The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1915 (The West Unbound: Social and Cultural Studies) Rating :
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to be different "from them"
By Jeffery Mingo
Many academic authors like to list axes of identity in a row. Books or chapters get called "Race, Class, and Gender" or "Race, Gender, and Sexuality." Well, sometimes "Nation" appears in such titles. "Nationalism" is too much of a loaded term, but I would say the people of Nation X often do things or have views just to differentiate themselves from Nation Y.
Here, the author explains how Canada almost never allowed divorces because it wanted to present itself as different from/superior to the United States. The book goes into many ways that this harmed indigenous Canadian women. When colonizers came to Canada, they thought of Native people as immoral due to their non-monogamy. However, the Native practice made much sense within its context. If a man was far away a long time on the hunt, having another or temporary husband protected a woman. If two sisters wanted to live together or not be separated one sister could persuade her husband to marry her sister. But like many practices outside of the Western/European norm, First Nations people were punished for being different. Further, since marriages could be so easily ended, the colonizers often never deemed First Nations women to be married at all.
I recently read a book on white New Zealanders who study the Maori language. It said many of that group embrace the term Pakeha because they don't see themselves as just British abroad. While not identifying as Maori, these Pakeha learned that Maori presence plays a strong role in their identity. In the scholarly text "Yellowface," the author stated that while African Americans were harshly oppressed, white American musicians often appropriated Black musical styles in order to differentiate themselves from continental Europeans. This desire to be different gets spelled out well in this book.
The author spends much of the beginning of the text detailing other groups in the area who were non-monogamous. That made me fear that she had little information on actual Natives, a sad trait of much writing on the indigenous. However, she then jumps into the Native group in more depth. I hope this book can help to produce or maintain more rights for First Nations people, and First Nations women in particular.
Product Description
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #2289871 in Books
- Published on: 2004-04-08
- Original language:English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.78" h x5.98" w x.98" l,1.31 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
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