Strong Women Stories (Chapter 7)

After the events of 9/11, it has shifted people’s thoughts about Islam, Afghanistan and the people who live in those countries. Dawn Martin-Hill describes the commonalities of the Afghanistan Mohawk communities as very similar. Colonialism leaves Indigenous communities shattered and traumatized.

This chapter is called She No Speaks which refers to the emergence of an Indigenous traditional woman who is silent and obedient to male authority. That kind of women is referred to as voiceless and the woman who never questions male authority.

Traditionally Haudenosaunee women did not typically stay at home with the children. They worked in the fields harvesting and preparing foods and clothing. The children were raised by extended family. This is based on the Western tradition and is based the nuclear family.

Today Native women continue to be oppressed and to be seen as disposable. There are five hundred Native women missing in Canada today and fifty plus missing and murdered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Indigenous women today have lost the basic human right to raise their own children.