You respect her!

How are my favorite readers doing? Today's entry won't be too long, but don't think that it is because it's not important, no, no, no.

Last time we were talking about the importance of the community in North American Native culture, and how it affected their narrative production, for example Highway's plays are choral works, or in Jeannette Armstrong “This is a story”, she puts all the focus on the community as an entity.

Highway emphasizes the importance of Native tradition not just in the relevanze of the group over the individual, but in some other aspects such as the importance of respecting old people, before the quarrel starts in the store, Philomena warns Emily about her manners,

“Emily Dictionary. You come back to the reserve after all these years and you strut around like you own the place. I know Veronique St. Pierre is a pain in the ass but I don't care. She's your elder and you respect her.” (43)

An interesting view of tradition in opposition to colonial influence is that of the matriarchy. Traditionally, many Native tribes were matriarchal, in the play this role is represented by Pelajia, who goes around wearing pants, with a hammer and is always rattling about the old chief.

Due to the contact with and assimilation by European culture these societies have slowly swifted into patriarchal roles, this being a white culture perversion institutionalized in the Indian Act.

This perversion has caused a lot of pain in native culture. In The Rez Sisters we see just the innocent (more or less) side of it, while in Dry Lips Ougtha Move to Kapuskasing, we get the cruelest view of reality. Big Joey could have prevented the rape of Patsy, and when questioned why he didn't do anything, all he says is “Because I hate them! I hate them fuckin' bitches. Because they – our own women – took the fuckin' power away from us faster than the FBI ever did.”

Very nice speech if you ask me, specially from an honest misogynist. Still, this is yet another colonization.

This perversion has created yet another colonizing entity over the native woman, that is, their own men. If you remember, some time ago I mentioned an article by Spivak and the colonization of third world women, well, now the figure of the colonizer changes into men, as I have just said, and these men reproduce the same imperialist ideology, indeed, the attitude of Big Joey could be represented in this quote by Spivak, “ Here the native “subject” is not almost an animal but rather the object of what might be termed the terrorism of the categorical imperative.” ( “Three women's text and a critique of imperialism”, 900)

Suming up, native women are colonized by two different waves let's say:

First: The white dominant culture that defines them as natives, women, and then according to their moral standards (in this particular case we have been talking about homosexuality and two-spirits). About this Spivak makes a reference about Antoinette or Bertha Mason, from Wide Sargasso Sea, that could be applied to The Rez Sisters as well, “In the figure of Antoinette, whom in Wide Sargasso Sea Rochester violently renames Bertha, Rhys suggests that so intimate a thing as personal and human identity might e determined by the politics of imperialism.” (901)

Second: Now that the “white man is gone”, they find a new oppressor, what the dominant culture has made of their own culture, here regarding men.

Well guys, I think we have had enough Spivak by now, but I want to know what you opinions on this subject are. Do you think these women are doubly oppressed? Do you think non-white or non-western women experience a different situation?