When asked why she did not join the feminist movement, one Indigenous woman responded that her people had always experienced equality. With colonization, however, this began to change. The forced assimilation of Native people based on patriarchal gender roles in many ways upended traditional ways of living. Federal policy initiatives like the Dawes Act targeted families and sought to disempower women using the head of household classification. My research highlights the compelling but understudied history of gender dynamics and the impact of federal policy on Indigenous people, specifically the Dawes Act. An ethnohistorical approach and cultural framework make space to examine the fluidity of gender and other aspects of American Indian culture, which are different from a traditional Anglo-centric model. Because women are often absent in the historical record, sources such as census rolls, land records, and court cases must be included and read against the grain. These sources reveal not only Native women's disempowerment but also their resilience and how they used the same laws to their advantage. Despite attempts to diminish their power, Native women, in response to the Dawes Act, asserted their traditional matriarchal power by organizing and strategically choosing adjoining plots. In an unprecedented move, they also filed lawsuits contesting laws, something that most white women were prevented from doing in the late 19th century. Although they would not have used the language of feminism, these Indigenous women were early feminists in every sense of the word.
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