Countering Colonization : Native American Women and Great Lakes Missions, 1630-1900

This book offers a documented, revisionary history of Native American women.

From the time of early Jesuit missionaries to the late 19th century, the author brings Ojibwa, Crec and Montagnais-Naskapi women of the Upper Great Lakes region to the fore.

Far from being passive observers without regard for status and autonomy, these women were pivotal in their own communities and active in shaping the encounter between Native American and white civilizations. While women's voices have been silenced in most accounts, their actions preserved in missionary letters and reports indicate the vital part women played during centuries of conflict.

In contrast to some Indian men who accepted the missionaries' religious and secular teachings as useful tools for dealing with whites, many Indian women felt a strong threat to their ways of life and beliefs.

Women endured torture and hardship, and even torched missionaries' homes in an attempt to reassert control over their lives.

The author demonstrates that gender conflicts in Native American communities, which anthropologists considered to be "aboriginal", resulted in large part from women's and men's divergence over the acceptance of missionaries and their message.