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?
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