Aboriginal Women Roles

The pre contact Indigenous society was egalitarian, were everyone’s roles were equally valued. Egalitarian does not mean that the roles of each individual were equal but that the tasks of the elderly, the women, and the men were of equal value because the Aboriginal understood that each individual had an equal fundamental worth. For the Indigenous there was no role that was understood as bigger or more important, the roles of the men and women were complimentary to each other. This is the kind of culture that the Europeans encountered, which was very different from their patriarchy society; where the man held authority over women and children. Being able to see the difference in the two societies, it understandable that when contact happened …show more content…
The role of women is not only defined by what they did, but it is also wrapped up in how Aboriginal women understood feminism, and how the wider community valued women. Aboriginal woman recognized that they held a power within themselves, for them this “power of women refers to them embracing their womanhood and taking on their responsibilities in the role of woman as sustainer of life” and “keepers of culture.” Aboriginal women were not the only sustainers of life; one definition of feminism for the Aboriginals is taking “pride in being woman, being different from man, and making sure the way of women will remain balanced to the way of man, as both ways are needed to sustain life.” Here one starts to see how the Indigenous society shows who both the roles of men and women were both necessary and of equal …show more content…
The Indigenous women were acted and presented themselves very differently then the Europeans were use to. It was thought “that women’s position and image in European society have always been subordinate and inferior, this is patently not the case. The concept of womanhood is complex and highly nuanced.” The Europeans would have been surprised to find the “women being the ones making the decisions in the home … making them the head of the household.” Compared to the famous saying “man of the house”. There was also the fact that Aboriginal females had sexual independence, this “was the ultimate threat to the patriarchal family of the nineteenth century.” How Indigenous women lived went against what Europeans thought was proper and from this Aboriginal women were place in two categories. A woman settler said the following;
There were two classes of Indian women: ‘civilized and partly civilized.’ The former live on reserves, are much better off than before, ‘speak English fluently, are good cooks and excellent wives’ … the latter are more likely to live in a nomadic state, are forced to work extremely hard, ‘are not brilliant successes as cooks,’ do not dress in the modern fashion, and exhibit ‘much laxity respecting martial