Contact Zones: Aboriginal and Settler Women

Kerry Abel is a professor of history at Carleton University. She is the author of Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History, co-editor of Aboriginal Resource Use in Canada: Historical and Legal Aspects, and co-editor of Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History.

In recent years, scholars of colony and empire have debated the role of
women in imperialist expansion. Were European women partners in the
enterprise, or were they doubly colonized through European attitudes
about gender? How did Aboriginal women experience the process? This
collection of a dozen essays explores the questions in their Canadian
context from an interesting variety of topics and perspectives. The
contributing authors are all well-known and highly respected scholars
from two “generations” of academics. In their essays, they explore
the ways in which race and power relations in Canada’s past were
played out through women, both Aboriginal and European.

There are studies of specific women such as Pauline Johnson, Bernice
Loft, and Ethel Brant Monture, whose public performances presented
“Indian” voices to white audiences, and European women such as Emily
Carr, Maria Colles, and Loretta Chisholm, who interacted with the
British Columbia frontier in quite different ways. There are studies of
attempts to control and regulate women through means such as missions,
Indian agents, the law, and schools. One essay explores the
“performance” of nationalism through the Anglo-Canadian celebration
of Victoria Day in Victoria, B.C., while another looks at Metis
women’s art and the process through which it became commodified in the
fur trade. Each essay is accompanied by extensive footnotes that provide
a valuable reference resource to the growing body of international
scholarly literature in this field. There is also an index, something
all too often omitted in collections of essays.

While each essay explores a specific case study or topic, all of the
contributors have grappled with the pertinent theoretical and
historiographical questions. Some of the essays are more theoretical
(with the accompanying language/jargon) than others, and may prove heavy
going to the uninitiated. Nevertheless, the collection is an excellent
one, and even the most theoretical pieces are worth the effort. There is
good regional coverage (Ontario, the Prairies, British Columbia, and the
North), a good range of topics, and everywhere excellent research that
reveals many unknown aspects of women’s experience in Canada.