Iroquois Women: Matrilineal society stressed harmony, responsibility
Just as the Iroquois Confederacy inspired America's democracy, Iroquois women helped inspire the women's rights movement - in Central New York, the nation and the world. March is Women's History Month, and such Iroquois-U.S. history is a homegrown connection to women's history that is worth exploring and celebrating.
Recently at Syracuse Stage, Onondaga tribe member Jeanne Shenandoah and women's studies scholar Sally Roesch Wagner sat center stage and detailed that history for a program called, "Visionary Women: The Haudenosaunee and the U.S. Women's Rights Movement."
The event is part of a year-long educational series, "Onondaga Land Rights and Our Common Future," sponsored by Syracuse University, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation and other community organizations.
It revolves around the nation's land claim lawsuit, which emphasizes cleaning up Onondaga Lake in particular, a body of water held sacred by the Iroquois. The series also provides an education on the sovereign nation within this American nation, whose history and contributions too many remain unfamiliar with.
Central New Yorkers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, two giants in the American women's rights movement, were among the leaders inspired by Native American equality in the midst of America's glaring inequality. At a time when American women were considered property of men, with no legal right to vote, own land, sue for damages or fight abusers, Onondaga society was matrilineal; power was shared. Women governed the clans, elected men to speak for the clan, and all shared responsibilities.
Shenandoah said Iroquois culture was more concerned with harmony and responsibilities than women doing everything the same as men. Men and women are different; still, she added, many responsibilities overlapped.
A few miles outside the reservation, American society was extremely different. "If a woman was not satisfied with this situation, she was considered to be unnatural biologically and morally," Wagner said.
Gage and Stanton brought some of the Onondagas' example to the rest of America to change it for the better, Wagner said. The Native American-U.S. connection right here in Central New York helped pave the way. "Thank you for this vision of how the world can be lived," she told her Onondaga co-presenter. Iroquois-U.S. history is among the many homegrown connections to women's history that are worth exploring and celebrating.