Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / Book Club: Sisters in Spirit
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephane
- 0:07Speaker 1: Never Told You production of iHeart Radio, and welcome to
- 0:19Speaker 1: another edition of them in this book club. Ya, it's
- 0:23Speaker 1: our first for the year, right, it is. It is.
- 0:26Speaker 1: We're starting out very strong in our pick. I think personally,
- 0:30Speaker 1: what do you think, Itty? I agree? I think this
- 0:33Speaker 1: was a This was a great pick and it was
- 0:35Speaker 1: like just so educational and it it really devetailed well
- 0:39Speaker 1: with the things we had been talking about the end.
- 0:42Speaker 1: So it's true. It's true. Yeah, as in fact last year,
- 0:45Speaker 1: as in about a month ago, someone to use this
- 0:48Speaker 1: term on me, not too long ago, and it made
- 0:50Speaker 1: me go, what, why would you say it that way?
- 0:51Speaker 1: That's all misleading. Anyway, We did an amazing interview with
- 0:56Speaker 1: god to Junior Fox where we talked about her documentary
- 0:59Speaker 1: With Out a Whisper, which followed the holding a Shawnee
- 1:03Speaker 1: Clan uh and their history and their role in the
- 1:05Speaker 1: Suffragette movement. Um Dr Sally Roche Wagner has been researching
- 1:09Speaker 1: and documenting the history for years now and was a
- 1:12Speaker 1: part of that conversation with the Mohawk Clan mother at
- 1:15Speaker 1: the time. If you haven't seen that documentary. Please go
- 1:18Speaker 1: check it out. It's an amazing educational opportunity as well
- 1:22Speaker 1: as if your teachers or someone who wants to educate
- 1:24Speaker 1: younger generations, this is a must watch. Um and. Dr
- 1:28Speaker 1: Wagner was one of the first to be awarded where
- 1:31Speaker 1: the doctorate for her work in women's studies, and was
- 1:34Speaker 1: also one of the first to found a college level
- 1:36Speaker 1: women's study program in the United States, so she is significant.
- 1:41Speaker 1: With fifty one years of teaching a women's studies, Dr
- 1:44Speaker 1: Wagner has become one of the most active and overall
- 1:47Speaker 1: authority of the history of women's studies in this country,
- 1:50Speaker 1: so that's something to know. Um. And she has published
- 1:53Speaker 1: numerous books on the subject of women's studies and the
- 1:57Speaker 1: history of the suffragette movement, including the book we Are
- 2:00Speaker 1: Featuring today a which is titled Sisters in Spirit Holding
- 2:05Speaker 1: a Shawnee Iroquois. We're gonna put that in parentheses, uh,
- 2:09Speaker 1: influence on early American Feminists, which published in two thousand one.
- 2:13Speaker 1: So yes, this is kind of an older book, um,
- 2:16Speaker 1: but still significant to read. She also recently wrote The
- 2:20Speaker 1: Women's Suffrage Movement, which looks at the Suffragette movement through
- 2:23Speaker 1: a new intersectional lens, which we love and I'm sure
- 2:27Speaker 1: we'll tackle that soon enough as well. And here's a
- 2:30Speaker 1: bit of information written in a Sisters in Spirit of
- 2:33Speaker 1: some of Dr Wagner's work. Quote. The theme of for
- 2:36Speaker 1: our work has been telling the untold stories. The exhibit
- 2:39Speaker 1: in her monograph of the same name, She who Holds
- 2:42Speaker 1: the Sky, Matilda Jocelyn Gage reveals the stuffer just written
- 2:45Speaker 1: out of history because of her stay against the religious
- 2:48Speaker 1: right one years ago, while her traveling exhibit in Women's
- 2:51Speaker 1: Rights National Historic Part Curriculum, Sisters in Spirit documents the
- 2:55Speaker 1: influence of the Hoddeda Shawnee women on early women's right activists.
- 2:59Speaker 1: So there you go. And again we talked about this
- 3:02Speaker 1: and the significance, but we're gonna talk a little more
- 3:04Speaker 1: in depth with this book. And like many of the
- 3:06Speaker 1: books we have covered, uh, for this segment, this is
- 3:10Speaker 1: very quote heavy because of course they do they explaining
- 3:13Speaker 1: in the book, so we're just going to talk about it. Um.
- 3:16Speaker 1: So we wanted to take some time to talk of
- 3:18Speaker 1: the history and the themes with a discussion around the
- 3:21Speaker 1: quotes from the book. So instead of doing like we're
- 3:23Speaker 1: gonna talk about the book and then do themes. We're
- 3:25Speaker 1: gonna do themes and quotes all at the same time
- 3:28Speaker 1: to cover the entirety of the book, which is very
- 3:30Speaker 1: short by the way, so again this is like an
- 3:32Speaker 1: hour and a half two hour read. Yeah, m Let's
- 3:35Speaker 1: begin with the introduction, which was written by Jeane Shenandoah
- 3:38Speaker 1: of the Onondaga Nation. In the intro, we are asked
- 3:41Speaker 1: to open our minds and our eyes to learn things
- 3:43Speaker 1: we may have quote never thought about. Shenandoah writes, we
- 3:46Speaker 1: hope that the messages inside will help to open your
- 3:48Speaker 1: eyes and ears to things you may have never realized
- 3:51Speaker 1: or even thought about, since this type of information has
- 3:54Speaker 1: been withheld in the education of all the people, and
- 3:57Speaker 1: goes on to talk about the history of the hot
- 3:58Speaker 1: and shining quote. We huddn't Shannie live within the traditional
- 4:02Speaker 1: structure that we've always had, the structure of equality among
- 4:05Speaker 1: all members of our community. Women, men, and children have
- 4:08Speaker 1: equal spiritual, human and political rights. We have equal opportunity
- 4:12Speaker 1: to voice opinions or objections to any situation within our community,
- 4:15Speaker 1: and we know that our voice will be heard. And
- 4:18Speaker 1: with that, she continues, read this book and learn from it.
- 4:22Speaker 1: It helps you to realize what women have gone through
- 4:23Speaker 1: to make a stand for their rightful equal place on earth. Yeah,
- 4:28Speaker 1: so it's pretty good start. I think it's a great start.
- 4:31Speaker 1: So the book begins with a question that should be
- 4:33Speaker 1: asked for all of our historical understanding, quote, who gets
- 4:37Speaker 1: to be part of history? Um, we have to acknowledge
- 4:40Speaker 1: our lack of knowledge and lack of education when it
- 4:43Speaker 1: comes to the complete history, and be wary of who
- 4:45Speaker 1: is teaching it. Dr Dr Wagner rights, Uh, we Euro Americans,
- 4:49Speaker 1: you white people annie to see you are filled with
- 4:53Speaker 1: the poison of misinformation. Great gaps of knowledge accompany the lies.
- 4:57Speaker 1: Oh missions teach us equally and more viously the misinformation.
- 5:01Speaker 1: The lesson of exclusion is clear. Groups of people included
- 5:04Speaker 1: in the interpretation of history are respected, while excluded groups
- 5:08Speaker 1: are outsiders and can easily be ignored. If our teachers
- 5:11Speaker 1: do not tell us about a group of people, we
- 5:13Speaker 1: assume they are unimportant. And oh my god, that's so
- 5:19Speaker 1: right on. And we've talked about this with the complete
- 5:21Speaker 1: lack of transparency when it comes to education. I think
- 5:26Speaker 1: it's a huge subject. Now. I can't believe you wrote
- 5:28Speaker 1: this in two thousand one and it hits right on
- 5:30Speaker 1: the head today. Yeah, because it's such a huge topic
- 5:34Speaker 1: of debate um right now, and it's one of those
- 5:38Speaker 1: political issues that people use to get um their constituents
- 5:42Speaker 1: fired up. Uh, and it's very misunderstood. But yeah, it's
- 5:47Speaker 1: just it's what we learned is so much like white centric,
- 5:53Speaker 1: very male centric. It's not until you get out of college,
- 5:56Speaker 1: and even then that you you kind of are like, oh,
- 5:59Speaker 1: these things that would have been taught from the beginning
- 6:03Speaker 1: right there, right, and and the fact and we know
- 6:06Speaker 1: she has been a Dr Wagner has been working on
- 6:08Speaker 1: this for a long time. This is a twenty two
- 6:10Speaker 1: year old book, um, and I'm just learning about it
- 6:15Speaker 1: this past year to this year, Like, that's horrific to me.
- 6:20Speaker 1: I cannot believe it took us this long. And then
- 6:21Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show the constant erasure of
- 6:25Speaker 1: marginalized people in history and why it's important that we
- 6:29Speaker 1: make sure we keep talking about it and that other
- 6:31Speaker 1: people are educated. So it just it's one of those
- 6:35Speaker 1: things that it hasn't changed centuries upon centuries, but we
- 6:40Speaker 1: do have people like Dr Wagner who still talk about it,
- 6:43Speaker 1: who still pushed it forward because she's been talking about
- 6:45Speaker 1: it for the past twenty three years, if not longer,
- 6:48Speaker 1: So that's amazing to see. Um. And yeah, we have
- 6:51Speaker 1: to acknowledge the reason for the lack of truth and
- 6:53Speaker 1: information has to do with racism. She writes, the message
- 6:57Speaker 1: of a mission is an educational foundation of racism. Through
- 7:01Speaker 1: the silence in our education, many of us have learned
- 7:04Speaker 1: not to listen to the histories of people of color,
- 7:06Speaker 1: women and other excluded groups. And yeah, like she just
- 7:10Speaker 1: puts up lately, this is racist. This is an absolute
- 7:12Speaker 1: racist take on history because it's been whitewashed. Yeah. Yeah,
- 7:19Speaker 1: And I bet for a lot of people who as
- 7:22Speaker 1: always we hope you go read these books after we
- 7:24Speaker 1: see can we talk about them? But I bet for
- 7:27Speaker 1: a lot of you this will be new. A lot
- 7:29Speaker 1: of it was new for us. We're like kind of
- 7:32Speaker 1: in this field, so right, right, And the fact that
- 7:35Speaker 1: I have not heard this being addressed, I don't think
- 7:37Speaker 1: I've ever heard this being addressed except for small groups
- 7:41Speaker 1: of people, I feel like, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
- 7:58Speaker 1: And even deeper into the telling of the history, we
- 8:00Speaker 1: have to acknowledge the failability of the teachers, but also
- 8:03Speaker 1: the fluidity of history. Dr Wagner rights, There's nothing inherent
- 8:07Speaker 1: or inevitable about history created by people. It is shaped
- 8:10Speaker 1: by the same socio political economic forces that determine the
- 8:14Speaker 1: telling of it. History changes like institutions when people demand change.
- 8:19Speaker 1: As excluded groups see conclusion and institutions. They also celebrate
- 8:23Speaker 1: their histories, demanding to be remembered. United States history has
- 8:27Speaker 1: gone through phases in the last fifty years, reflecting cultural
- 8:30Speaker 1: and social shifts towards greater inclusion and diversity. Right. I
- 8:35Speaker 1: hope we come back to that because I feel like
- 8:38Speaker 1: this is so cyclical um and where we are today,
- 8:42Speaker 1: and of course we know the backtracking that I guess
- 8:47Speaker 1: the political shift more so that has happened recently, including
- 8:50Speaker 1: attacking Native and Indigenous laws that were placed to protect
- 8:55Speaker 1: but also to acknowledge the wrongs that have happened to
- 8:58Speaker 1: them by the colony zation that continues to happen. Let's
- 9:02Speaker 1: be honest, and I hope that this continues bigger and bigger,
- 9:05Speaker 1: because we are going to have this conversation and we're
- 9:07Speaker 1: not gonna stop having this conversation. We don't know what's
- 9:09Speaker 1: happening in schools. We don't know what's happening around us
- 9:12Speaker 1: right now all the time. Um, we hear all the
- 9:15Speaker 1: bad news. I hear all the bad news, but even
- 9:17Speaker 1: talking to some teachers are like, we haven't had a
- 9:19Speaker 1: pushback like that yet. But doesn't mean it's not coming
- 9:22Speaker 1: around necessarily or that it's not happening elsewhere. So I'm
- 9:26Speaker 1: hoping that it is just more of a shift of
- 9:29Speaker 1: the the people who are just talking the loudest, and
- 9:32Speaker 1: that this information is going to get out more and
- 9:35Speaker 1: more because I think more especially the younger generations are wonderful.
- 9:38Speaker 1: They're seeking for more information like this. Yeah, yeah, And
- 9:42Speaker 1: I do think that there's that going on. There is
- 9:47Speaker 1: there is this push that Wagner described. Dr Wagner described, Um,
- 9:52Speaker 1: and I think also just I hope m books like
- 9:56Speaker 1: this and even podcasts like this, perhaps through a small
- 10:00Speaker 1: your level, not to shoot her own horn, but like
- 10:01Speaker 1: that kind of information is becoming more and more available.
- 10:04Speaker 1: Whether or not you find it, that's an issue, but
- 10:07Speaker 1: it is out there. I feel like there's more things
- 10:12Speaker 1: out there for people to find. You just have to
- 10:15Speaker 1: know how to look for it, and that is, yes,
- 10:16Speaker 1: the problem. Um. Dr Wagner continues. This phase of history
- 10:21Speaker 1: also conveyed the message that the only people that matter
- 10:23Speaker 1: are wealthy white men, and that common people have no
- 10:26Speaker 1: influence over the course of events. Right. And in this example,
- 10:30Speaker 1: she talks about the story of Christopher Columbus and and
- 10:34Speaker 1: the way it was framed and what we see today.
- 10:36Speaker 1: And I love that. I love that we have come
- 10:38Speaker 1: to a cultural shift of changing that to Indigenous People's Day,
- 10:42Speaker 1: like awareness Day, I'm like, yeah, Okay, we're getting there.
- 10:45Speaker 1: We're getting there, at least we're getting there with terms.
- 10:47Speaker 1: We're getting there with understanding, but there's obviously so much
- 10:50Speaker 1: that we're lacking, right, And we even talked about that
- 10:53Speaker 1: with things like our our episode we did on Wikipedia
- 10:55Speaker 1: or those check ins with like, there's still so much
- 10:59Speaker 1: further to go in terms of who we're talking about
- 11:02Speaker 1: and when we're recording and it still is this a
- 11:06Speaker 1: lot kind of wealthy white man. It is getting better,
- 11:09Speaker 1: but it's like slow going. Um. But as she wrote,
- 11:14Speaker 1: history changes, and that is things in part to those
- 11:17Speaker 1: who saw the injustices of these whitewashed context She writes, quote,
- 11:21Speaker 1: recognition of historical injustices opened the way to see the
- 11:24Speaker 1: triumphs of those who resisted overcame It nearly overwhelming odds
- 11:28Speaker 1: and survived. Most recently, we have begun to explore the
- 11:32Speaker 1: unexpected and largely unknown stories of friendships established during colonization
- 11:36Speaker 1: and coexistence and of the way groups influenced each other.
- 11:40Speaker 1: All right, And I love that beginning because that's kind
- 11:43Speaker 1: of the thing we talked about with Fox about her documentary,
- 11:47Speaker 1: was that, more so than just the history, we were
- 11:50Speaker 1: seeing the friendship between Dr Wagner and the clan mother
- 11:53Speaker 1: and how they've been friends for years, but just loving
- 11:55Speaker 1: their relationship even and that was one of the bigger
- 11:58Speaker 1: things to her that she saw following them around and
- 12:01Speaker 1: the love between them and the work they've done throughout
- 12:04Speaker 1: the years, like this book and the and the Ford. Um.
- 12:07Speaker 1: I really found it fascinating. And also, yeah, the fact
- 12:10Speaker 1: that they have survived, and when we talked with Box
- 12:13Speaker 1: about even the native language and that she didn't know
- 12:16Speaker 1: it because yes, it had been literally beaten out of
- 12:19Speaker 1: them and during the boarding school era and and now
- 12:23Speaker 1: has come back and it's being restored and it's a
- 12:25Speaker 1: beautiful thing because they know that it has to survive,
- 12:28Speaker 1: and it's an amazing thing to witness today. Yeah. Yeah,
- 12:33Speaker 1: And and things like just the cultural practices and the
- 12:37Speaker 1: stories and passing these things down from generation to generation.
- 12:41Speaker 1: We really can't recommend that documentary enough. It was so
- 12:45Speaker 1: enlightening and it's beautifully shot. But yeah, I love the
- 12:47Speaker 1: friendship between between them two and then also seeing these
- 12:50Speaker 1: multiple generations of women right talk about these issues, right. Uh.
- 12:57Speaker 1: Dr Wagner asks us the readers to seriously think about
- 13:01Speaker 1: the radicalism of the suffraget movement, that we celebrate the
- 13:04Speaker 1: nine at Amendment today and acknowledge the works are the
- 13:07Speaker 1: more well known activists like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
- 13:11Speaker 1: which by the way, I believed Dr Wagner had a
- 13:14Speaker 1: hand and bringing her history back for a while. It
- 13:16Speaker 1: was missing until not too long ago, So that's pretty interesting. Um,
- 13:21Speaker 1: we don't always look deep at the fights they had
- 13:24Speaker 1: to endure. And for those who are willing to call
- 13:26Speaker 1: out oppressive systems, that even today is still a controversial topic.
- 13:31Speaker 1: And within these conversations we have to look at ourselves
- 13:34Speaker 1: and ask would we have done the same thing or
- 13:38Speaker 1: as Dr Wagener puss it uh just be quote safe, um,
- 13:42Speaker 1: And yeah, we're gonna talk a little more bit about that,
- 13:45Speaker 1: and and just so you know, we're not gonna go
- 13:47Speaker 1: deep into some of the analogies because I have a
- 13:49Speaker 1: hard time with some of these analogies. And when it
- 13:51Speaker 1: comes to white women movements, uh to enslavement, and there
- 13:55Speaker 1: is some conversations about servitude back then in the limited
- 13:58Speaker 1: freedoms and all of that. So there is some conversations
- 14:01Speaker 1: about that in the book. We're not going to harp
- 14:04Speaker 1: too deeply in it, but just know that it is
- 14:05Speaker 1: there in that in the awareness that women have no
- 14:08Speaker 1: rights at that point in time, especially the beginning of
- 14:11Speaker 1: the movement in the mid nineteenth century going forward, so
- 14:15Speaker 1: there was a lot of time about emancipation and conversation.
- 14:17Speaker 1: So this was something that was in their thought processes
- 14:20Speaker 1: and I think it's important to know. But we're not
- 14:22Speaker 1: gonna go deep into that part um. But a part
- 14:25Speaker 1: of Dr Wagner's work includes the history of many women
- 14:28Speaker 1: as part of the suffragette movement, as well as preserving
- 14:31Speaker 1: the works of the women, especially those who are lesser known.
- 14:34Speaker 1: Within the book, she talks about the works and interactions
- 14:37Speaker 1: of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Justin gauge Um Engage was
- 14:41Speaker 1: with the suffrage Triumvirate alongside Stanton and Anthony. So they
- 14:45Speaker 1: were the first three essentially leaders, and they met up
- 14:48Speaker 1: the leadership positions of the National Women's Suffrage Association. Gauge
- 14:51Speaker 1: and Stanton concentrated on more radical levels of feminism at
- 14:55Speaker 1: the time. Dr Wagner writes a quote made by Gauge, quote,
- 14:59Speaker 1: the laws civil and social, each equally burdensome our church origin.
- 15:03Speaker 1: And not until the church is destroyed will women be freed,
- 15:07Speaker 1: which even said today would cause a lot of controversy.
- 15:12Speaker 1: We know this as a black people saying it today
- 15:14Speaker 1: is causing a lot of controversy. Stanton seemed to have agreed,
- 15:18Speaker 1: as Dr Wagner quotes from one of Stanton's letters. As
- 15:22Speaker 1: I have passed from the political to the religious phase
- 15:24Speaker 1: of this question, I now see more clearly than ever
- 15:27Speaker 1: that the arch enemy to women's freedom skulk behind the
- 15:30Speaker 1: altar to rouse women to a sense of their degradation
- 15:34Speaker 1: under the canon, law and church discipline is the work
- 15:37Speaker 1: that interests me most into which I prepared to devote
- 15:40Speaker 1: the sunset of my life. Right eighteen fifties, eighteen seventies,
- 15:45Speaker 1: they were talking about this. This was not heard of.
- 15:48Speaker 1: We know that there's a d conversation about religiousness and
- 15:53Speaker 1: like religious morality. I did not know that they were
- 15:58Speaker 1: so against the church. I think I knew very little
- 16:00Speaker 1: on that level of like they just wanted to move forward, um,
- 16:03Speaker 1: and it was right, but they were supremely against the
- 16:07Speaker 1: church as it stands. And that kind of comes into
- 16:10Speaker 1: the conversation about white nationalism today and how it relates together.
- 16:14Speaker 1: And it's pretty amazing to see that we're still here. Yeah. Yeah,
- 16:19Speaker 1: it's a big focus of the book, honestly, um. And
- 16:22Speaker 1: that surprised me as well how much they wrote about religion,
- 16:27Speaker 1: and specifically here, like you know, white European religion, that
- 16:32Speaker 1: how it was oppressing women, and that's something you and
- 16:37Speaker 1: I were working on a long series about. It's getting longer.
- 16:41Speaker 1: It's getting longer, longer. So yeah, I mean it's still
- 16:45Speaker 1: a huge, huge topic today. But I was surprised at
- 16:48Speaker 1: how much of this book. I was like, oh, whoa.
- 16:52Speaker 1: They did not hold back, and they weren't the only ones.
- 16:55Speaker 1: They definitely were the quieter voices, it seems because again,
- 16:58Speaker 1: like Dr Wagner makes mentioned that Susan B. Anthony was
- 17:01Speaker 1: the perfect example of the quiet, demure moral representation of
- 17:07Speaker 1: the Suffraget movement. And not necessarily standing or gage who
- 17:10Speaker 1: are like, yeah, the church, the church is destroying us
- 17:12Speaker 1: because y'all want to put us under this awful idea
- 17:15Speaker 1: that Eve has uh cursed us all, which they talk
- 17:19Speaker 1: about too. But it's an interesting take it. I'll love it.
- 17:22Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie sorry. And with that, they wrote
- 17:26Speaker 1: in the History of Women's suffrage quote, society is based
- 17:28Speaker 1: on this fourfold bondage of women, Church, state, capital, and society,
- 17:33Speaker 1: making liberty and equality for her antagonistic to every organized institution.
- 17:37Speaker 1: So those are the four institutions and kind of break
- 17:39Speaker 1: it down. We're just gonna kind of summarize that with
- 17:42Speaker 1: state being under government control with no rights and limited liberty.
- 17:46Speaker 1: Capital is the idea of marriage, which equates to unpaid
- 17:48Speaker 1: labor and servitude and often leads to the women having
- 17:51Speaker 1: no rights or no say within the household or the land,
- 17:55Speaker 1: no right to property. Is either society, which is an
- 17:58Speaker 1: inability to earn wages or have a career, which takes
- 18:01Speaker 1: away from their having independence, liberty, and even equality, um
- 18:05Speaker 1: any of them. Like, we wouldn't break that down a
- 18:07Speaker 1: little further because she does talk about these four subjects
- 18:10Speaker 1: throughout and of course we just mentioned the church, so
- 18:13Speaker 1: we don't have to explain that. I don't think. Yeah.
- 18:15Speaker 1: I would also add in here I've long wanted to
- 18:17Speaker 1: do this episode. I think it would be very complicated.
- 18:19Speaker 1: Perhaps we'll talk about it in the religious history one.
- 18:22Speaker 1: But there's a long history of wanting to restrict women's
- 18:26Speaker 1: rights because many women are people with uters is can
- 18:29Speaker 1: have children and children at this time, we're used for labor,
- 18:33Speaker 1: and so it was a type of capital and they
- 18:35Speaker 1: wanted to men in the church. The church didn't want
- 18:38Speaker 1: to pay for children burn out of web. Look that
- 18:41Speaker 1: came up to is like women who had children, people
- 18:45Speaker 1: who had children having no rights to the child right
- 18:50Speaker 1: and yeah, that was that they were property on the
- 18:52Speaker 1: same level as women were property right. Very interesting, Um,
- 18:57Speaker 1: so where did these ideas these institutions come from? And
- 19:01Speaker 1: on the interview, I admitted to fox Uh that this
- 19:04Speaker 1: was one of those moments that felt obvious that the
- 19:07Speaker 1: suffraget movement wasn't something born from the Eurocentric ideal that
- 19:10Speaker 1: the beginning of this country was based on the oppression
- 19:13Speaker 1: of the European British standards. So it kind of was like, oh, yeah, duh, yeah,
- 19:22Speaker 1: it made yeah of course, of course, we just don't
- 19:25Speaker 1: think that that far behind Dr Wagner. She writes about
- 19:29Speaker 1: her own misconceptions. I did not set out to look
- 19:31Speaker 1: for this connection, this link between early suffragists and native people's.
- 19:36Speaker 1: In truth, if someone has suggested it to me when
- 19:38Speaker 1: I taught my first women studies class in nineteen sixty nine,
- 19:42Speaker 1: I would have scoffed at yet another more quote romantic
- 19:46Speaker 1: Indian story. I had a single question, basic to feminist history.
- 19:50Speaker 1: How did the radical suffragists come to their vision, A
- 19:53Speaker 1: vision not of band aid reform, but of a reconstituted
- 19:57Speaker 1: world completely transformed H And I thought that was something significant.
- 20:01Speaker 1: She admits it, and then she goes on to talk
- 20:03Speaker 1: about the fact that she never once doubted that it
- 20:07Speaker 1: came from the European women, even though when we look
- 20:10Speaker 1: at the historical context, European women didn't have freedoms like that, right, right,
- 20:15Speaker 1: And I think that goes to show how deeply ingrained
- 20:19Speaker 1: our whitewash history is. Is that I mean, she admitted it.
- 20:23Speaker 1: I can admit it. I didn't really think about it
- 20:25Speaker 1: when when I learned it, I was like, oh, of course, um,
- 20:29Speaker 1: but that's how deep this is. And That's how damaging
- 20:31Speaker 1: that kind of a rature is because we could have
- 20:34Speaker 1: I mean, it's heartbreaking in so many ways, but we
- 20:37Speaker 1: could have learned so much more we had the history
- 20:40Speaker 1: available to us instead of they taught us how to
- 20:43Speaker 1: plant corn. Yes, the native people taught us how to
- 20:46Speaker 1: plant corn, and I mean white people. Sorry. And this
- 20:51Speaker 1: is something that she discovers and we'll talk about in
- 20:53Speaker 1: a few minutes. Yes, but first, Dr Wagner begins by
- 20:56Speaker 1: breaking down the language of the colonizers versus the indigenous Uh,
- 21:00Speaker 1: the different types of misinformation presented in the usage of
- 21:03Speaker 1: the term indians. For example, um is an example of
- 21:07Speaker 1: the horror and dangers of colonizers giving names instead of
- 21:12Speaker 1: the community letting us know the name that they go by.
- 21:15Speaker 1: The different tribal names given we're also given by colonizers,
- 21:19Speaker 1: as well as the term tribes. Dr Wagner writes, not
- 21:22Speaker 1: recognizing the terrible appropriation of self identity inflicted in a
- 21:26Speaker 1: false other imposed name. They have that quote political correctness
- 21:31Speaker 1: that requires them to change their language. Yeah, why is
- 21:36Speaker 1: it still relatable? I know, I mean, let's be honest,
- 21:43Speaker 1: Like when we talk about a lot of these conversations
- 21:46Speaker 1: and issues yeah, it's still going ongoing today, even to
- 21:49Speaker 1: the point that finally the people have stopped saying the
- 21:53Speaker 1: term Indian, which basically cringed to say, I'm not gonna
- 21:56Speaker 1: lie uh to Native or Indigenous or First People's which
- 22:01Speaker 1: is appropriate, which makes complete sense. And in the fact
- 22:04Speaker 1: that this was not the name they were getting, like
- 22:07Speaker 1: they go by. This has always been an insulting term
- 22:11Speaker 1: for them because it was giving by colonizers as a
- 22:13Speaker 1: way of kind of ownership of that community. And it's
- 22:16Speaker 1: it's like, oh God, yeah, and I love that sentence
- 22:19Speaker 1: about her saying the terrible appropriation of self identity inflicted. Uh,
- 22:24Speaker 1: like that whole sentences that we talked about appropriation. And
- 22:28Speaker 1: this was two thousand one and it existed dead, but
- 22:30Speaker 1: it wasn't this big conversation it is today that Yeah,
- 22:36Speaker 1: it absolutely was. This is absolutely some of the evidence
- 22:39Speaker 1: of appropriation committed by colonizers, and which is the example
- 22:43Speaker 1: of why this is so damaging and an important then
- 23:00Speaker 1: Dr Wagner writes, self naming is, of course a critical
- 23:03Speaker 1: part of the process of creating a diverse culture. One rule,
- 23:06Speaker 1: when in doubt about what to call a person or group,
- 23:09Speaker 1: don't tie up their time and energy and asking read
- 23:12Speaker 1: what they have to say, then sift carefully and slowly
- 23:15Speaker 1: through the multiple answers, knowing that this is not a
- 23:17Speaker 1: trivial matter. So we change by evolving and respecting the
- 23:21Speaker 1: culture that has been around before the existence of this country. Yeah. Yeah,
- 23:27Speaker 1: ask questions, ask good questions. I wonder who wrote the
- 23:30Speaker 1: history always, but I do think that's part of it.
- 23:33Speaker 1: Is like a lot of people, and we've discussed this again,
- 23:37Speaker 1: going back to that Wikipedia episode, is if it's not
- 23:39Speaker 1: easily found, I think a lot of people just don't
- 23:41Speaker 1: put in the time and we really need to. We
- 23:44Speaker 1: have to write and yeah, like she says, don't tie
- 23:47Speaker 1: up their time and energy, which is exactly that conversation is.
- 23:51Speaker 1: Let we're asking for something of value from them because
- 23:55Speaker 1: we're too lazy to look at it ourselves when the
- 23:58Speaker 1: work has already been done. Yes, Yes, Also an ongoing
- 24:02Speaker 1: conversation here, Dr Wagner emphasizes the importance of recognizing the
- 24:06Speaker 1: community as they call themselves, and here Dr Wagner is
- 24:10Speaker 1: specifically talking about the six nations of the Hodda Nishani
- 24:13Speaker 1: are formally named Iroquois, which includes the Onondagas, the Cayugas,
- 24:18Speaker 1: the Senecas, the Mohawks, and the Oneidas. Later they would
- 24:22Speaker 1: add the nation of tolcar Auras and Hotda. Nashani translates
- 24:26Speaker 1: to quote the people of the long House from the
- 24:28Speaker 1: circumstance that they likened their political structure of a long
- 24:32Speaker 1: tenement or dwelling. Yeah, and I'll also add, if you
- 24:35Speaker 1: get the book, and I'll hope you get the book
- 24:36Speaker 1: and you're able to read it, they do have a
- 24:37Speaker 1: lot of amazing illustrations to go with these, and there
- 24:41Speaker 1: is a great illustration like of this dwelling. So it's
- 24:44Speaker 1: really interesting to see. And these are people who would
- 24:47Speaker 1: heavinly influence the radical movement of women's rights and the
- 24:51Speaker 1: beginning of feminist ideology. According to Dr Wagner's research, the
- 24:55Speaker 1: women's rights movement really began in the territory of Hodashani
- 24:58Speaker 1: in eighteen forty eat uh. As we said earlier, she
- 25:01Speaker 1: found these answers to who was the influence in the
- 25:04Speaker 1: women's rights movement. Um, here's another quote from the book.
- 25:08Speaker 1: It dawned on me I had been skimming over the
- 25:11Speaker 1: source of their vision without even noticing it. My own
- 25:14Speaker 1: stunningly deep seated presumption of white supremacy had kept me
- 25:18Speaker 1: from recognizing what these protect typical feminists kept insisting in
- 25:22Speaker 1: their writings. They believed women's liberation was possible because they
- 25:26Speaker 1: knew liberated women, women who possessed rights beyond their wildest imaginations.
- 25:31Speaker 1: The hold of a Shawnee women um and she later continues,
- 25:34Speaker 1: like most historians do, I had assumed that the story
- 25:37Speaker 1: of feminism began with the discovery of America by white men,
- 25:41Speaker 1: or the political revolutions staged by the colonists. That there's
- 25:45Speaker 1: no seed of feminism already in American soil when the
- 25:48Speaker 1: first white settlers arrived. Without realizing it, I had assumed
- 25:52Speaker 1: that white people had imported the germ of the idea
- 25:55Speaker 1: of women's rights, and that was the end of the story, right.
- 25:59Speaker 1: I think the two parts that we wanted to talk about, like,
- 26:02Speaker 1: that is white supremacy that level, whether or not you
- 26:05Speaker 1: want to admit it. And because people don't like that
- 26:08Speaker 1: term white supremacy because it's too heavily laid with you
- 26:10Speaker 1: might be racist, um, but that is as an underlying
- 26:14Speaker 1: racism that you don't know about. That even like for
- 26:17Speaker 1: me as well, obviously I'm still as an Asian woman
- 26:21Speaker 1: hanging onto that white supremacy and assuming the same thing
- 26:25Speaker 1: that it was it began with white women point blank.
- 26:28Speaker 1: M hmm. Yeah. And there's so much offensive like ideas
- 26:33Speaker 1: underpending that in terminology and depending that that the book
- 26:36Speaker 1: does go into. But yeah, it's pretty it's pretty distressing
- 26:41Speaker 1: and disturbing because yeah, if you you don't know because
- 26:44Speaker 1: you were raised with this particular version of history that
- 26:46Speaker 1: we're all kind of like growing up in um, then
- 26:51Speaker 1: you don't know to ask. And so it's so good
- 26:54Speaker 1: that the work like this exists and people are asking
- 26:59Speaker 1: now because it is just the so much of what
- 27:06Speaker 1: the Hodd and Shannie Like, there was one chart, you
- 27:09Speaker 1: know the chart I'm talking about where it showed that
- 27:11Speaker 1: like how their society is versus like we're gonna talk
- 27:13Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, I'm telling you, like, it was such
- 27:16Speaker 1: a beautiful thing that even today I was looking at
- 27:20Speaker 1: it like what right, I can barely imagine this. And
- 27:26Speaker 1: to be honest, even to this day, they still have
- 27:29Speaker 1: more rights and more equality than we do as a
- 27:33Speaker 1: country today. Yeah. Let the culture before, since they've been existing,
- 27:47Speaker 1: has more rights than us today. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, And
- 27:53Speaker 1: it's just again so frustrating that so many of us
- 27:57Speaker 1: do think of when we think of the feminist movement,
- 28:00Speaker 1: we think of these white women, and there were so
- 28:01Speaker 1: many women of color behind it that get erased. But
- 28:05Speaker 1: then to have them get the credit flight being the
- 28:08Speaker 1: start of it when they were learning from all of
- 28:11Speaker 1: the incigenous women, like, that's where they got these ideas
- 28:15Speaker 1: um and she was able to research to the truth.
- 28:17Speaker 1: At the beginning of the movement, she writes, they stayed
- 28:19Speaker 1: and engage, looked elsewhere for their vision of the regenerated world,
- 28:23Speaker 1: and they found it in Upstate New York. They became
- 28:26Speaker 1: students of the hoddaa Shawnee and found a cosmological worldview
- 28:30Speaker 1: they believed to be superior to the patriarchal, white male
- 28:34Speaker 1: dominated view prevalent in their own nation. So Lovely Gauge
- 28:46Speaker 1: was an avid researcher of the Hoddaashani culture and the
- 28:49Speaker 1: role of the women in their system, which she termed
- 28:52Speaker 1: matriarch kate I think that's correct or mother rule system.
- 28:56Speaker 1: As In fact, Gauge wrote articles about the Hodda Shanie
- 28:59Speaker 1: and all so started a book. Here's another quote from
- 29:02Speaker 1: Dr Wagner, the editor of The New York Evening post
- 29:06Speaker 1: said that Gauge expressed, quote an exhibition of ardent devotion
- 29:09Speaker 1: to the cause of women's rights, which is very proper
- 29:12Speaker 1: in the president of the Suffrage Association and gives prominence
- 29:15Speaker 1: to the fact that in the old days, on the
- 29:17Speaker 1: glory of the famous Confederation was at its height, the
- 29:20Speaker 1: power and importance of women were recognized by the allied tribes. Right.
- 29:26Speaker 1: I found it interesting because we're gonna go deeper into
- 29:28Speaker 1: the fact that these women who we're trying to advocate
- 29:33Speaker 1: so hard for the women in the United States at
- 29:37Speaker 1: that point in time, in the in the white territories,
- 29:39Speaker 1: I guess we're trying so hard to bring that cultural
- 29:43Speaker 1: aspect to it, but had to admit they loved and
- 29:47Speaker 1: rather would have stayed with that culture the indigenous community
- 29:53Speaker 1: because they were they were even given the same rights
- 29:56Speaker 1: as HoDaa Shawnee women. They are who were have been
- 29:59Speaker 1: born into that since but they were accepted of it.
- 30:01Speaker 1: And because of this they came back with allies who
- 30:04Speaker 1: helped to be like here, here you go, we got
- 30:06Speaker 1: your back. This is what you can do, this is
- 30:07Speaker 1: what we're gonna tell you about. We'll tell you about
- 30:09Speaker 1: our system, we'll show it to you and show you
- 30:10Speaker 1: how wonderful it worked. Yeah, that was a lot of
- 30:13Speaker 1: examples of that throughout and also a lot of like
- 30:17Speaker 1: discussion hit home again of how they felt safe like
- 30:21Speaker 1: walking at night alone Native territories, but didn't they never had,
- 30:27Speaker 1: and then the back they were surprised when they felt
- 30:30Speaker 1: that safe. They're like, yeah, why wouldn't you write um
- 30:37Speaker 1: And as both Stanton and Gauge continue to push forward
- 30:39Speaker 1: in the women's rights movement, they noted quote the society
- 30:43Speaker 1: in which they lived was based on the impression of
- 30:45Speaker 1: women hot into Shawnee. Society, on the other hand, was
- 30:47Speaker 1: organized to maintain a balance of the quality between women
- 30:50Speaker 1: and men, and they went as far as creating a list, Yes,
- 30:53Speaker 1: this is what we were talking about to show those differences,
- 30:56Speaker 1: which they break down as social, econom make, spiritual and political.
- 31:01Speaker 1: Here are some of the examples, um hoddena Shaani. Violence
- 31:04Speaker 1: against women not a part of culture and dealt with
- 31:07Speaker 1: seriously when occurs. Each woman controls your own personal property.
- 31:11Speaker 1: Sky woman the spiritual being catalyst for the world. We
- 31:14Speaker 1: see women hold key political offices e g. Clan mothers
- 31:18Speaker 1: and for Euro American women, husbands have legal right and
- 31:21Speaker 1: religious responsibility to physically discipline wives, no rights to her
- 31:25Speaker 1: own property, body or children, no female in the godhead,
- 31:29Speaker 1: and women are excluded from political office. Also, they can't
- 31:33Speaker 1: vote while holding a Shawnee are the ones to choose
- 31:35Speaker 1: their chief right, And there's a lot more to that list.
- 31:39Speaker 1: We just wanted to give you a little bit of
- 31:41Speaker 1: an example. But it's again shocking and again more rights
- 31:46Speaker 1: than what we have today, even like we've gotten more
- 31:48Speaker 1: rights since then, yeah, but still less rights than what
- 31:52Speaker 1: the hold of a Shawnee women has. Yeah, I thought, yeah,
- 31:56Speaker 1: I thought. I thought it was interesting they included the
- 31:58Speaker 1: bit about like the odd head. There's no because, as
- 32:02Speaker 1: you said earlier, that idea of Eve ruining everything in
- 32:06Speaker 1: kind of white Christian religion. Um, so it's like, not
- 32:10Speaker 1: only do we not have like a god, we have
- 32:15Speaker 1: like the woman ruined everything. Right, they are meant to
- 32:18Speaker 1: be punished because they are the ones they are the
- 32:21Speaker 1: fault for sin periods. Yes and man right noxious? Uh.
- 32:29Speaker 1: And also many of these women who studied the hold
- 32:31Speaker 1: of a Shawnee were adopted into the different indigenous communities
- 32:34Speaker 1: during their time with them, allowing them to practice leadership
- 32:37Speaker 1: and autonomy under the hood. Of a Shawnee lifestyle, so
- 32:40Speaker 1: they gotta taste. They got that taste. Um. And those
- 32:43Speaker 1: who did study the lifestyle of this indigenous group all
- 32:46Speaker 1: acknowledged the overall equality and freedom within the community, even
- 32:50Speaker 1: beyond the freedom of the women. The system that was
- 32:53Speaker 1: used by the hold of a shanity brought about peace
- 32:55Speaker 1: within the community and a camaraderie. Um. And yeah, like
- 32:58Speaker 1: you said, there was safety and there was a lot
- 33:01Speaker 1: of measure to make sure everybody felt equal in a
- 33:03Speaker 1: part of the system. So it wasn't just you have
- 33:07Speaker 1: this role. It's a minute role. Get out of the
- 33:08Speaker 1: way or you'll be beaten. Um. And if you could
- 33:11Speaker 1: step out of line whatever, it was like, No, we
- 33:14Speaker 1: all are equal to each other. One doesn't outdo the other.
- 33:16Speaker 1: We balanced each other, right, Um. And that whole idea too,
- 33:21Speaker 1: is so stark of like, you know, hurting a woman
- 33:24Speaker 1: with the hold nutshine people punishing seriously, very very rare.
- 33:29Speaker 1: It's like codified into law that men could do that
- 33:32Speaker 1: to their wives if they like straight or did something
- 33:36Speaker 1: quote heavy quotes wrong, right, And it's biblically allowed, not
- 33:41Speaker 1: been allowed to biblically forced. They was like, you have
- 33:44Speaker 1: to do this right, because otherwives the sin will get
- 33:48Speaker 1: hold of her. It was their responsibility to keep their
- 33:52Speaker 1: wives in check. Yeah, it's really real. Must up, must up. Yeah.
- 33:58Speaker 1: And in their culture of the Hut and Shinny had
- 34:00Speaker 1: freedoms that seem radical even today to some extent, women
- 34:04Speaker 1: choosing their leaders and being able to fire him if
- 34:07Speaker 1: his actions violate. There's three qualifications. Quote they cannot commit murder,
- 34:12Speaker 1: cannot commit theft, and cannot abuse a woman. Huh, that's right,
- 34:16Speaker 1: they're right there. And on top of that, divorce was
- 34:22Speaker 1: not looked down on, which Stanton was a proponent of.
- 34:25Speaker 1: Dr Wagner writes she found a model in the Hood
- 34:27Speaker 1: and a Shawnee attitudes towards divorce, where quote a misbehaving
- 34:31Speaker 1: Iroquois husband quote might at any time be ordered to
- 34:34Speaker 1: pick up his blanket and budge get out. Yeah, pick
- 34:39Speaker 1: up his blanket, budge, But I love it, get out.
- 34:46Speaker 1: That's great. And reviews on divorce were in part due
- 34:49Speaker 1: to the level of the structure of marriage, with marital
- 34:52Speaker 1: rape and abuse being legal, as well as women's complete
- 34:55Speaker 1: loss of autonomy to the authority of their husband. Stanton
- 34:58Speaker 1: looked towards the practices of the Hoddan Shawnee. She is
- 35:01Speaker 1: quoted in the book as envying how native women quote
- 35:04Speaker 1: ruled the house. Dr Wagner continued later in the book
- 35:08Speaker 1: of the seriousness for men of the Honda Shawnee misbehaving, uh,
- 35:12Speaker 1: including rape, which researchers noted was non existence. She writes
- 35:18Speaker 1: a tesca or chief Elias Johnson wrote, the absence of
- 35:21Speaker 1: rape and quote sexual violation of women was virtually unknown
- 35:25Speaker 1: among native men, right, which is amazing And I think
- 35:29Speaker 1: I know Fox talked about that during our interview as well,
- 35:32Speaker 1: that that was not introduced until Christian missionaries came through
- 35:36Speaker 1: and tried to quote unquote civilize right and the indigenous community,
- 35:41Speaker 1: which damn you. And as for domestic violence, if one
- 35:48Speaker 1: of the indigenous men were known to be abusive, he
- 35:50Speaker 1: was quote led to the red hot statue of a
- 35:53Speaker 1: female and requested to treat it as he had done
- 35:56Speaker 1: his wife. He commenced beating it and the sparks flew out,
- 35:59Speaker 1: and we're continually burning him. So that was his attrition essentially,
- 36:04Speaker 1: just like, Okay, we got this burning hot statue, good
- 36:07Speaker 1: for it, and which is what just caused him to burn.
- 36:10Speaker 1: I'm like, I like it let's do it. Yeah, So
- 36:16Speaker 1: obviously there was very limited numbers of some domestic violence
- 36:18Speaker 1: at that point in time. And on top of the
- 36:21Speaker 1: different responsibilities, the hot and a Shawnee women were farmers
- 36:25Speaker 1: and the authority of the land. Um, here's another quote
- 36:28Speaker 1: for the book, satisfying and sacred. Women's work harmoniously complimented
- 36:32Speaker 1: the hunting diplomatic duties of men. Both were equally valued
- 36:36Speaker 1: within the framework of community responsibility, individual liberty flourished. Um.
- 36:41Speaker 1: And you know, we we had this conversation about feminism
- 36:44Speaker 1: in general a while ago as we were talking about
- 36:46Speaker 1: the different waves that yes, at one point the women
- 36:48Speaker 1: wanted to be able to work, which kind of contradicted
- 36:51Speaker 1: the fact that women who had to work and had
- 36:52Speaker 1: no choice it had to be menial labor and the
- 36:55Speaker 1: fact that this is not a right to them. Right.
- 36:59Speaker 1: But this comes to the path fact that is about
- 37:01Speaker 1: the balance, because at this point in time, um, Stanton
- 37:05Speaker 1: and Engage, we're both talking about the fact the women
- 37:09Speaker 1: were in uh, pretty much servitude to their husbands and
- 37:12Speaker 1: we're not allowed to do anything else, and had no
- 37:15Speaker 1: monetary savings themselves and had the rights to anything. So
- 37:18Speaker 1: if they were ever to be abandoned. They would have nothing. Yeah,
- 37:21Speaker 1: And I think that's another thing that was really striking
- 37:24Speaker 1: to me because even if I personally believe that women's
- 37:29Speaker 1: work is undervalued, it should be paid way more. I'm
- 37:34Speaker 1: I'm of the belief like women who stay home and
- 37:36Speaker 1: take care of kids should get paid some like financial
- 37:39Speaker 1: compensation because it's a job. This is hard for me
- 37:43Speaker 1: to believe our society could ever reach a point where
- 37:45Speaker 1: we equally value quote Bremon's work and men's work, because
- 37:49Speaker 1: that's how difficult this battle has been, right and it
- 37:55Speaker 1: still continues to be obviously, as you were talking about,
- 37:57Speaker 1: even like the pay gap, that we continue to talk
- 37:59Speaker 1: about the gender gap when it comes to opportunities for
- 38:02Speaker 1: better jobs or good jobs or different jobs. Um. But
- 38:07Speaker 1: there was a balance in the hood of the Shaunning community.
- 38:10Speaker 1: Dr Wagner rights. Women were responsible for everything in the
- 38:14Speaker 1: earth while men had the care of everything on the earth.
- 38:17Speaker 1: And yes, that's I think that's part of the biggest
- 38:21Speaker 1: conversations that gets lost when it comes to like men's
- 38:23Speaker 1: rights movements and all this. Both we want to get
- 38:26Speaker 1: the equal footing, and at this point that's no longer.
- 38:30Speaker 1: Equality is equity and that's a conversation we need to
- 38:33Speaker 1: have in itself, and of course it becomes an intersectional thing,
- 38:36Speaker 1: which yes, it's a big, big conversation, but to the
- 38:38Speaker 1: fact that they started equal, they've been equal. They don't
- 38:42Speaker 1: have to talk about equity because they're already equal. And
- 38:44Speaker 1: this is the conversation that we don't have enough of.
- 38:48Speaker 1: And it's this balance of like, yeah, you can have
- 38:51Speaker 1: this one and one, one and one, as in like, okay,
- 38:54Speaker 1: if you want to be a stay at home mom,
- 38:57Speaker 1: that's wonderful, you do you, but you also have that
- 39:01Speaker 1: right to have a vacation, to have a compensation, and
- 39:05Speaker 1: have time off, like all of those things where you
- 39:07Speaker 1: should be allowed that just as much as the husband is,
- 39:10Speaker 1: and that he should be able to follow through with
- 39:11Speaker 1: that as his is, Like he gets vacation every day
- 39:14Speaker 1: if she's they are taking care of the children and
- 39:16Speaker 1: feeding him and cleaning the house. Equality would be that
- 39:19Speaker 1: he would take that footing as if this was her
- 39:21Speaker 1: job as well, right with equal compensation at equal time off.
- 39:26Speaker 1: But that's that's a whole different I digress. Yes, it's
- 39:31Speaker 1: just yes. And with all of this knowledge, the movement
- 39:34Speaker 1: went forward. The activists took up the act of civil disobedience,
- 39:37Speaker 1: including trying to vote and not paying taxes. They declared
- 39:40Speaker 1: the States violating the law by quote refusing to women's
- 39:43Speaker 1: citizens the exercise of a right secured to them by
- 39:46Speaker 1: the Constitution of the United States, including the denial of
- 39:50Speaker 1: women's legal right to vote. And it was soon after
- 39:54Speaker 1: that Susan B. Anthony would be arrested and tried for
- 39:57Speaker 1: voting in eighteen seventy three, which led to Anthony being
- 40:00Speaker 1: found guilty of voting and find one hundred dollars, which
- 40:03Speaker 1: would lead to the Supreme Court case brought on by
- 40:06Speaker 1: Virginia Minor, but they lost. The court declared quote, states
- 40:10Speaker 1: have the absolute right to grant or deny suffrage. But
- 40:13Speaker 1: of course that didn't stop them from continuing to fight
- 40:16Speaker 1: another quote from the book, ridiculed labeled heretics and arrested
- 40:19Speaker 1: for the crime of voting, The courageous suffragists continued to
- 40:22Speaker 1: believe in the rightness of their cause, and as they
- 40:26Speaker 1: continued to work for the right to vote, the activists
- 40:28Speaker 1: kept looking to the examples of the Hodden Shawni people.
- 40:31Speaker 1: Dr Wagner quotes both Stanton and Gauge Stanton rights the
- 40:35Speaker 1: women were the great power among the clan. As everywhere else,
- 40:39Speaker 1: they did not hesitate when occasion required to knock off
- 40:41Speaker 1: the horns as it was technically called, from the head
- 40:44Speaker 1: of a chief and sent him back to the ranks
- 40:46Speaker 1: of the warriors. The original nomination of the chiefs also
- 40:49Speaker 1: always rested with the women, and from Gauge quote, the
- 40:53Speaker 1: common interests of the confederacy were arranged in councils, each
- 40:56Speaker 1: sex holding one of its own, although the women took
- 40:59Speaker 1: the initiative suggestion orders of their own sex, presenting their
- 41:02Speaker 1: views to the council of men, right, and they could
- 41:06Speaker 1: they held tied to that. Um, we still don't have that. No,
- 41:13Speaker 1: I'm so discarded. Um, of course, like it is. It's
- 41:15Speaker 1: something that they looked for. This was radical, So I'm
- 41:20Speaker 1: not gonna lie. I knew about Stanton, kind of knew
- 41:23Speaker 1: about Gauge, not really, but to understand that they saw
- 41:26Speaker 1: the bigger picture. They saw the bigger picture even for today,
- 41:30Speaker 1: and it's phenomenal that we're still behind what they wanted. Yeah, yeah,
- 41:36Speaker 1: And I think that's one of those things where it's
- 41:39Speaker 1: also so difficult to untangle when your government is kind
- 41:45Speaker 1: of based in white supremacy and in sexism and in racism,
- 41:50Speaker 1: like all of those systems. So like they're trying to
- 41:52Speaker 1: get the right to vote within this system that's already
- 41:56Speaker 1: kind of messed up, um, And so when you see,
- 42:01Speaker 1: you know, the hun is shiny, they can just knock
- 42:04Speaker 1: the horns off as they say, like, oh, this is
- 42:06Speaker 1: not working. Whereas we have like convicted like sexual assault
- 42:13Speaker 1: people who represent us in our government and can't seem
- 42:17Speaker 1: to get them out right, Like it's just such a
- 42:20Speaker 1: stark again stark difference, and then we accept it. M hmm.
- 42:25Speaker 1: It's kind of like have a House of representatives whose
- 42:29Speaker 1: entire campaign was based all on lines, yeah, and our
- 42:34Speaker 1: speaking of the House refuses to denounce him yep, who
- 42:41Speaker 1: was a veteran and it was supposed to be one
- 42:43Speaker 1: of the better right conservative representatives. Like that that level
- 42:47Speaker 1: just blows my mind, like are you kidding me? And
- 42:50Speaker 1: we didn't talk much about it before in this outside
- 42:53Speaker 1: of like talking about how much didn't and Gauge really
- 42:55Speaker 1: opposed the Church um and felt like they were a
- 42:58Speaker 1: giant oppressors. So here's a quote from Gauge that Dr
- 43:15Speaker 1: Wagner pulls forth that the woman of every Christian Land
- 43:19Speaker 1: fears to meet a man in a secluded place by
- 43:22Speaker 1: day or night is of itself sufficient proof of the
- 43:24Speaker 1: low state of Christian morality. That's pretty damning. I mean
- 43:30Speaker 1: totally on point though. Yeah, if you had good you
- 43:34Speaker 1: can't feel safe around a quote good Christian man the dark.
- 43:40Speaker 1: That is saying something right. And they talked about beyond that,
- 43:45Speaker 1: about the oppression of men, and that the religion, religion
- 43:49Speaker 1: in itself that was brought over by uh the European standards,
- 43:53Speaker 1: was to oppress women and that's the intention of it all.
- 43:56Speaker 1: And if they hold on to that, that women will
- 43:58Speaker 1: never have freedom and they will never have rights, and
- 44:00Speaker 1: that the first they must abolish the church essentially. Um.
- 44:06Speaker 1: And I found that interesting in this conversation, and that
- 44:09Speaker 1: quote that Gage says applies today. I hate you did
- 44:14Speaker 1: so much. Yeah, it's true. And I like, like we
- 44:19Speaker 1: said at the top, I didn't know that religion was
- 44:21Speaker 1: going to be such a big part of this. I
- 44:23Speaker 1: was shocked that at this time they were saying this stuff,
- 44:28Speaker 1: not because they were wrong, but because it feels so
- 44:30Speaker 1: explosive even today, right, But they were back then like Nope,
- 44:36Speaker 1: it's not gonna work. The fact that, yeah, that women
- 44:41Speaker 1: were actually printing this as a part of their goals
- 44:47Speaker 1: essentially and in some of their points is phenomenal because
- 44:50Speaker 1: we know how pure toan level, uh it was in
- 44:55Speaker 1: that point in time, and to have these women come
- 44:57Speaker 1: forward again, I didn't realize honestly, that level and that depth.
- 45:02Speaker 1: I just assumed there were Christian women because most of
- 45:04Speaker 1: the time that I hear from about the suffrages, I
- 45:08Speaker 1: think about the prohibition to in nineteen twenties as it
- 45:12Speaker 1: comes around, So that didn't link to me and all
- 45:16Speaker 1: of that because it was kind of the morality level
- 45:17Speaker 1: as well, like women have uh an opinion, they created
- 45:22Speaker 1: the temperance society at that point in the nineteen twenties,
- 45:25Speaker 1: so a little later, but still all these things um
- 45:28Speaker 1: in the nineteen hundreds and and understanding at that point
- 45:31Speaker 1: that that is such a different point of view. Not
- 45:35Speaker 1: that I don't know Stanton engages opinions on alcohol, but
- 45:38Speaker 1: I guess maybe today that's what I like, that could
- 45:41Speaker 1: Christian behavior kind of goes alongside that. So seeing them
- 45:46Speaker 1: out right being outspoken about their disdain about European Christianity, wow,
- 45:54Speaker 1: like wow, Yeah, I think there's also just this is
- 45:58Speaker 1: my experience. There's kind of a general vibe that everybody
- 46:02Speaker 1: was pretty every like white European Christian was pretty religious. Um.
- 46:07Speaker 1: And so that's just sort of my assumption is like
- 46:10Speaker 1: almost everybody was religious, um. But that doesn't seem like
- 46:15Speaker 1: it was the case. So with that, I think it's
- 46:18Speaker 1: it's something that we we should know that because we
- 46:21Speaker 1: often talk about the beginning of movements, uh, and even
- 46:25Speaker 1: the beginning of the country as some kind of religious
- 46:27Speaker 1: adventure or whatever. And this was obviously not that. This
- 46:31Speaker 1: is obviously not that they were radical. They were radical
- 46:34Speaker 1: to the core. They would be radical today. Yeah, I'm
- 46:37Speaker 1: pretty sure didn't want of them say that, Like she
- 46:40Speaker 1: kind of called out the hypocrisy of oh, you wanted
- 46:43Speaker 1: to leave Europe because of religious persecution and now that
- 46:46Speaker 1: I'm saying this, yeah, and as in fact that she
- 46:50Speaker 1: talked about that you wanted freedom and the rights that
- 46:52Speaker 1: we were so oppressed by, and then we fought with you,
- 46:55Speaker 1: and then you took it away from us to how
- 46:57Speaker 1: we were with you. We were with you in this
- 46:59Speaker 1: calls and they quote Abigail Adams, which was before that movement,
- 47:03Speaker 1: in her hopes that things would change for women, but
- 47:06Speaker 1: it didn't, and she feared that. She feared that we
- 47:10Speaker 1: were working alongside these men, but we're not going to
- 47:12Speaker 1: get the rights. Yeah, but you know they're there's so
- 47:16Speaker 1: there's so much to this, Yeah, and then you know,
- 47:19Speaker 1: we want to end it on a little more of
- 47:21Speaker 1: a positive note, I guess. And as Dr Wagner talked
- 47:23Speaker 1: about and early in the book the idea of balance
- 47:26Speaker 1: for the hood in a Johnny is Key, she writes,
- 47:29Speaker 1: the hood in a Shawnee worldview is based on keeping
- 47:32Speaker 1: everything in balance. Women and men each have responsibilities they
- 47:36Speaker 1: must carry out to maintain this balance. The clan mother
- 47:38Speaker 1: has the entire extended family that makes up a clan
- 47:42Speaker 1: um and that it's an amazing representation, but it's not.
- 47:49Speaker 1: It was their lifestyle of what it could be. Yeah,
- 47:56Speaker 1: it's it feels like we're just saying the same thing
- 47:58Speaker 1: over andre, but you really it's like, when you read it,
- 48:02Speaker 1: it's devastating how hard it was for me to even
- 48:04Speaker 1: envision a lot of this um And it's been here
- 48:09Speaker 1: this whole time. They've see have been living this life
- 48:14Speaker 1: and finding this balance. Yeah. Yeah, And I think it's
- 48:19Speaker 1: interesting because when we think about equality, the word balance
- 48:25Speaker 1: doesn't come to mind for me, but it is. That's
- 48:27Speaker 1: exactly what we're asking for, is a balance UM. And
- 48:30Speaker 1: when balance happens, equity happens so that we can all
- 48:33Speaker 1: catch up to that the scale is balanced and brought
- 48:36Speaker 1: back to as it should be and being equal to all.
- 48:40Speaker 1: But it's such an interesting aspect of seeing that in
- 48:44Speaker 1: in such a symbolic manner. Does that make sense? But Yeah,
- 48:49Speaker 1: I love this book. I think everyone should read it. Yeah,
- 48:52Speaker 1: you're gonna learn a lot of history that you don't know.
- 48:55Speaker 1: You're gonna understand and be jealous of a culture that,
- 48:59Speaker 1: unforly many of the colonizers try to completely destroy UM
- 49:04Speaker 1: And I'm glad it didn't, And I'm glad it's coming
- 49:06Speaker 1: back in full force and in at least being in conversation.
- 49:10Speaker 1: I'm glad you've met someone like got you, Junie Fox,
- 49:13Speaker 1: who was doing so much to make sure that story
- 49:16Speaker 1: is out there, and for Dr Wagner, who was also
- 49:19Speaker 1: making sure that she's not only not only shining a
- 49:24Speaker 1: light onto our own prejudice, but shining a light on
- 49:26Speaker 1: the rest of us and and letting us know the
- 49:28Speaker 1: true history behind some of the things that we just
- 49:31Speaker 1: attribute to a few people, a few white people and
- 49:34Speaker 1: making it bigger. Yes, yes, I I totally agree that,
- 49:39Speaker 1: like everyone should read this, go watch the documentary. Um
- 49:44Speaker 1: and I know got you, Junie Fox said in her interview,
- 49:47Speaker 1: and she said this in other interviews. This should be
- 49:48Speaker 1: taught in schools, and I one thousands agree it should
- 49:53Speaker 1: be in every school. Absolutely. Yes, well, uh, clearly we
- 49:59Speaker 1: had so much to say off this. We feel like
- 50:02Speaker 1: it'll definitely give you a lot to think about. So
- 50:06Speaker 1: if you haven't already, if there's something else like this
- 50:09Speaker 1: we should be reading and talking about, let us know.
- 50:11Speaker 1: We love your suggestions. You can email us at Stephanie
- 50:15Speaker 1: and mom Stuff at iHeart media dot com. You can
- 50:17Speaker 1: find us on Twitter at moms of podcast or on
- 50:19Speaker 1: Instagram at stuff I've Never Told You and TikTok at
- 50:21Speaker 1: Stuff I've Never Told You. We have a video. You
- 50:24Speaker 1: need to go watch it. Yes, thank you Joey. Yes,
- 50:31Speaker 1: Joey is amazing and patient. We'll always say thanks to
- 50:36Speaker 1: our super producer, Christina also amazing evasion. Yes, yes, and
- 50:41Speaker 1: thanks to you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You, the
- 50:43Speaker 1: the production I Heart Radio. For more podcast from my
- 50:45Speaker 1: Heart Radio, you can check out the heart radio app,
- 50:46Speaker 1: Apple podcast, wherever you listen to your favorite shows.