To Help Indians Help Themselves

At the very height of the struggle over the Nineteenth Amendment, leading Indigenous feminists were completing and publishing their major works of political theory. This was not a coincidence. Native women had long been engaged in the fight for political participation, citizenship rights, and women’s place in the United States. They built on their previous years of activism, drawing on the lessons they learned about honing their arguments, winning allies, and navigating the particularities of state, federal, and tribal political structures. The year 1920 fell amid what is often called the nadir of Native history, a period characterized by poverty, disease, massive land dispossession, and scant political power—all of which were a direct result of federal policies. Native feminists marshalled multiple strategies to address these problems. In some cases, they loudly and directly called upon newly enfranchised white women. In others, they looked to access U.S. citizenship and suffrage rights for the nearly one-third of adult Native people who were still considered wards of the federal government. Women also worked within their own communities and their own political traditions to protect their lands and cultures.