Feminist Principles in Iroquois Culture Will Be Topic of Talk

Women’s history scholar Sally Roesch Wagner and Jeanne Shenandoah of the Onondaga Nation communications office will give a talk entitled "Sisters in Spirit: Iroquois Women, an Inspiration to Early Feminists" on Thursday, April 5. The event, which is free and open to the public, starts at 7:00 p.m. in Textor 103, with a reception and book signing to follow.

Shenandoah, a member of the Onondaga Nation Eel clan, will describe the duties Haudeno-saunee women have traditionally held, including their responsibilities as clan mothers. She will also discuss the balance between men and women in Haudenosaunee society. Wagner will then look at what 19th-century suffragists such as Matilda Joslyn Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony knew about the status of women in Iroquois society and how the Indian model influenced the white women’s struggle for equality in religion, government, business, and the home.

"They caught a glimpse of the possibility of freedom because they knew women who lived liberated lives, women who had always possessed rights beyond their wildest imagination — Iroquois women," Wagner wrote in The Untold Story of the Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists, a collection of her essays.

Wagner is also the author of two books, She Who Holds the Sky: Matilda Joslyn Gage and Celebrating Your Cultural Heritage by Telling the Untold Stories, as well as numerous journal articles. A former professor of women’s studies at Sacramento State College, she is currently the executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, New York.

Shenandoah is also involved in the Gage Foundation, serving as vice president. In addition, she is a member of the Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force, which is concerned with environmental issues affecting the Iroquois homeland.

The event is being sponsored by the Native American Cultural Club, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Department of Anthropology, and nine other departments and units on campus.

For more information call anthropology faculty members Brooke Olson at 274-1735 or Jack Rossen at 274-3326.