Contact Zones: Aboriginal And Settler Women in Canada's Colonial Past

"Contact Zones" makes a unique contribution to the history of Canadian women in imperialism and colonization. Through its attention to Native/Newcomer relations and women's roles in the colonial project, the contributors add an important dimension to understanding how Canada was colonized and how Aboriginal and settler women responded to new regimes. Race, class, and gender are interrogated within Canada's imperial and colonial system. The book challenges fixed dichotomies concerning the colonizer and the colonized, and reveals the complexities of the colonial experience. Aboriginal women like Pauline Johnson, Bernice Loft, and Ethel Brant Monture carved out spaces and shaped identities in both worlds. By recognizing the necessity to "perform" they enchanted and educated white audiences across Canada. At the same time Aboriginal women's bodies were increasingly regulated by missionaries, Department of Indian Affairs agents, and schoolteachers. Aboriginal women were expected to consent to moral, sexual, and marital rules that white women were beginning to fight against. Social space, both private and public, provided the stage upon which the theatre of empire was acted out. "Contact Zones" draws upon a vast array of primary sources to provide insight into the ubiquity and persistence of colonial discourse, and to demonstrate how it ultimately was an embodied experience. Above all, it shows how the colonial enterprise was about embodied contacts. What bodies belonged inside the nation, who were outsiders, and who transgressed the rules - these are the questions at the heart of this provocative book.