Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature

• Published in: Studies in American Indian Literatures 2014, Vol.26 (1), p.110-131
• Main Author: Stanciu, Cristina
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adoption; Canadian literature; Citizenship; Colonialism; Community Relations; Consent; Families & family life; Females; Fiction; Gender; Gulf languages; History; Indigenous Populations; Johnson, E Pauline (1861-1913); Keresiouan languages; Law; Literary Genres; Literature; Marriage; Milton, John (1608-1674); Mohawk; Mothers; Narratives; Native literature; Native women; Novels; Persuasion; Politics; Reading; Reasoning; Tribes; United States Literature
• ISSN: 0730-3238; 1548-9590
• DOI: 10.5250/studamerindilite.26.1.0110

Clearly and persuasively supporting the claim that Indian wars were wars against Indian families (171), Domestic Subjects, grounded in archival research and in literary and legal theory, also builds on recent scholarship on domesticity, gender, nation, empire, and settler colonialism-engaging, for instance, the work of Anne McClintock, Laura Wexler, Hazel Carby, Lora Romero, Ann Stoler, and Mark Rifkin-to showcase not only the political dimension of domesticity but also to illustrate how the political shapes the aesthetic in the literary work of five carefully chosen writers: E. Pauline Johnson (Mohawk), John Milton Oskison (Cherokee), S. Alice Callahan (Creek), Mourning Dove (Okanogan), and DArcy McNickle (Cree/Salish). Chapter 1, "Entangled Love: Marriage, Consent, and National Belonging in Works by E. Pauline Johnson and John M. Oskison," offers a legal and literary history of marriage law in the United States and Canada by examining the stakes of two forms of marriage for Indigenous communities, interracial marriage and polygamous marriage, in E. Pauline Johnsons "A Red Girls Reasoning" (1893) and John Milton Oskison s "The Problem of Old Harjo" (1907).