Strong Women Stories Introduction & Chapter 1

Intro- The intro titled “For the Betterment of Our Nations” by Bonita Lawrence & Kim Anderson described what the book Strong Women Stories will contain such as the sense of who a person is individually and with the world, as well as how their past is now apart of their present, and the challenges that Native/Indigenous women may face.
There are accounts of spirituality, re-claiming/gaining/loosing Indian Status, and who show be considered to even be able to say legally (and governmentally) who is Native American. In the section of the book “Coming Home” what is highlighted here are things that come affect native people such as leaving ones community and the factor of assimilation (which I think is hard to run from or even harder to not be effected).
The second section of the book “Asking Questions” tries to negotiate for those who have left their communities with the question of “what happens when we come home and we don’t like what we find?” It is said that these struggles are about finding one as a Native American women. In the section “Rebuilding Our Communities”, the reader should for definition to how Native Women are striving to rebuild their communities, and this is not necessarily always physical building of buildings but of maintaining and reestablishing language and traditions.
These women look toward their children to rebuild because they are the ones who will “greatly influence our future”. However there is realization that there are some things in which they cannot change such as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (although I believe that through education of their children can this problem be decreased but not completely rid of) and this is the same with women and violence.

Chapter one by Gertie Mai Muise titled “Where the spirits live: women rebuilding a non-status Mi’kmaq Community” speaks of the Mi’kmaq women of western Newfoundland. Muise opens with “we are systematically oppressed but, without question we are altogether strong. We are dependent on men, the church and welfare like no other group of Aboriginal women in this country, yet we are fiercely independent and cut our own trails”. Muise speaks about when she left her home to become and educated woman by attending college. She was pushed into this decision by her father, but she states she does not believe her family would have pushed her into going to college if they knew that it would mean assimilation. Muise states that “I had already been socialized not to live among my people.
Assimilation was already at work within me. University constantly hammered in western values, such as competition and debate, business marketing techniques, psychology, and Christian theology, which reduced my own people’s knowledge to the status of folklore.” This made me wonder while I was reading and made me write in the margin of the book does education always equal assimilation? Is this prevalent for all people of color? However she moves further to make the point that assimilation is like a protection from being pushed out of ones home like the generations before her and also it’s a way to blend in and protect one-self from genocide.
However there is a problem that comes with this. Muise said that they go out and assimilate and have children or are children of relationships with people who are Mi’kmaq so that heritage is later refused to them because they are “half-breed” or “part-bloods”. I think that assimilation can be seen as a way for the government to push out those who are assimilated or no longer “apart” of the community thanks to western world teachings, and yet it becomes another way in which these people are being pushed out. There is also a fear of Politics because it is something that continues to be oppressive, and again I make the point politics, assimilation are all the same. If a person cannot adhere to laws that local and federal government puts forth, fines and new laws are put into place which terrorize a people become apart of that life. I would find it difficult as an educated woman to find the common ground. I feel that either way assimilated or not the government is going to find a way to get rid of you.