Traditional gender roles among Native American and First Nations peoples tend to vary greatly by region and community. As with all Pre-Columbian era societies, historical traditions may or may not reflect contemporary attitudes. Gender roles exhibited by Indigenous communities have been transformed in some aspects by Eurocentric, patriarchal norms and the perpetration of systematic oppression. In many communities, these things are not discussed with outsiders.
Apache
Traditional Apache gender roles have many of the same skills learned by both females and males. All children traditionally learn how to cook, follow tracks, skin leather, sew stitches, ride horses, and use weapons.100 Native Americans Who Shaped American History, Juettner, 2007. Typically, women gather vegetation such as fruits, roots, and seeds. Women often prepare the food. Men use weapons and tools to hunt animals such as Bison. It is expected that women do not participate in hunting, but the role of mothers is important. A puberty rite ceremony for young girls is an important event. Here the girl accepts her role as a woman and is blessed with a long life and fertility. Apache people typically live in matrilocal households, where a married couple live with the wife's family.
Eastern Woodland societies
Eastern Woodland communities vary widely in whether they divide labor based on sex. In general, as in the Plains nations, women own the home while men's work may involve more travel.James Ax tell, The Indian Peoples of Eastern America: A Documentary History of the Sexes, New York, Oxford University Press, 1981, 107–110 Narragansett men in farming communities have traditionally helped clear the fields, cultivate the crops, and assist with the harvesting, whereas women hold authority in the home.James Ax tell, The Indian Peoples of Eastern America: A Documentary History of the Sexes, New York, Oxford University Press, 1981, 123 Among the Lenape, men and women have both participated in agriculture and hunting according to age and ability, although primary leadership in agriculture traditionally belongs to women, while men have generally held more responsibility in the area of hunting. Whether gained by hunting, fishing, or agriculture, older Lenape women take responsibility for community food distribution. Land management, whether used for hunting or agriculture, also is the traditional responsibility of Lenape women.Gun log Fur, A Nation of Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters Among the Delaware Indians, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009, 87
Historically, a number of social norms in Eastern Woodland communities demonstrate a balance of power held between women and men. Men and women have traditionally both had the final say over who they would end up marrying, though parents usually have a great deal of influence as well.James Axtell, The Indian Peoples of Eastern America: A Documentary History of the Sexes, New York, Oxford University Press, 1981, 74–75
Haudenosaunee
The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) creation myth holds that before the world was created, there was a floating island in the sky upon which the Sky People lived. Among them, a pregnant Sky Woman who was going to give birth to twins. Her husband was angry to find out they were expecting twins, and pushed her off of the floating island where she landed on the back of a giant turtle which eventually grew and became the continent of North America, which the Sky Woman and her children then gave human life to. This central myth, attributing the creation of the world to a woman rather than a man, is unique and informs the spiritual and philosophical importance of women within the precolonial Haudenosaunee people.
Before colonialism, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (the Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida and Tuscarora peoples) had a matriarchal socioeconomic and familial structure. Women owned their own property and belongings, and children were considered descendants in their mother's line rather than that of the father. Following his marriage, a man would move into the woman's family home where he and his future children would become members of the woman's clan. In the case of parental separation or the death of the mother, children remained under the custody of the mother or the mother's surviving clan in the case of her death. Additionally, after marriage wives were empowered to divorce their husband by ordering him out of her household at any time, for any reason regardless of shared children or property.
In the 1600s, the Haudenosaunee women carried out what is believed to be the first feminist rebellion within the modern territory of the United States. Previously, Haudenosaunee men bore the sole responsibility of deciding when to declare war against rival nations. Haudenosaunee women, wanting a say in the declaration of war, boycotted sex and child-rearing. This was effective because women were believed to hold the secret to creating life, a greatly honored act. Additionally, since women grew and cultivated crops for their nation, the women of the Five Nations restricted warriors’ access to food and clothing needed for battle. The rebellion was effective, and henceforth Haudenosaunee women were granted the power to veto the nation's engagement in warfare.
Precolonial Haudenosaunee women also exercised a high level of bodily autonomy. Womanhood was respected as sacred, and rape and other acts of violence against women were rare in indigenous societies. Further, women had total control over if, when, and how they desired to bear children.
Women, as heads of household, also had the authority to decide whether or not their children would go to war. Mothers alone held the power to force their children to fight in a war if they felt it served the community, or to forbid their children from fighting if they disapproved of the war, further solidifying women's power in military endeavors.
Further, women controlled the economy of their respective nations through growing and distributing food and other resources. Haudenosaunee women were recognized for their agricultural contributions and creativity throughout the year in ceremonies, nearly all of which celebrated the land's fertility and crops, a primarily female domain. While Haudenosaunee did not practice land ownership in the same way as their colonial successors, the land was understood to be held by women. The Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, formed in the fifteenth century, dictated when an Haudenosaunee woman used a patch of land either to live or for agriculture, it was respected as her property and if she were to move, another woman was free to use the land.
Additionally, women established and maintained the culture of their nations by defining the political, social, and spiritual practices. Senior Haudenosaunee women, the Clan Mothers, were also responsible for nominating and regulating male Rotiyanehson (chiefs) to ensure that they adequately fulfilled responsibilities to the nation. Further, political power was shared among all members of the respective Nation, with women holding voting power alongside men.
Haudenosaunee women and their power within their communities also inspired later post-colonial women's rights movements within the United States. The women's suffrage movement for white American women began in Seneca Falls in 1848, part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy's traditional territory. Early leaders of the Women's suffrage movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage specifically cited the equal rights of Haudenosaunee women to participate in their government as inspiration for their movement. Further, they used Haudenosaunee women as an example to dispute notions that the subordination of white women was not natural nor just, and used their society to demonstrate true democracy in action.
Ojibwe
Historically, most Ojibwe cultures believe that men and women are usually suited to specific tasks. Hunting is usually a men's task, and first-kill feasts are held as an honour for hunters. The gathering of wild plants is more often a women's occupation; however, these tasks often overlapped, with men and women working on the same project but with different duties. Despite hunting itself being more commonly a male task, women also participate by building lodges, processing hides into apparel, and drying meat. In contemporary Ojibwe culture, all community members participate in this work, regardless of gender.
Wild rice (Ojibwe: manoomin) harvesting is done by all community members, though often women will knock the rice grains into the canoe while men paddle and steer the canoe through the reeds. For Ojibwe women, the wild rice harvest can be especially significant as it has traditionally been a chance to express their autonomy:
While the Ojibwe continue to harvest wild rice by canoe, both men and women now take turns knocking rice grains.
Both Ojibwe men and women create beadwork and music, and maintain the traditions of storytelling and traditional medicine. In regards to clothing, Ojibwe women have historically worn hide dresses with leggings and moccasins, while men would wear leggings and breechcloths. After trading with European settlers became more frequent, the Ojibwe began to adopt characteristics of European dress.
Hopi
The Hopi (in what is now the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona) are traditionally both matriarchal and matrilineal,Schlegel, Alice, Hopi Gender Ideology of Female Superiority, in Quarterly Journal of Ideology: "A Critique of the Conventional Wisdom", vol. VIII, no. 4, 1984, p. 44 and see pp. 44–52 (essay based partly on "seventeen years of fieldwork among the Hopi", per p. 44 n. 1) (author of Dep't of Anthropology, Univ. of Ariz., Tucson). with egalitarian roles in the community, and no sense of superiority or inferiority based on sex or gender.LeBow, Diana, Rethinking Matriliny Among the Hopi, op. cit., p. . Both women and men have traditionally participated in politics and community management,LeBow, Diana, Rethinking Matriliny Among the Hopi, op. cit., p. 18. although colonization has brought patriarchal influences that have seen changes in the traditional structures and formerly higher status of women.Schlegel, Alice, Hopi Gender Ideology of Female Superiority, op. cit., p. 44 n. 1. However, even with these changes, matrilineal structures still remain, along with the central role of the mothers and grandmothers in the family, household, and clan structure.Schlegel, Alice, Hopi Gender Ideology of Female Superiority, op. cit., p. 45.Schlegel, Alice, Hopi Gender Ideology of Female Superiority, op. cit., p. 50.
Kalapuya
The Kalapuya had a patriarchal society consisting of bands or villages, usually led in social and political life by a male leader or group of leaders.Prescott, Cynthia Culver. “Gender and Generation on the Far Western Frontier.” Google Books, Google, 2007 The primary leader was generally the man with the greatest wealth.Juntunen, Dasch, and Rogers, The World of the Kalapuya, p. 17. While female leaders did exist, it was more common for a woman to gain status in spiritual leadership. Kalapuya bands typically consisted of extended families of related men, their wives, and children. Ceremonial leaders could be male or female, and spiritual power was regarded as more valuable than material wealth. As such, the spiritual leaders were often more influential than the political leaders.Juntunen, Dasch, and Rogers, The World of the Kalapuya, p. 19.