Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement - by Valerie Sherer Mathes (Hardcover)

About the Book

This collection of essays offers a new interpretation of the WNIA's founding, argues that the WNIA provided opportunities for indigenous women, creates a new space in the public sphere for white women, and reveals the WNIA's role in broader national debates centered on Indian land rights and the political power of Christian reform.

Book Synopsis

This collection of essays offers a new interpretation of the WNIA's founding, argues that the WNIA provided opportunities for indigenous women, creates a new space in the public sphere for white women, and reveals the WNIA's role in broader national debates centered on Indian land rights and the political power of Christian reform.

Review Quotes

Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement presents an important new look at one of the most significant Indian reform organizations. Re-examining the WNIA's history, membership, and activities, contributors to this volume highlight the intersectionality of race, gender, and identity.--Lisa E. Emmerich, professor emerita of history, California State University, Chico

The collection of chapters that makes up this important re-examination of the Women's National Indian Association (WNIA) offers a compelling and complex analysis of Indigenous and White women's activism.--Sarah Eppler Janda, Southwestern Historical Quarterly

This fine collection is the first to explore the activities of Indigenous women in the WNIA and to locate the organization in the broader gendered politics of Indian policy. It is a worthwhile contribution to both women's and policy history.--Katherine M. B. Osburn, author of Choctaw Resurgence in Mississippi: Race, Class, and Nation Building in the Jim Crow South, 1830-1977

About the Author

Valerie Sherer Mathes is a professor emerita of history at City College of San Francisco. Her published books include The Women's National Indian Association: A History (UNM Press).

Albert L. Hurtado is the Travis Professor of Modern American History at the University of Oklahoma and the author of award-winning studies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century California.