We Are Dancing For You
We Are Dancing For You
Native Feminisms & the Revitalization of Women's Coming-of-Age Ceremonies By Cutcha Risling Baldy.
This is a deeply personal account of the revitalization of the women’s coming-of-age ceremony for the Hoopa Valley Tribe. At the end of the twentieth century, the tribe’s Flower Dance had not been fully practiced for decades. The women of the tribe undertook its renewal using memories of elders and medicine women and details found in museum archives, anthropological records, and oral histories. The author is assistant professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University and a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe.
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In a scholarly yet intimate and appealing way, the author explores how White settlement attempted to obliterate women's role in native societies and in cultural teaching through boarding schools, language suppression and forced assimilation. Young women's beginning of menstruation was transformed from a time of pride and self-awareness to one of shame and secrecy. Through scholarly research and personal interviews, the author presents the background of physical and cultural genocide not only among the tribes of Humboldt County but nationwide. As a result, traditional ceremonies including those around girls' coming of age were demeaned and nearly abandoned.
Baldy goes on to detail how her mother and women of her own tribe, the Hupa, worked to revitalize many aspects of their traditional culture, most particularly the Flower Dance coming of age ceremony. Through personal stories, she describes the rituals and their effect on girls' feelings of self worth and confidence in their futures.
With this enlightening book, the author succeeds in - as she said - "(re)writing, (re)righting, and (re)riting" an essential part of Humboldt's cultural history.
