xi+185 pages with maps, bibliography and index. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 6") bound in original publisher's red cloth with gilet lettering to spine in original jacket. First edition. With Countering Colonization, Carol Devens offers a well-documented, revisionary history of Native American women. From the time of early Jesuit missionaries to the late nineteenth century, Devens brings Ojibwa, Cree, and Montagnais-Naskapi women of the Upper Great Lakes region to the fore. Far from being passive observers without regard for status and autonomy, these women were pivotal in their own communities and active in shaping the encounter between Native American and white civilizations. While women's voices have been silenced in most accounts, their actions preserved in missionary letters and reports indicate the vital part women played during centuries of conflict. In contrast to some Indian men who accepted the missionaries' religious and secular teachings as useful tools for dealing with whites, many Indian women felt a strong threat to their ways of life and beliefs. Women endured torture and hardship, and even torched missionaries' homes in an attempt to reassert control over their lives. Devens demonstrates that gender conflicts in Native American communities, which anthropologists considered to be "aboriginal," resulted in large part from women's and men's divergence over the acceptance of missionaries and their message. This book's perspective is unique in its focus on Native ...

University of California Press, Date: 1992-03-20. Hardcover. Used: Good. 1992. University of California Press ISBN 0520075579 9780520075573 [US]

hardcover. Good. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book. ISBN 0520075579 9780520075573 [US]