To women running for President over 100 years ago ...

 To the 150-year-old struggle for pay equity ... 

Feminist scholar Sally Roesch Wagner brings alive a new history

Did you know that Belva Lockwood ran for President in 1884 and 1888? This was eight years after Victoria Woodhull announced her candidacy for President. Running a woman for president was only one part of a twenty-year campaign of non-violent civil disobedience that predates Gandhi by half a century and characterizes the history of the National Women Suffrage Association.

From voting illegally to suing the government, refusing to pay taxes and running a woman for president, the movement practiced brilliant strategy and courage that shines today.

Claiming they had more cause for revolution than the founding fathers in 1776, they fought "for the daughters of 1976," Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote.

But voting was only a part of the early movement. Equal Pay for Equal Work, they demanded. Gage called for an end to sexual abuse by the clergy and trafficking in women in 1893. “Among the Iroquois the women had the veto power in war,” she wrote, “but an American woman can say nothing.” And reproductive rights? “The law of motherhood should be entirely under woman’s control,” Gage asserted.

Arrangements for bringing Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner and this new view of women’s history to your campus and community may be made by contacting Barbara Dean, 540-533-0733 or MsBPD@aol.com.

Drawing on her 30-plus-year career as scholar and performer, Dr. Wagner presents a spellbinding new way of looking at history, engaging audiences from kindergarten to senior citizens, in venues ranging from college campuses to state legislatures.

Through years of impeccable research and a dazzling stage presence, Dr. Wagner brings her characters to life with “as close an approximation as years of study can make possible,” according to the former Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Your campus can join the more than 100 colleges and universities where Sally Roesch Wagner has lectured and performed to raves, leaving your students with a changed perspective and a renewed commitment to work toward an inclusive democracy in the United States of America.

One of the first women to receive a doctorate for work in women’s studies in the United States (UC Santa Cruz, 1978), Dr. Wagner is also a founder of one of the country’s first women’s studies programs at California State University, Sacramento (1970). A women’s studies professor for 37 years and now Executive Director of the Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, New York, Wagner is the nation’s foremost authority on Matilda Joslyn Gage.Dr. Wagner appeared as a “talking head” in Ken Burns’ PBS documentary, “Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony,” for which she wrote the accompanying faculty guide. She was an historian in the PBS special, “One Woman, One Vote” and has been interviewed on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Democracy Now.”

The 1997 Jeanette K. Watson Women’s Studies Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University and author of numerous books and articles, Wagner’s recent titles include: She Who Holds the Sky: Matilda Joslyn Gage (Sky Carrier Press, 2003); Introduction to the reprint of Matilda Joslyn Gage’s 1893 classic Woman, Church and State (Humanity Books, 2002); and Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists (Native Voices, 2001).

In performance as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Dr. Wagner moves spontaneously through her material, drawing upon a vast knowledge of the character and her times as though upon personal memories. Each presentation, uniquely adapted for the audience, is unparalleled in historical accuracy.

Following her portrayal, Wagner leaves her character and becomes the scholar beneath the wig. In this way, the audience has an opportunity to question facts and interpretations offered in the performance, entering into provocative dialogue with one of the nation’s leading authorities on the history of the woman’s rights movement.

Wagner in performance as Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Witty, brilliant and iconoclastic, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) was, during her lifetime, one of the preeminent women in America. An organizer of the world’s first Women’s Rights convention in 1848, Stanton became a Lyceum lecturer and widely-read author who espoused every radical reform of her day—from racial and economic justice, cooperative housekeeping and a woman’s right to her own body, to children’s rights. “The few have no right to the luxuries of life while the many are denied the necessities” was her motto. Promising that “I shall not grow conservative with age,” Stanton challenged the enemies of freedom to the end of her life.

Women's Rights: Current Lectures by Sally Roesch Wagner

“Meet the woman who was ahead of the woman who was ahead of her time: Matilda Joslyn Gage”
With these words Gloria Steinem describes Gage, the forgotten feminist, who was considered a major woman’s rights leader during her time. Adopted into the wolf clan of the Mohawk nation, and supporter of native sovereignty and treaty rights, Gage acknowledged the superior position of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) women, drawing inspiration from their model. She advocated civil rights, the separation of church and state and inspired her son-in-law L. Frank Baum to create a feminist utopia in his 14 Oz books. Written out of history for her challenge to religious fundamentalism, Gage stands as a beacon today in the struggle for peace and justice.

“Susan B., Elizabeth, Matilda and Me: the making of a feminist”
Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, considered the “triumvirate” of National Woman Suffrage Association leadership, all experienced firing moments in their young lives that set them on the path of devoting their lives to social justice. Second-wave feminist pioneer Sally Roesch Wagner, a founder of one of the country’s first women studies program, reflects on the similarity of her formative experiences 100 years later.

“Sisters in Spirit: the Haudenosaunee influence on early American feminists”
On the cutting edge of feminist scholarship, Sally Roesch Wagner describes how women of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy inspired the revolutionary vision of early feminists by providing a model of empowered women. At a time when Euro-American women had few rights, Haudenosaunee women possessed decisive political voice, control of their bodies and property, custody of the children they bore, satisfying work and a society virtually free of rape and domestic violence. The thinking of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage became transformed through their involvement with their indigenous neighbors in upstate New York. Wagner's presentation-based upon her book, Sisters in Spirit: The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists-keynoted the 1998 National Women's Studies Association annual convention.

Also available…
MULTICULTURAL PROGRAMS

featuring Dr. Wagner and her colleagues and friends

Racism and Cultural Awareness Workshops with Tillie Black Bear, Sicangu Lakota director of the White Buffalo Calf Society battered women’s shelter on Rosebud Reservation, or Oglala Lakota artist/activist Vic Runnels.

Joint Lecture with Jeanne Shenandoah, traditional midwife and member of the Onondaga Nation Eel clan, on the origins of the woman’s movement in native culture. Read review by Janet Dodd.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass in dialogue—Joint Performance with Charles Pace, exploring the interface between race and gender.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass: Equality Beyond Race and Gender—Dramatic Portrayal with Fred Morsell. See additional information

2007 Calendar

March 6, 7:00 p.m. Bath, New York
"The Influence of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Influence On Women's Rights”
Bath Branch AAUW
Steuben County Health Care Facility
County Road 113
Bath, NY
Sponsored by the New York Council for the Humanities

March 15, 1 – 2:15 p.m., Placerville, Calif.
"The Influence of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) On Women's Rights”
El Dorado Center Community Center (C-102)
El Dorado Center
6699 Campus Drive
Placerville, CA
For information contact Deb Moreno, 916-984-9614

March 15, 5:30 – 6:45 p.m., Folsom, Calif.
"The Influence of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) On Women's Rights”
Folsom Lake College Large Lecture Hall (FL3-173)
Folsom Lake College
10 College Parkway
Folsom, CA
For information contact Deb Moreno, 916-984-9614

June 3, 1 p.m., Howes Cave, New York
Longhouse Lectures
“New York's Missing Link: The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign, Then and Now" by Robert Spiegelman
and
“The Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Influence on Women's Rights” by Sally Roesch Wagner
Iroquois Museum
Howes Cave, NY
For information contact the Iroquois Museum at info@iroquoismuseum.org or call 518-296-8949

November 15, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Cambridge, Mass.
"How women are ‘erased’ from history -- and overcoming this."
Theological Opportunities Program
Harvard Divinity School
Andover Hall
45 Francis Ave.
Cambridge, MA
$15 registration fee for the half day conference
For further information call Elizabeth Dodson Gray, 781-235-5320.

COMMUNITY, GENERAL

[Elizabeth Cady Stanton] appeared...at her rabble-rousing best....expounding on her most radical notions...It was not Stanton at the lectern, of course, but Sally Roesch Wagner...relating in costume and character the once -- and to some, it seems, still-controversial ideas of the 19th century feminist leader. The audience reaction was spontaneous. Los Angeles Times

I floated along for several days on a blissful cloud of satisfaction about your appearance here. Smithsonian National Museum of American History

You bring her to life in exactly the way I’ve always imagined her: fiery, brilliant, witty, disarming, powerful…eerie to watch, because the character is so believable…as compelling a piece of living history and as persuasive piece of teaching as I've ever seen. Women’s Rights National Historical Park, Seneca Falls, NY

… your performance was indeed a highlight of our Conference...you held the audience spellbound from start to finish. Soroptimist International

… knows how to take command of a room. Along with a vital stage presence, she has a personal wit that enlivens the character…Stepping out of that role, she literally let her hair down and engaged the audience in a very personal way, at an entirely different level - vulnerable and intimate, yet clearly knowledgeable about the mid-19th century world of her character. Official evaluator, 1992 California-Oregon Humanities Chautauqua

… a particularly effective means to encourage people to distance themselves from the passion of hard-fought public issues and think about those issues within the discipline of the humanities. I have never seen this better evidenced than in her performance as Elizabeth Cady Stanton before a special session of the Nebraska Legislature in 1990. Executive Director, Nebraska Humanities Council

Her performance removes the wall of time and you believe she is still in her own time and place. National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, Baker City, OR

… an extraordinarily talented performer and an outstanding historian…We would be thrilled to have her back. The Haggin Museum, Stockton, CA

Sally is able to recreate the past, to make you feel a part of it, and then connect it to the present political climate, leading to a better understanding of where we are going, and what work still needs to be done. Onondaga Women’s Political Caucus, Syracuse, NY

Next to the band shell in Huron's city park is a big...tent and...hundreds of people begin to make their way toward it. They are farmers, merchants, college students, teachers, children, senior citizens ... On this particular summer evening they learn about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the witty, determined woman who challenged church and state in the cause of female equality. A historian from California, dressed in 19th century fashion, addresses the gathering as Stanton would have...as close an approximation as years of study can make possible…The crowd is caught up and asks questions of the scholar as though she were Stanton. The dialogue is generally penetrating and informed. Director, National Endowment for the Humanities

MULTICULTURAL

We had a standing room only crowd...it was an historic moment as this new research created cross-cultural connections for women's hope in society and made us think differently about our roles. Elizabeth Cady Stanton Foundation, Seneca Falls, NY

... terrific and high impact. The strong connection between women's rights and civil rights and the importance of human rights struggles was beautifully documented. William Patterson College, NJ

Sally's skill in research is obvious, and she is also blessed with a wonderful presentation style which stimulates thought. She made me feel like I could have been one of the early pioneers making friends with the Native women. AAUW Regional Conference, Rapid City, South Dakota

One of the few educational programs which directly, assertively and seriously attends to the issue(s) of race and gender. University of California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo, California

… top notch scholarship, sensitive presentation. University of California, Davis

Although she is not proud of it, it took Sally Roesch Wagner 17 years to realize the diffusion of culture works both ways. "While clearly the white agenda was to try to turn the Indians into white people...because the Indians had such an extraordinarily developed and exemplary culture, a lot of white people became like Indians or adopted part of the culture," Wagner said. The Associated Press

CAMPUS

… just what our campus needed…a wonderful job of bringing Stanton’s radical ideas alive for a largely conservative audience. I’ve heard nothing but positive reviews. University of North Alabama, Florence

… a superb spotlight event... spellbinding and enlightening. Colby College, Maine

... eloquent, articulate and thought-provoking. West Virginia Institute of Technology

Class visits were terrific, lecture was a full house (including our President). Four of our faculty are incorporating Dr. Wagner’s scholarship into their own work. Several new projects sparked from the faculty interaction with her...thank you so much. This was a wonderful opportunity for our students and faculty. State University of New York, Potsdam

Sally was very accessible—meeting students and other audience members at their level of understanding. Students commented on her generosity. They were impressed by her gift of challenging and provoking students without putting them off. Mansfield University, PA

Accolades continue to come in from students and colleagues...you dared to make everyone think! ...grateful you shared your concepts, your humor, and your pleasure of history with us. We have grown from your presence. Delta College, Stockton CA

As a Distinguished Visiting Professor ... you were exemplary. The time you spent here provided precisely the kind of exchange for which the…program was established. State University of New York, Plattsburgh

Moving and enlightening as a dramatist and as a discussion leader...the evaluation forms filled out by attendees were stunning! Salem College, North Carolina

… captivated and enlightened the audience. Her choice of material elicited excellent questions from the audience. University of North Dakota

… you cannot help but think that you have stepped back in time or that the characters have come forward – time as we know it is suspended…I feel renewed and empowered and proud to have women such as these in my past. Loyola University, New Orleans, LA

K - 12

Dr. Wagner has given 42 presentations and addressed almost 6,000 students and teachers. ... the students sat spell-bound in assembly after assembly...like a walking encyclopedia...She truly brings excellence into the schools! Black Hills Special Services Cooperative, SD

Very exciting program, thought-provoking, enlightening. Highly recommended ...Sally Roesch Wagner makes history 'live' for students...Their response is overwhelmingly positive. Los Angeles Unified School District

You made those kids think of history in ways they never did before...I love watching you work with young people. The way you build groups is truly inspiring. Academy for Youth Leadership, Project of NE State Legislature

GENERAL

I have seen Sally address the Missouri State Legislature as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, sat at dinner with her and the feminist women in that legislative body, listened to her speak to a group of fifteen self-employed women around a dinner table in a Chinese restaurant and, after speaking for a while, slowly transform herself into [Elizabeth Cady] Stanton before our astounded and admiring eyes, watched as she spoke to elementary school children, been in the audience when she spoke to and performed for Women's Studies scholars as a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the National Women's Studies Association, sat in the radio studio with her in Tampa, Florida while she was being interviewed for a national talk show, and shared a cherished friendship with her for many, many years! She is an incredible and wonderful performer, historian, lecturer, scholar, historian, writer and interviewee. Susan Koppelman, Tucson, Arizona 2005

Graduating Seniors and your families; President Ryerson; Members of the Board, Faculty and Staff and Friends of the College:

I asked to have dinner in the cafeteria with the senior class officers who had made the decision to bring me. “What do you want me to say?” I asked, and more importantly, as Gwen Webber McLeod suggested, “what do you want me not to say?”

I got my answer. No “reach for the stars.” No “your life awaits you.” No “we’ve messed up the world totally and now we’re turning it over to you to straighten it out.”

Fair enough. “So what do you want me to say?” I asked. “Mandate better food in the cafeteria.” Putting a second forkful of a mouth-watering Thai vegetarian dish into my mouth, I declined. I’m doing field research in the cafeteria here, and the results are positive.

We shared our histories, my story of being told I was committing academic suicide when I forged out a doctorate for work in women’s studies before there was a program anywhere in the country. Women’s Studies might prove to be just a flash in the pan, what would I do then, my sensible friends questioned? You will never find a job, my wise colleagues counseled. My heart, my passion, was women’s studies. I followed it and in the process inadvertently received one of the first two doctorates awarded in the country for work in women’s studies. I didn’t listen to the sensible. And I made history.

The students could relate. They took an academic risk when they came to a small woman’s college in an upstate village. “Don’t you want to go to a larger college? with boys?" They were constantly asked by their sensible family and friends.

"What if they had spent the last four years in a co-ed college?" I asked them. "Or at a larger woman’s college?"

Their answers were immediate, firm and unanimous. "We might not have found our voices," they said.

 For four years learning has been at the center of your existence, and you have been nurtured by a faculty who have taken their own academic risk by coming here, devoted teachers who have caught the Wells vision of a radically old idea: that of educating the entire student ―heart and mind―  within a warm, encouraging community.

You seniors did not swim in a sea of 500 faces in lecture classes. You do not join the thousands of graduates around the country today who sit in their caps and gowns leaving a university without having had a single meaningful and extended conversation with a professor in their entire four years.

You didn’t listen to the sensible, and your professors have become your friends. They will miss you, and you them.

“Be yourself,” they have encouraged. “Find your own niche.” By your own testimony, you have been pushed personally as well as academically. Two of you told me how quiet you had been in high school, in the background, and would have continued that pattern in a large college. Here, where the cacophony was stilled, you found silences into which you could speak, and you became student leaders. You didn’t listen to the sensible and you found your voice. You had to, you told me, to amuse yourself and others in the middle of nowhere.

You took a risk coming to the middle of nowhere to go to college, and in the process you found community, where you know everyone, at least by sight. You are not leaving college; you are moving away from your community. Your challenge, you said, was this: Now that you’ve found your voices, how not to lose them.

Let me tell you a secret. You don’t have to be anything; you just have to keep following your heart. We just put one foot in front of the other and we end up as pioneers. The courage rests in taking that first step toward your passion when common knowledge tells you you’ll fall off the face of the earth if you do. It helps to know where you are and whose footsteps you’re walking in.

This campus is here because the founder didn’t succumb to peer pressure. His buddy, Ezra Cornell, pooh-poohed Henry Wells idea of founding a college for women. Yours “will be but one of a hundred like institutions scattered over our state,” Ezra counseled, which “might soon dwindle and droop when your fostering hand [is] withdrawn by death.” Instead, he sensibly suggested, bring your money over to Ithaca and “engraft female education” on our dream. Create “the Wells Female Department of the Cornell University.”

Cornell gallantly ate crow as he toasted his friend Henry Wells at the laying of the cornerstone at Main Hall in 1866. Mr. Cornell had recently, the Rochester Democrat reported at the time, given half a million dollars to found an institution in Ithaca "to furnish" as was said, "good husbands for Mr. Wells’ good girls.” Cornell, fortunately, is today still in that business. And we gather on this campus that has flourished for 137 years.

What do we know about the history of this place? We are in Deawendote ―Where the Day Breaks ―named by the Cayuga because the eastern ridge hides the rising sun and extends the dawn over that horizon. This is the land of the Cayuga, one of the six nations of the Iroquois confederacy -- a governmental system based on everyone having a voice, a wonder to the Europeans who had only known power from above, from the King. This is what equality looks like, they marveled. Oh, no, the sensible piously pronounced. Every country must have one leader who rules over us like the father watches out for the family. We are in the Cradle of Democracy, for the Founding Fathers saw how well the Iroquois system of a government of the people, by the people and for the people worked and they decided to try it. For white men, anyway.

One hundred years later, the Founding Mothers of equality, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage – who all lived in this area - saw what women’s equality looked like and they decided to try it. Matilda Joslyn Gage – a white woman, a suffragist, was adopted into the Wolf clan of the Mohawk nation in 1893 – a nation where each clan mother had the responsibility for nominating the chief and holding him in his position, removing him if necessary – a nation where everyone, even the children, had a say in choosing the chief. The same year, 1893, Gage was arrested for voting in her own village of Fayetteville. It was a crime for women to vote in her nation; it was the responsibility of women to do so in her adopted nation. Despite all the dire warnings of the sensible and pious that God’s divine order of woman’s subordination to man would be destroyed if women voted, she knew better. She had seen votes for women in action.

In nearby Seneca Falls, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott never set out to make history in the summer of 1848. They hadn’t seen each other for years, and over tea with mutual friends, Mott told of visiting the Seneca, where she had watched women equally with the men decide the political future of their nation. She knew women’s equality was possible. She’d seen it. Stanton was frustrated with the demanding life of raising a growing flock of children – she eventually had seven – and a husband who was gone most of the time. She just wanted a minute to herself to curl up with a good book. The demands on women weighed heavy on her, along with their powerlessness in all aspects of their lives, and she poured out her discontent to her friends. Mott’s vision of a better lot for Native American women contrasted with Stanton’s discontent, one thing led to another and the women decided to call a convention to talk about woman’s condition. They never dreamed the resulting 1848 Seneca Falls convention would be lauded around the world as the cornerstone laying of the woman’s rights movement.

A few years before, just down the road from here, some students at Cayuga Academy decided to form a club. I’m sure you students identify. You need to find some way, as you told me, to entertain yourselves in this quiet village. So these boys formed "the New Confederacy of the Iroquois," a secret society pretending to be Indian chiefs holding Grand Council. Their “Supreme Chieftain” had the good sense to realize that if you were going to pretend to be part of a group, it would be a good idea to meet someone from that group. Ignoring the advice of those sensible and pious elders who no doubt told him to grow up and stop pretending to be a Godless savage, he became friends with a Tonawanda Seneca, Ely Parker, and began to attend actual Iroquois council meetings with him. He learned what it was to be Indian. For one thing, white people were intent on stealing your land.

This Cayuga Academy student became a corporate lawyer and represented the Tonawanda Seneca in their ongoing legal battle against the Ogden Company’s land grab. But that’s not what he’s known for. His campfire talks to the yearly “Grand Council” meetings, when he and his buddies dressed up like Indians in the woods around Aurora formed the nucleus of the League of the Ho de no saw nee or Iroquois, published in 1851. That book became the foundation for Anthropology. Lewis Henry Morgan didn’t set out to invent a new discipline, but he followed his interest, listened to people who were the experts, and today Morgan is known as The Father of Anthropology. Lewis Henry Morgan was also the first elected trustee of Wells College.

We all have the potential to be pioneers. Some of you are. The first college graduate in your family. You didn’t set out to be a pioneer. You just wanted to go to college and in the process, you made family history. Sometimes life just happens to you.

If you have as a goal to be the first woman president of the United States, you will be a lousy one. But if you leave here, have children, get involved in their education, find that the school doesn’t have enough money to properly educate them, wonder if we couldn’t take away a few pennies from our weapons of mass destruction to educate our kids, and run for president on that platform, you’d change history.

How do you tell if you’re on the right path? Well, if you’re following one foot in front of the other in the direction you think you should be going, you probably are. If sensible and pious people tell you you’re going the wrong way, then you know you’re heading where you should be going. Sensible and pious people are the canaries in the mine of social change. They have a nearly perfect track record of being on the wrong side of every single social justice issue for over 200 years.

If Elizabeth Cady Stanton and I and every woman who has taken her licks because of our work for women had listened to the sensible and pious folks who told us that our role was to obey men and live as their help-mates, you’d leave here to spend the rest of your corseted days tatting. If Henry Wells had listened to Ezra Cornell you would be graduating from the female appendage of Cornell, which by now, however, would probably be defunct. If the country had followed down the road of the sensible and pious, who placed obedience to their government – even when it is wrong – above all else, no one might have pushed the envelope, and we could still have slavery.

There is a plaque on the third floor of the McMillan Building - this building behind us – which is dedicated to Lewis Henry Morgan, the Father of Anthropology, Trustee of Wells College from 1868 -1881, adopted into the Hawk Clan of the Seneca Nation, and given a name which translates as One Lying Across. A bridge-maker between cultures. On the plaque, you will find these words, read by over 20 generations of Wells’ students, which I read to you today:

Democracy in government, brotherhood (and sisterhood) in society, equality in rights and privileges and universal education foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient nations of this land.

You leave this community in which you have lived now for four years and go off to create the next higher plane of society – the replica of what you have known here. Sirens will replace the birds that wake you in the morning. You won’t hear the sound of your own footsteps at twilight walking down the hill. Never again will you walk through the esophagus on your way to the gourmet Thai food in the cafeteria.

But of course you will. You can, and will, come home again, back to your community. And you will take the community with you. It lives in you. You will find likeminded others and create community wherever you go. It will not happen all at once, but little by little. You will put one foot in front of the other and, disregarding the sage and safe advice of the sensible and the pious, you will make history.

(Thanks to Jane Marsh Dieckmann, whose Wells College: A History (Wells College Press: 1995) provided much of the Wells College background and to Brooke Andersen, Katie Lysyczyn, Meghan McCune and Lauren Tipton, Wells students who worked with me in creating the ideas of this speech. Deborah Tall, in From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place (Knopf: 1993) brilliantly models how to tell the intriguing story of this area.

Jeanne Shenandoah and Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner

"Onondaga Land Rights and Our Common Future,"
Syracuse University Review by Janet Dodd, Assistant Director, Women’s Studies, Syracuse University, March 2006.

On March 7th I attended the second in a series of collaborative talks created to enlighten folks in our area about the Onondaga Nation Land Rights Claim. This particular talk was created to coincide with U. S. Women’s History Month and featured a discussion between Jeanne Shenandoah, a member of the Onondaga Nation, and feminist scholar Sally Roesch Wagner. Dr. Wagner’s work, like much feminist scholarship, has focused on the work of excavation; in her case, trying to recover, understand, and make known the complicated struggle for liberation enacted by middle-class white women in the 19th century. The roots of Shenandoah’s work, as a member of the Hauenosaunee Environmental Task Force, are part of that struggle. Shenandoah and Wagner work in coalition to make this history visible; Shenandoah is Vice President and Wagner the Director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation housed in Gage’s 19th century home in Fayetteville NY.

What unfolded for me on the Syracuse Stage was a story about connections between women of different nations and feminist struggles for liberation and justice. History, written from the U.S. perspective, teaches us that justice is a linear process; that freedom is struggled for and (sometimes) won, end of story. As Shenandoah said, however, and as the story they told confirmed, history books don’t tell the truth. Whose history is told and from what standpoint is an issue of paramount importance to those of us interested in issues of social justice.

In the late 19th century, Wagner stated, there were no models in the “civilized” world of what equality between men and women would look like. She identified her own racism as a factor shaping her consciousness of the “highest civilization” Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton referred to in their writings. Interactions with the people of the Onondaga Nation, she said, provided our foremothers not only a model of egalitarian gender relations, but served to inspire this area’s radical reform movements relative to health, food, and dress as well.

Shenandoah described an ontology far different than that of mainstream U.S. culture built upon relations of economic inequality, masked by political discourses of individual rights, and justified by appeals to Christian morality. When she began to speak about the lives of the Haudenosaunee, she spoke first about the thanks-giving address that is spoken at the beginning and end of all ceremonial and governmental gatherings of the Six Nations as well as the responsibilities involved in being chosen a leader of the people. Originally, the political economy of the Onondaga Nation was based on agriculture; the division of labor was (and is) organized around matrilineal kinship. This means, in practice, that children are born into their mother’s family regardless of who fathers the child; through mother-lines of descent, clans or large extended families form the basis of their political and economic relations.

Shenandoah addressed interpretations of Native culture that conflate or confuse matrifocal with "matriarchal.". Their culture is not woman-dominated; there are different things, she explained, personal ceremonies in which men and women have different parts or duties, but difference does not mean “less than.” “It is not that women have power; it’s that people have power,” she said. There is no “power over” since there is no dominance. Responsibilities are shared communally, children’s identities are that of their Clan family, and women and men share the work associated with caring for small children. In her culture, Shenandoah said, males do not have to spend time proving they are men since both male and female are equally valued, and both women and men take part in the political and economic life of the community. All property is held in common; women and their families may own their own homes, but they cannot (and would not) sell their land outside the community.

Today, there are nine clans on the Onondaga Nation; each clan is headed by an older (sometimes the oldest) woman who is chosen by the people based on good human traits such as responsibility and respect. The Clan Mothers are endowed with the responsibility of choosing a man to serve as “Chief," that is, a spokesperson to work with these women to insure that things are done correctly. She stated that it is a very big job and a heavy responsibility to assure that ceremonies are done correctly, that proper procedures are followed, and that ceremonies are performed at the right time. The Clan Mothers are conceived of as spiritual teachers; they lead by the heart. There is a seeking to achieve balance, an acknowledgement of the connectedness of all living things, and a spiritual attitude of thankfulness that centers the culture.

Against this description of a culture organized around an ideal of thanks-giving, a division of labor valuing both men’s and women’s contributions, and a focus on the responsibilities of leaders to the collective, Wagner described some key features of 19th century society from the standpoint of white women. Then (and now) participation in rule-making practices -- ordered by ideals of White Supremacy, male dominance, and capital accumulation emergent in relations of family, church, and state -- was dominated by economic elites who were raced white and gendered male.

• Modes of dress that damaged women’s health due to corseting so tight breathing was difficult and mortality during childbirth was a common occurrence.

• Parental rights as solely father-rights; women, being made “dead” in the law through the marriage contract, had only the responsibilities of motherhood but no legal rights to their children. Children could be (and were) willed by husbands/fathers as legal property to other men as part of their estates.

• Men endowed with the duty and responsibility of “chastising” their wives through rules organizing a legal head-of-household created through the marriage contract; only the head-of-household’s infliction of permanent injury to wives, children, and servants was (sometimes, in some jurisdictions) punishable by law.

• Wives were to obey and submit to the rule of their husbands even as men were mandated to obey and submit to the laws of the Christian god.

The objectification of women’s bodies manifest in the modes of fashion described above reflected the social expectations of the female encoded in political and economic policies organized by the ideal of patriarchal marriage. The path created for white women’s economic security was marriage; her “job” was to attract a man who could financially support her and her children in exchange for her labor caring for the bodily needs of husband and children under the control of the head-of-household. The activities associated with the position of wife/mother were organized in relation to cost control measures in business and government. For example, white/middle-class women’s work was coordinated by schedules of husband and children, to make sure all were prepared to meet the expectations associated the activities of business and education that family members would participate in outside the home. Employees who were concerned with the needs of their families were costly to business; time off to care for sick children, meet with teachers, attendance at school events, etc., increased labor costs. Too, children who were not properly prepared – fed, clothed, washed, taken to doctors or cared for at home when ill, helped with homework, etc., -- were expensive to educate, a concern of government funding public education.

The position of head-of-household, too, was organized in relation to public expectations; his time needed to be free from the responsibilities associated with family care work so that he could put in the hours necessary to make a living. The fewer responsibilities he was expected to assume in relation to his own physical needs as well as those of his household, the more time, energy and attention available for appropriation by his employer and/or in activities associated with managing the relations of business, church, and state.

The position of head-of-household, organizing relations between women, men, and the state, is the standpoint of the “individual” in political discourses of democracy. Yet, this paradigm of gender domination/subordination rests on the assumption that all men have access to living-wage jobs allowing for the appropriation of women’s labor in the home. Labor, of course, is only one input of production. In the U.S. race relations based on the ideal of White Supremacy operated to refine class and gender relations in complex ways. In practice, White Supremacy worked to conceal class interests in the U.S. by strategically expanding/contracting the category of “whiteness” according to the needs of capital. Some groups were categorized as “white," only later to be re-categorized as racially “Other” depending on opportunities for resource appropriation.

Finally, this paradigm organizing relations of gender/sexuality, race/ethnicity, and social/economic class was endowed with the moral authority of the Christian church. In this system, the vulnerability of women and their children to the physical and sexual rule of husbands/fathers, as well as women’s abilities to enact strategies of resistance to protect themselves and their children, were managed by political discourses that framed feminist challenges to race and gender inequality as “threats to the family." In practice, feminist resistance to structural subordination in the home/work place was a threat to organizational processes of ruling that controlled costs and increased profits for those in positions of power in business/government.

Wagner spoke of how this family ideology, encoding relations of dominance and subordination into the relations of the U.S. political economy, was imported as the basis of our own legal system through the implementation of Blackstone’s Code. Blackstone’s Code, she stated, was a derivative of English Common Law that was itself rooted in Canon Law of the Christian Church. The ideological dominance of Christian marriage as an organizer of political and economic relations between women and men, among women, and among men, is evident today in the complex of policies, regulations, and practices ordering the relation between labor, embodied workers, and rates of compensation among U.S. citizens -- as well as between U.S. citizens and other workers, within our borders and beyond them.

In their conversation, Shenandoah and Wagner gave an example of how interdependent ideologies of White Supremacy and male dominance, emergent in the political and economic practices of capitalist Christian culture shaped the interaction between white and Native women in this area in the 19th century. Discourses of Christianity were central in justifying policies and practices that reflected and created unearned economic and political advantage for families headed by white men in relation to families headed by African-American and immigrant men and in relation to families headed by women (across the color-line) within the borders of the U.S.

Within this context, Shenandoah explained that one line of contact between white women of the 19th century and Hauenosaunee people was through Christian missionaries who came to live in tribal communities with the goals of “civilizing” Natives who were judged “savages” for not praying to the right god. One of the things that most upset missionaries, both men and women, Shenandoah explained, was the autonomy of Six Nations women. The primacy of White Supremacist ideology in instituting a patriarchal gender order to serve the needs of capital (or, more precisely, the owners/controllers of capital) codified as a Christian “good” was evident when Shenandoah spoke of how Native children were taken from their families and placed in missionary schools under U.S. government policies of assimilation and “re-education." There, Shenandoah said, Native children were beaten, tortured, and sometimes killed in an attempt to wash their culture, their language, and their families out of them.

The links between the imperialist aims of U.S. policies of assimilation towards Native peoples and the gender politics inherent in discourses of Christianity that demanded the end of woman-headed families as a moral imperative were revealed in an editorial written in 1878 by Matilda Joslyn Gage in her newspaper, The Women’s Rights News. Gage’s editorial, Wagner said, spoke of the resistance of the Onondaga people to the U. S. plan and revealed the economic motives behind the racial politics of assimilation. In addition to the removal of Native children from their families, these policies included the forced re-classification of Native men (of formerly sovereign nations) to U.S. citizenship status. Through this re-classification, Native peoples were made subject to U.S. laws regulating property ownership, in effect, removing control of communal lands from Native women.

Near the end of the talk, Shenandoah spoke of the struggles of the Hauenosaunee to bring their people and their children back home; to recover and maintain their beliefs, their language, their very names, in the context of the ongoing campaign of eradication waged by the U.S. government against Native people. “WE’RE STILL HERE,” she stressed. She stated that their clans, their ceremonies throughout the year, reflect continuous and group practices of thankfulness; things done as a group are very strong.

 This story has much to teach us, I think, about contemporary strategies of resistance to U.S. imperialism as well as the centrality of ideological dominance in shaping who we see as our allies and what we see as relevant to our struggles for social justice. I left the talk feeling a little…hopeful. I’ll be back at Syracuse Stage on April 11th to learn more.

HAUDENOSAUNEE INFLUENCE ON WOMEN’S RIGHTS: ON THE WEB
A sample of the information you will find on the Internet about Dr. Wagner’s scholarship on this exciting new historic connection.

ARTICLE
“American Women” in Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=501

LECTURES
Iroquois Museum, Oct 22, 2006
http://www.iroquoismuseum.org/calendar.htm

“Visionary Women: Haudenosaunee and the U.S. Women’s Rights Movement with Jeanne Shenandoah, March 7, 2006. Part of Onondaga Land Rights and Our Common Future lecture series at Syracuse University
http://www.peacecouncil.net/NOON/commonfuture/media/Program_visionary.pdf

North Country Community College’s Fall Lecture Series “Your Voice in a Democracy” held at Tulloch Campus, Malone, October 25, 2005
http://www.nccc.edu/news_announcements/nov05/noted_author_lecturer.html

“Teaching American History Through Hotinonshonni Eyes” teacher institute at St. Lawrence University, in Canton, New York, July 25 – August 7, 2004.
http://www.srk12.org/hotinonshonni/presenters/roesch-wagner.htm

SISTERS IN SPIRIT BOOK REVIEW
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-915927/In-the-native-state-Reviews.html

MUSEUM EXHIBIT (1998)
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/98/7.23.98/Iroquois_exhibit.html

INTERVIEW
"Circled with Knowledge": Sally Roesch Wagner and the first feminists. By Stephanie Hiller
http://www.awakenedwoman.com/interview_wagner.htm

“ELIZABETH CADY STANTON AND FREDERICK DOUGLASS:
EQUALITY BEYOND RACE AND GENDER”