Published by University of New Mexico Press
Founded in the late nineteenth century, the Women’s National Indian Association was one of several reform associations that worked to implement the government’s assimilation policy directed at Native peoples. The women of the WNIA combined political action with efforts to improve health and home life and spread Christianity on often remote reservations. During its more than seventy-year history, the WNIA established over sixty missionary sites in which they provided Native peoples with home-building loans, founded schools, built missionary cottages and chapels, and worked toward the realization of reservation hospitals.Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement reveals the complicated intersections of gender, race, and identity at the heart of Indian reform. This collection of essays offers a new interpretation of the WNIA’s founding, argues that the WNIA provided opportunities for indigenous women, creates a new space in the public sphere for white women, and reveals the WNIA’s role in broader national debates centered on Indian land rights and the political power of Christian reform.
Subjects: HistoryAmerican IndiansWomenAHA21WHA20
List of IllustrationsForeword Albert L. HurtadoIntroduction. Still Working in the Field: The WNIA and Gender History Jane SimonsenPart One. New InterpretationsChapter One. From Indian Territory to Philadelphia: A Critical Reexamination of the Origins and Early History of the Women’s National Indian Association, 1877–1881 John M. RheaChapter Two. Two Marys and a Martha: Three Massachusetts Women and Indian Reform in the 1880s Curtis M. HinsleyPart Two. The National SceneChapter Three. A Place at the Table: The Women’s National Indian Association in the Indian Reform Arena Valerie Sherer MathesPart Three. The Influence of Helen Hunt JacksonChapter Four. Her Soul Is Marching On: Helen Hunt Jackson’s Followers in the Indian Reform Movement Phil BrigandiChapter Five. In the Shadow of Ramona: Frances Campbell Sparhawk and the Fiction of Reform David Wallace AdamsPart Four. From Philadelphia to Northern California: Coast to Coast ReformChapter Six. Mary Lucinda Bonney Rambaut: Educator and Indian Reformer Valerie Sherer MathesChapter Seven. C. E. Kelsey and California’s Landless Indians Valerie Sherer MathesPart Five. Indian Women and Self-DeterminationChapter Eight. “Your Indian Friend”: Indigenous Women and Strategic Alliances with the WNIA Jane SimonsenConclusion. “Indians Can Be Educated”: The WNIA at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition Lori JacobsonAppendix. WNIA Missionary Stations Valerie Sherer MathesBibliographyContributorsIndex
