I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism

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.

I Am Woman is a study in contradictions. It is an angry exploration of
love. It is an anti-racist essay that sees “white” culture as
fundamentally (and perhaps everlastingly) flawed. Even the subtitle,
which promises “a Native perspective,” is contradicted by the
author’s condemnation of the women’s movement for being interested
in her only as a Native voice, not a woman’s.

All these contradictions give the reader a powerful glimpse into a mind
that is struggling to find a way out of the fundamental contradictions
that Native peoples face in modern North American society. In essays,
poetry, and stories, the author explores topics ranging from
child-rearing practices to communism. She argues that colonialism is
ultimately responsible for the racism and sexism that pervades both
Native and non-Native society in Canada. Her solution is decolonization,
not public or political, but rather a personal and inner decolonization
of the mind.

This second edition includes a new preface, some minor textual changes,
and a beautiful new cover. Although the ideas of the angry activists of
the 1960s and 1970s are represented here, there is also much that is
refreshingly individual; a critic of the American Indian Movement,
Maracle challenges clichés about Native spirituality, for instance. I
Am Woman remains as provocative and controversial today as when it was
first published.