We Are Dancing for You: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women's Coming-of-Age Ceremonies

by Cutcha Risling Baldy, Coll Thrush (Editor), Charlotte Coté (Editor)

Overview

“I am here. You will never be alone. We are dancing for you.” So begins Cutcha Risling Baldy’s deeply personal account of the revitalization of the women’s coming-of-age ceremony for the Hoopa Valley Tribe. At the end of the twentieth century, the tribe’s Flower Dance had not been fully practiced for decades. The women of the tribe, recognizing the critical importance of the tradition, undertook its revitalization using the memories of elders and medicine women and details found in museum archives, anthropological records, and oral histories.

Deeply rooted in Indigenous knowledge, Risling Baldy brings us the voices of people transformed by cultural revitalization, including the accounts of young women who have participated in the Flower Dance. Using a framework of Native feminisms, she locates this revival within a broad context of decolonizing praxis and considers how this renaissance of women’s coming-of-age ceremonies confounds ethnographic depictions of Native women; challenges anthropological theories about menstruation, gender, and coming-of-age; and addresses gender inequality and gender violence within Native communities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295743448
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	06/01/2018
Series:	Indigenous Confluences
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	213,254
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Cutcha Risling Baldy is assistant professor of Native American studies at Humboldt University and a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 'A:diniw A'ydyaw'A:dit'e:n / WeDoIt, We Did It, We Are Doing It 3

Chapter 1 Dining'xine:wh-mil-na:sa'a:n / Hupa People-With Them-It Stays, There Is a Hupa Tradition Oral Narratives and Native Feminisms 28

Chapter 2 Ninis'a:n-na:ng'aV The World-Came to Be Lying There Again, the World Assumed Its Present Position California Indian History, Genocide, and Native Women 51

Chapter 3 Wung-xowidilik / Concerning It-What Has Been Told Anthropology and Salvage Ethnography 73

Chapter 4 Tim-na'me / At the Lucky Spot She Bathes Indigenous Menstrual Beliefs and the Politics of Taboo 100

Chapter 5 Xoq'it-ch'iswa:l / On Her-They Beat Time, a Flower Dance Is Held for Her Revitalization of the Hupa Women's Coming-of-Age Ceremony 124

Conclusion: Hayah-no:nt'ik' / It Reaches So Far, the Story Extends to There 148

Notes 153

Bibliography 175

Index 185

What People are Saying About This

Deborah A. Miranda

"Part meticulous research, part spiritual journey, and fully in the heart of cultural re-invention, We Are Dancing for You does work that cherishes, educates, celebrates, and enriches our future generations with the knowledge that yes, our bodies are the archive, and the archive is alive and singing."

Mishauna Goeman

"Cutcha Risling Baldy’s research on the Hupa flower dance is important feminist and Indigenous scholarship as she is not only approaching the subject as a key insider, but she is also exploring what it means in the larger continuum of Hupa epistemologies and ontologies. While this could easily and beautifully linger in the ethnographic realm of scholarship or in the more common California Indian Studies sphere of examining the devastating consequences of colonization and genocide in California, Ms. Baldy instead magnificently pushes the analysis further by developing a Hupa feminist methodology. She models the political possibilities in reviving the dances that are geared especially toward woman. This tribally specific work and her analysis reaches beyond Northern California and into other Indigenous groups who are working to decolonize structures by regaining healthy gendered elements of tribal life and activist work. These insights are key to our understandings of cultural production, gender, and revitalization and vital to understanding solutions for California Indian communities."

Dian Million (Tanana)

I am in awe . . . Risling Baldy’s interventions into the field are many and absolutely necessary. We Are Dancing for You is located in a place, in the lives of a community where the voices of individual women are heard, as is the author’s. [This book] locates its authority in community knowledge and language. It pushes back against the outside, primarily white male ethnographic professional as authority.

Kim Anderson

A truly significant contribution to the field exploring Indigenous approaches to menstruation and the meaning of womanhood. That it is grounded in the particular culture of the author makes it all the more valuable and unique.

Editorial Reviews

"This text is critical for scholars of Native studies, American Indian studies, anthropology, sociology, psychology, gender studies, history, and American studies, as well as other fields... In centering a gendered ceremonial practice, We Are Dancing for You documents that cultural resurgence, decolonizing praxis, and Native feminisms provide a space for academics to recognize the daily and ceremonial roles of Indigenous women in indigenizing space and place in their homelands and homewaters. Beyond the academy, Risling Baldy references the positive outcomes for ceremonial participants and reminds readers of the critical and utilitarian need to re-indigenize Indigenous life."

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Her book is well-written, well-argued, and a joy to read for scholars and general audiences alike!

-- "IK: Other Ways of Knowing"

Risling Baldy distinctly positions the significance of coming-of-age ceremonies through arduous historical research, sophisticated contributions to Native feminisms, and Indigenous narrative interweavings.

-- "Gender & Society"

Risling Baldy skillfully argues that a Native feminist analytic reveals that Native feminisms were not introduced by Western culture, but have always been contained in oral narratives and are fundamental aspects of Native culture and society.

--Olivia Chilcote "News from Native California"

This text is critical for scholars of Native studies, American Indian studies, anthropology, sociology, psychology, gender studies, history, and American studies, as well as other fields... In centering a gendered ceremonial practice, We Are Dancing for You documents that cultural resurgence, decolonizing praxis, and Native feminisms provide a space for academics to recognize the daily and ceremonial roles of Indigenous women in indigenizing space and place in their homelands and homewaters. Beyond the academy, Risling Baldy references the positive outcomes for ceremonial participants and reminds readers of the critical and utilitarian need to re-indigenize Indigenous life.

-- "American Indian Culture and Research Journal"

From the Publisher

Risling Baldy skillfully argues that a Native feminist analytic reveals that Native feminisms were not introduced by Western culture, but have always been contained in oral narratives and are fundamental aspects of Native culture and society.

News from Native California

"Risling Baldy skillfully argues that a Native feminist analytic reveals that Native feminisms were not introduced by Western culture, but have always been contained in oral narratives and are fundamental aspects of Native culture and society."

News from Native California - Olivia Chilcote

"Risling Baldy distinctly positions the significance of coming-of-age ceremonies through arduous historical research, sophisticated contributions to Native feminisms, and Indigenous narrative interweavings."

Gender & Society