Many Tender Ties, Chapters 2, 3

think for this post I want to focus more on the roles in which the women had. I never really knew how much they did, but it was very much beneficial to the survival and comfort of others. The women would be the ones in charge of food, making clothing, and the big red flag word COLONIZATION COLONIZATION COLONIZATION. I think of how the women were traded for fur despite all of their efforts and contributions for only god knows what would happen. In Ch. 2 we talked in class how it was beneficial for the traders to enter into marriage with these Native American Women when it would allow access, but it was alluded in the book that these men were not to actually have feelings for the women although some did. Would this because of the whole "savage" thing where man should not love a beast? This plays into on of themes we are exploring over the semester of the ideology of race/gender/oppression/power & privilege. Did any of these women ever feel as if they had privilege once they became associated with these white men as being romantically involved or in relationship of servitude?

There was the whole synopsis on the Marriage a la facon du pays where they would exchange vows by doing things around Native tradition,. but it doesn't seem that they were necessarily accepted on the "white side" until they went throught the cleansing process to make them more desireable to the white men. And it was later mentioned that the "trader usually visited the Indian encampments to claim his wife". CLAIM?!?!? are you kidding me. These women were just property, servitude sexually and domestically. I just wonder about the women who were to ONLY have illicit affiars with these white men, whilst married to their European wives. I could only imagine what the Native women were feeling, or even if they accepted this type of relationship.

I also want to point out the two pictures on pg. 34 & 35 where the woman Sally who was Okanagan and the next page being her daughter Henrietta. I can't help to think about the movie Rabbit Proof fence where the idea was for anglo men who have children with aboriginal women to cut through the blood and through time create whiteness and breed out the race in order to get rid of the aboriginal blood and create and new type of pure race or investing into whiteness in the long run?

I dunno just a few thoughts

Charla