Stephanie A. Sellers – författare

Autobiographical stories, widely popular since their creation, are still one of the primary ethnographic and historic sources on Native North American individuals. Many books in this genre, including the famous Black Elk Speaks, have been translated into numerous languages. Native American Autobiography Redefined: A Handbook interrogates critical discussions about Native American autobiographies and challenges their often Eurocentric perspectives: it offers a new rubric for studying the genre, dismantles misperceptions about indigenous peoples, and analyzes in detail a non-biased, Native-centered example of writing about Native American autobiography. This book asks readers to move away from the western cultural notion of «autobiography» to a Native American cultural perspective of «communal narrative.» Special emphasis is given to issues of gender bias and to the great disparity between Eastern Woodlands and western culture’s perceptions of women.

This introduction to the fundamentals of Native American women’s studies first looks at several definitive topics created by the western cultural notion of feminism, and western historical and religious perspectives on women. These include ecofeminism, gender roles and work, notions of power, essentialism, women’s leadership, sexualities, and spirituality in light of gender. The book then discusses these concepts and their history from a traditional Native American point of view. Foremost among the questions that Native American Women’s Studies addresses are: How have Native American women governed their nations? How was/is the divine creatrix expressed in Native American social systems? Most significantly, this book sheds light on the radical differences between the indigenous understanding of human experience in terms of gender, and that held and created by western culture.