Abstract
The impact of colonialism on women’s work and status in traditional subsistence economies has been well documented. However, there is considerable debate on the exact nature of the effects of colonial processes on women’s lives. Leacock, Brown, and Bell have suggested that men and women in precolonial societies are autonomous individuals with positions of equal power and prestige. Women make a substantial contribution to the domestic economy and control the access to resources and the conditions of their work. By contrast, other scholars point to accounts of male violence against women, and patrilineal patterns of resource allocation where women have access to land and other critical resources only through male kin. Thus, these and other authors believe that women’s degree of autonomy and independence in pre-colonial societies should not be overestimated.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Eleanor Leacock, “Introduction” to F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1972)
Diane Bell, Daughters of the Dreaming (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1983).
Henrietta Moore, Feminism and Anthropology (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1988)
Karen Sacks, Sisters and Wives: The Past and Future of Sexual Equality (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1979).
Simi Afonja, “Changing Modes of Production and the Sexual Division of Labor among the Yoruba,” Signs 7 (1981): 299–313.
Lourdes Arizpe, La mujer en el desarrollo de México y de América Latina (Mexico: UNAM-CRIM, 1989)
GIMPTRAP, Las mujeres en la pobreza (Mexico: GIMTRAP-COLMEX, 1994)
Soledad González Montes and Vania Salles, Relaciones de género y transformaciones agrarias (Mexico: COLMEX, 1995)
Pilar Alberti and Emma Zapata, Estrategias de sobrevivencia de mujeres campesinas e indígenas ante la crisis económica (Mexico: Colegio de Postgraduados, 1997).
José Luis de Rojas, México Tenochtitlan: Economía y Sociedad en el Siglo XVI (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986), p. 101.
G. McBride, The Land Systems of Mexico (New York: American Geographical Society, 1923), p. 117.
Anna-Britta Hellbom, La participación cultural de las mujeres indias y mestizas en el México precortesiano y postrevolucionario (Stockholm: The Ethnographical Museum, 1967), pp. 235–6
S. Cline, Colonial Culhuacan, 1580–1600. A Social History of an Aztec Town (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), p. 112
Susan Kellogg, “Kinship and Social Organization in Early Colonial Tenochtitlan,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians (Austin: University of Austin Press, 1986), 4:105.
Susan Kellogg, “Aztec Women in Early Colonial Courts: Structure and Strategy in a Legal Context,” in Five Centuries of Law and Politics in Central Mexico, ed. R. Spores and R. Hassing (Nashville: Vanderbilt Publications, 1984).
Margarita Loera y Chávez, Calimaya y Tepamaxalco. Tenencia y transmisión hereditaria de la tierra en dos communidades indígenas. Epoca colonial (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1977).
Enrique Florescano Mayet, Origen y desarrollo de los problemas agrarios en México (Mexico City: ERA, 1984), p. 24.
Mercedes Olivera, “The Barrios of San Andrés Cholula,” in Essays on Mexican Kinship, ed. H. Nutini, P. Carrasco, and J. Taggart (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), p. 72.
Soledad González Montes and Pilar Iracheta, “La violencia en la vida de las mujeres campesinas: el distrito de Tenango, 1880–1910,” in Presencia y transparencia. La mujer en la historia de México (Mexico: COLMEX, 1987), p. 123.
Jacques M. Chevalier and Daniel Buckles, A Land without Gods. Process Theory, Maldevelopment and the Mexican Nahuas (London: Zed Books, 1995), p. 31.
Lourdes Arizpe and Carlota Botey, “Mexican Agricultural Development Policy and Its Impact on Rural Women,” in Rural Women and State Policy in Latin America, ed. Carmen Diana Deere and Magdalena León de Leal (Colorado: Westview Press, 1987), p. 70.
Shirlene Soto, Emergence of the Modern Mexican Woman. Her Participation in Revolution and Struggle for Equality (Denver: Arden Press, 1990), pp. 109–10.
Esperanza Tuñón Pablos, Mujeres que se Organizan. El FUPDM, 1935–1938 (Mexico City: UNAM-Porrúa, 1992).
Rocío Esparza Salinas, Las mujeres campesinas ante las reformas al Artículo 27 de la Constitución (Mexico: GIMTRAP, 1996), p. 25.
Kathleen Jamieson, Indian Women and the Law in Canada: Citizen Minus (Ottawa: Minister of Supply Services, 1978), p. 113.
J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens. A History of Indian–White Relations in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), p. 9.
Olive Dickason, Canada’s First Nations (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992), p. 71.
Carol Devens, “Separate Confrontations: Gender as a Factor in Indian Adaptation to European Colonization in New France,” American Quarterly 38 (1986), p. 464
Eleanor Leacock, “Montagnais Women and the Jesuit Program of Colonization,” in Rethinking Canada. The Promise of Women’s History, ed. V. Strong-Boag and A. C. Fellman, (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1991), pp. 11–27.
Donna Kahenrakwas Goodleaf, “Under Military Occupation. Indigenous Women, State Violence and Community Resistance,” in And Still We Rise. Feminist Political Mobilizing in Contemporary Canada, ed. L. Carty (Canada: Women’s Press, 1993), p. 227.
Jennifer Brown, “A Demographic Transition in the Fur Trade Country: Family Sizes and Fertility of Company Officers and Country Wives, Ca. 1759–1850,” The Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology 6 (1976), p. 68
Kathleen Jamieson, “Sex Discrimination in the Indian Act,” in Arduous Journey. Canadian Indians and Decolonization, ed. J.R. Ponting (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986), p. 116.
Sally Weaver, “First Nations Women and Government Policy, 1970–1972: Discrimination and Conflict,” in Changing Patterns. Women in Canada, ed. S. Burt, L. Code and L. Dorney (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993), p. 116.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2002 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
García, V.V. (2002). Native Women and State Legislation in Mexico and Canada: The Agrarian Law and the Indian Act. In: Hunt, T.L., Lessard, M.R. (eds) Women and the Colonial Gaze. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523418_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523418_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-77351-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-52341-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)