This week’s reading material for our second case study was related to the topic War and Nationalism and what I found especially striking was the depiction of indigenous women’s contributions to the First World War.
Alison Norman describes in her article the wartime work of women belonging to the Six Nations community. Their contributions -that were mainly composed out of “knitting, making food to send overseas, and raising money”[1]– were strikingly similar to the work lots of “women across Canada were conducting”[2]. The indigenous women, however, as well as their male counterparts, nevertheless faced severe discrimination, such as “when a ban was placed on their socks in 1915 for the fear they could transmit”[3] diseases such as smallpox to the recipients.
Nevertheless, since “[non-combatant], voluntary, charitable, stay-at-home roles comprised the bulk of Canadian women’s contributions to the dominion’s war efforts between 1914 and 1918”[4], the indigenous women’s similar efforts during wartime were believed to be a sign of their cultural change towards what was believed to be the proper Canadian way, or, in Norman’s words, it suggests that “much of the Six Nations community was acculturated to an Anglo-Canadian way of life.”[5] This might be true for some of the indigenous individuals, but just like with Anglo- and French-Canadians, there were various, often individual reasons for indigenous persons that led them to either to refuse to support the war or to engage in the work connected to it. But what is striking is that individual’s people’s actions could and did serve as a reminder and inspiration for the whole community. An example for this is Edith Anderson Monture, a Six Nations woman who worked as nurse on the front and therefore gained the right “to vote, asunder the Military Service Act, 1917, nurses were given this right”[6]. Her war service became part of the Six Nations “cultural memory of the Great War”[7], giving the Six Nations community just another reason to proof that they always were, and always had been, taking on crucial tasks in order to survive in a Canada still hostile to indigenous peoples by becoming part of the Canadian effort in the Great War while being accepted as an indigenous woman. This way, she confirmed the Six Nations community’s ”history of warriors” [8] and proved that their “women, too, could have followed this path throughout the ages”[9], which shows the deep connection between the own sense of the community and how indigenous people used the Great War as a vehicle to steer towards a sense of belonging and their right to be just as valid Canadians as Anglo- and French-Canadians.
[1] Norman, “‘In Defense of the Empire’: The Six Nations of the Grand River and the Great War” which is available online in the book, Glassford and Shaw (Eds.), A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the First World War, UBC press, 2013: 31
[2] Ibid.
[3] Duhamel and McRae,”Holding Their End Up in Splendid Style,” Manitoba History, 82 (2016): 43.
[4] Shaw, “Expanding the Narrative: A First World War with Women, Children and Grief,” Canadian Historical Review, 95,3 (2014): 401.
[5] Norman, „In Defense,“ 36.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
