The plains truth: The impact of colonialism on Indian women

Conclusion

Somewhere between fact and fancy, between competing perspectives and interpretations, lies the truth. No extreme position can totally reflect the data, but neither does interpretation collapse into relativism. In these pages I have noted that as Plains society became increasingly enmeshed in production for the fur trade, a simple yet significant degree of specialization of labor emerged, forged along traditional lines. Women were precluded from contributing to hunting, a situation fostered by the effects of the horse on their foraging economy. Private property relations both resulted from and compounded this situation by assuring men a degree of control over distribution, exchange, and production unknown in the previous century. The result was the relative decline in the position of women.

An historical materialist framework succeeds here. In adopting it we avoid outlining the problem in a one-dimensional way by interpreting homeostatic function and conflict diachronically. Most significantly, historical materialism does not present the problem in a simplistic (either functionalism/or conflict theory) framework, but rather seeks to argue from the former to the latter via an examination of the relations of production.

In tribal society, unlike class society, relations between the sexes do not lend themselves to overt political expression in the context of massive movements which have revolution or social change as the sole end. The institutions of kinship and family, and their reproductive functions, effectively prohibit this antagonistic splintering of society ¹. And this is even more the case where we find both family and wider kin groupings looming importantly in economic matters. Contemporary society can readily make for feminist issues, precisely because families are increasingly superfluous; the result being that the exploitative relations between the sexes are more sharply defined and given expression. In tribal society, however, kinship is the fulcrum of social life and is the modality of all institutions. To the degree that Plains Indian women could seek status within, and identify with, the domestic unit or band, the social schisms forming in Plains society could remain smoldering beneath the surface. The very nature of kinship society precludes the kind of class conflict which occurs in centralized or formative state systems. But it is no guarantee against structurally significant discontent.