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Gender
Is, As Gender Does: A Study Merging Cherokee Women’s
Autonomy and Gender Performativity
Jenell
Morrow
Deparment
of Cultural Studies,
Claremont
Graduate University
This paper analyzes the
pervasive subjugation of natives’ cultures, particularly
Cherokee culture, and what westernization meant for the
daily norms of Cherokee women. Specifically, this
historical study viewed through the scope of gender
performance carves out a new niche of analysis.
The field of Cherokee
gender studies is small, but encompasses significant works
uncovering standard ways of native life prior to immense
colonization by Europeans. The focus of this study draws
upon Cherokee gender studies, revealing the autonomous
lives women lived, and intertwines Judith Butler’s
concept of gender performativity with the freedom of
Cherokee females.
Methodologically, a gender
analysis of Cherokee women’s history will be shown
through examples of Cherokee women’s agricultural
management, sexual freedom, and political sovereignty.
Subsequently, these examples will be employed to locate
gender performativity within the Cherokee tribe before the
United States government removed them from their homelands
in 1838-1839. Performativity, as understood in this paper,
elicits new perspectives regarding the status of women and
how their societal positions were acted out repetitiously.
The spotlight of this study
shines on the idea that gender, and the performance of
gender, actively worked in the construction of Cherokee
society. Therefore, I argue gender does not simply
illustrate already existing cultural practices; rather
gender plays a part in creating those practices. Finally,
a brief window into the life of Wilma Mankiller, principal
chief of the Cherokee nation from 1987-1996, will depict
how a particularly strong form of femaleness continues to
this day within the Cherokee tribe.
About Jenell Morrow
Jenell Morrow has a M.A. in
Applied Women's Studies from Claremont Graduate University
and is currently a Ph.D. student in Cultural Studies at
Claremont Graduate University. She is deeply committed to
the intersections of feminism, queerness, race, and class.
She lives in California and is involved with several
grassroots activist projects and organizations.
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