Beloved Women
Sarah Eppler Janda
In an era when minorities struggled for recognition, LaDonna Harris and Wilma Mankiller furthered the interests of Native Americans and forged a new place for women in politics by astutely playing accepted notions about ethnicity and gender to their own advantage. In Beloved Women, historian Sarah Eppler Janda examines the public identity these two women created for themselves and how, in turn, their respective identities shaped their political fortunes.
Moving beyond the conventional role of a 1950s U.S. senator's wife, Harris discovered opportunities to call attention to the inequalities facing Native Americans. A Comanche, Harris founded activist organizations, testified at ... Read more
During the heyday of the women's rights movement, Mankiller linked feminist ideas to Cherokee tradition. Indian culture, she asserted, esteems women, as proven by the legendary Beloved Woman who fulfills familial expectations yet also assumes political duties. Mankiller adopted this role when she became the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985, a position she held for a decade.
Harris and Mankiller became national leaders, Janda concludes, in large part because their complex persona—Indian and woman—enabled them to challenge social and political norms.
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About Sarah Eppler Janda
Reviews for Beloved Women
Choice
Janda offers a pivotal work that documents the contributions of American Indian feminists to politics.
Western Historical Quarterly
Enlightening... a thorough examination of the women and their contributions.
The Journal of American History