A Necessary Balance: Gender and Power among Indians of the Columbia Plateau (Volume 246) (The Civilization of the American Indian Series) - Softcover

Ackerman, Lillian A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806144564 ISBN 13: 9780806144566

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014

Synopsis

Many Native American cultures have long treated women and men as equals. In A Necessary Balance, Lillian A. Ackerman examines the balance of power and responsibility between men and women within each of the eleven Plateau Indian tribes who live today on the Colville Indian Reservation in north-central Washington State.

Ackerman analyzes tribal cultures over three historical periods lasting more than a century--the traditional past, the farming phase when Indians were forced onto the reservation, and the twentieth century industrial present. Ackerman examines gender equality in terms of power, authority, and autonomy in four social spheres: economic, domestic, political, and religious.

Although early explorers and anthropologists noted isolated instances of gender equality among Plateau Indians, A Necessary Balance is the first book-length examination of a culture that has practiced such equality from its early days of hunting and gathering to the present day. Ackerman’s findings also relate to an examination of European and American cultures, calling into question the current assumption that gender equality ceases to be possible with the advent of industrialization.

About this title

About the Author:

Lillian A. Ackerman, Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology at Washington State University, is the editor of Song to the Creator: Traditional Arts of Native American Women of the Plateau and coeditor of Women and Power in Native North America.

Review:

“Required reading for all scholars of Native history and federal Indian policy in the Pacific Northwest.”―Pacific Northwest Quarterly

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0806144564
• ISBN 13: 9780806144566
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300