The Ojibwa Woman

Landes, Ruth

doi:10.7312/land93888

Cited by 65 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Further, consider the Algonquian and Athapaskan bands of the subarctic, which exhibit the conventional passive exclusion and menstrualparturition taboos but formally proscribe neither women's big-game hunting nor their use of guns. Among Southwestern Ojibwas, for example, skilled women hunters were accorded the same prestige as their male counterparts (Landes 1938). Even in these ethnographic contexts, women hunters were exceptional.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Sexual Division of Foraging Labor: Biology, Taboo, and Gender Politics

Brightman

1996

Comp Stud Soc Hist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

If women's biology is their economic destiny, nowhere is this destiny more inexorable than in anthropological representations of the sexual division of foraging labor. Physically weak, immobilized by nursing children, engrossed in the provisioning of reliable plant foods, redolent with odors that drive away the game, and subject finally to the axiom that specialization everywhere increases productivity, the foraging woman who gathers but does not hunt seems multiply inevitable, the product at once of logistical necessity and evolutionary selection.This essay develops a contrasting perspective, one consonant with Claude Meillassoux's (1981:20-21) observation that "nothing in nature explains the sexual division of labor, nor such institutions as marriage, conjugality, or paternal filiation. All are imposed on women by constraint, all are therefore facts of civilization which must be explained, not used as explanations." The first section of the essay questions both the inevitability of the sexual division of foraging labor and the logical and empirical adequacy of the existing physiological theories of it. Although they account persuasively for the relative non-viability of an exclusively female labor force of hunters, such theories explain absolutely nothing about why categorial divisions of foraging labor exist at all, why they are predicated on gender, or why women's hunting is almost universally either marginalized or proscribed. The second section relates the exclusion of women's hunting to taboos on women's use of hunting weapons and to a more general ideology of metaphysical antipathy between femaleness and the hunting profession in foraging societies. The third section considers the effects of these taboos and of the division of labor in producing asymmetric distributions of prestige and authority between the sexes. The Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the 1988 annual meeting of the American all provided valuable suggestions at different stages of production. My thanks also to anonymous referees. The usual disclaimers apply. 0010-4175/96/4401-9165 $7.50 + .10

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Sexual Division of Foraging Labor: Biology, Taboo, and Gender Politics

Brightman

1996

Comp Stud Soc Hist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Women engage in such hunting among the Agta (Estioko- Griffin 1981, 1985) as well as the Ojibwa (Landes 1938) and the Kaska (Honigmann 1964) from North America. What is more, these women have significant success.…”

Section: Ancient Subsistence Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Female Advantage in Object Location Memory According to the Foraging Hypothesis: A Critical Analysis

Ecuyer-Dab

Robert

2007

Hum Nat

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

According to the evolutionary hypothesis of Silverman and Eals (1992, Sex differences in spatial abilities: Evolutionary theory and data. In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 533-549). Oxford: Oxford University Press), women evolutionary hypothesis, women surpass men in object location memory as a result of a sexual division in foraging activities among early humans. After surveying the main anthropological information on ancestral sex-related foraging, we review the evidence on how robust women's advantage in object location memory is. This leads us to suggest that the functional understanding of this type of memory would benefit from comparing men and women in carefully designed and ecologically meaningful cognitive contexts involving, for instance, incidental versus intentional settings that call for either the absolute or relative encoding of the locations of common versus uncommon objects.

show abstract

“…Culturally, Indian women come from a tradition of self-sufficiency and sovereignty in their health care and in the birth of their children. They have been taught at puberty to care for themselves and their children, both physically and spiritually (Landes, 1969;Nietzhammer, 1977). The Ojibwa women interviewed in this study speak of themselves as leaders, as bearing responsibility for the preservation of their families and their communities.…”

Section: Discussion and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Editorial

Manson¹

1989

AIANMHR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Several not so surprising difficulties were encountered: specifically, process issues, low English literacy, and uncertain follow through by physicians. Nonetheless, Goldwasser and Badger were able to demonstrate that such screening is feasible for a significant portion of the patient population and that a substantial number of those completing the screener, in this case, the General Health Questionnaire, reported symptomatology that warranted further inquiry by a health professional. Evidence is mounting that large percentages of medical patients suffer from mental health problems that are often undetected by providers. Consequently, the management of psychiatric illness in primary care settings has captured the attention of the broader scientific community. Witness, for example, the recent National Institute of Mental Health "Depression Awareness, Recognition, and Treatment" (DART) initiative. Given the stigma that continues to plague Indian/Native mental health programs, efforts to detect serious psychological dysfunction among Indian and Native medical patients and to treat them appropriately in the clinics where they are first seen hold considerable promise for success.In course of that epidemic. It also summarizes a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention that proceeds in several phases and that may be adapted to other community settings.The fourth and last article in this issue, "An Investigation of Health Decision-Making Skills Among American Indian Adolescents", by Okwumabua, Okwumabua, and Duryea, speaks to a very specific and poorly understood mechanism that underpins many of the preventive interventions being promoted for Indian/Native adolescents at high risk of alcohol, drug abuse, or mental health problems. Working with a small sample of seventh graders, the authors examined their decision-making skills in regard to a series of health and social matters. The students proved to be equally efficacious in their ability to make decisions across both types of situations. However, some intriguing differences arose in the nature of the decisionmaking errors committed, largely with respect to the steps taken in analyzing and implementing responses to problematic social situations. Further work along these lines may prove useful in adapting various intervention strategies to this special population. Abstract: This study presents a trial in which the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) was introduced among general medicine clinic patients on a Navajo Indian reservation in Chinle, Arizona, to test its utility in enhancing recognition of significant psychiatric problems. It was found useful in alerting physicians to suicidal patients, and in identifying risk factors such as household size and number of children for symptoms of anxiety and depression. The few problems encountered in administration of the screening tool could easity be overcome.As a fourth-year medical student, one of the authors (H.G.) completed a five-week family and community medicine rotation in Chinle, Arizona. While there, he examined...

show abstract

The Ojibwa Woman

Cited by 65 publications

References 0 publications

The Sexual Division of Foraging Labor: Biology, Taboo, and Gender Politics

The Sexual Division of Foraging Labor: Biology, Taboo, and Gender Politics

The Female Advantage in Object Location Memory According to the Foraging Hypothesis: A Critical Analysis

Editorial

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About