Native American Women’s Studies: An Introduction

            Women’s Studies is a unique discipline that colleges and universities began to offer during the 1970’s.  At this time, the feminist movement was exploding and propelled women to learn about history as it specifically affected their gender.  Women’s studies programs are now offered at nearly every college and university in the United States.  These programs foster the exploration of women’s roles in society, past and present, and introduce students to feminist theory and criticism.  Women’s studies programs allow students to take an interdisciplinary approach to their studies and “brings to light valuable information about women in the family and at work, in the arts, in politics, and in the sciences ­ information that traditional scholarship has overlooked”.1  Native American Women’s studies is a specific concentration within the larger discipline.  It focuses on the same attributes as mentioned above, but the focus is on Native American women and their place in history and the world today.

            This pathfinder was created for the virtual library at Northwest Indian College (NWIC).  In light of this, I searched for sources that are available on the Internet and do not charge for access.  In the beginning, I limited my search to the very narrow field of “Native American Women’s Studies” and was disappointed with the quantity and quality of the results this generated.  Keeping in mind that women’s studies is an interdisciplinary program, I decided to broaden my subject to include art, writing, health, family, history, etc.  Taken as a whole, all of these areas define the Native American woman and her life within the community.  I also decided to include a few descriptions of Native American Women’s courses offered at universities so that the teachers at NWIC can have an example of what ideas are taught in these courses and what resources are used to teach them.

            To begin, I entered a myriad of search terms into the Google <www.Google.com> and Yahoo! <www.yahoo.com>. search engines. I started by searching such keyword phrases as “Native American women and studies”, “Native American women and history”, “Native American Women and art”, “Native American women and writing”, and so forth.  Using these terms Google returned a countless number of websites that focused on these subjects.  The challenge was trying to find websites that contained valuable information and that were built by reliable and unbiased sources.  I did not limit my choices to those produced by academia because I found that the majority of my hits came from outside of the academic world.  Also, I found some of my choices while perusing the sites that Google returned by looking at their “links” pages and bibliographies. 

            What are some of the questions future teachers need answered about Native American women’s studies?  I expect that they would first of all want to know what Native American women’s studies courses teach and what resources they use.  Also: Where can I find information about Native American women authors?  Is there a website that addresses Native American women and their health concerns? Are there any sources that educate students on Native American puberty rituals? Where can I find photographs of Native American women and their traditions?  These questions and many others will be answered in this pathfinder and can be located at www.gslis.utexas.edu/~vlibrary/edres/pathfinders/potter.