7:52pm May 7, 2014

“Through a politics of maternalism, many white women reformers claimed for themselves the role of a ‘Great White Mother’ who would save her benighted Indian ‘daughters.’

Ironically, however, while these reformers venerated motherhood in their political discourse, they often failed to respect the actual mothering done by many native women. Instead, many reformers portrayed American Indian women as unfit mothers whose children had to be removed from their homes and communities to be raised properly by white women within institutions.

Many Indian women also bitterly contested the maternalism of white women. Her public persona as the ‘Big White Squaw’ aside, Estelle Reel admitted in her reports the great difficulty she had working with Indian women. The Indian mother, she wrote, is ‘much more opposed, as a rule, to allowing her children to accept the white man’s civilization, than is her spouse.’”

Cecily Devereux, New Woman, New World [PDF download]

#Stolen Generations
#White Savior Industrial Complex

#WHITE FEMINISM <3

(via brandx)

This is why I was not happy, as a Quaker, whenever fellow Quakers patted themselves on the back for the history of white Quakers’ relations with Indians, also abolitionism.  And I’m sure Quakers were doing worse than that.

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