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Freedom is crucial to the history of Native American women’s rights because after colonization, women’s right to freedom was pushed aside as they were forced into the role of a housewife.

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The European Settlers coming to the Native American's land shifted the native women's jobs and daily life. Before the settlers, Native women were a very important part of the tribe and community. They were very respected for their role with childbirth and were given political, social, and economic power. The native women have always been a very important part to their tribes and did the jobs of building houses, farming and land prep.

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1492 - European settlers came to the Native American Land

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1492 - European settlers came to the Native American Land

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In 1492, European settlers arrived to the Native American land. When they came, they had their own opinions on how the natives ran their society. Opinions from clothing choices to jobs and tasks. To start, the European settlers arriving changed the way that the native women worked. The Europeans were confused at the gender roles for the Native people. The women were the ones preparing the land, owning the houses, planting and doing pretty much all of the things that were generally considered "men's" jobs for the Europeans. They saw that the men were mostly just sitting, gambling and resting. Something that was also new for the Europeans is that women had a right to divorce. Since the women generally had the houses and belongings in their name, the divorced men could often find themselves homeless with only a horse in their name. Mostly, the women were the main providers for the families, although the men did help to gather the food and prep the fields. (Encyclopedia of the Great Plains)

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The European settlers arriving and being as confused as they were, shows how freedom was important to Native women's history. Specifically because European women had a lot less freedom and power. The variety of jobs that Native women were offered and the power they held in their communities demonstrated a lot of freedom because they had many basic human rights that most European women were not given. They played a big part in their community and were respected by all of the tribe.

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The Native American women often dressed with certain clothing. In summers, they would normally not wear shirts. This was normal for most tribes as men, women and children were naked most of the time. This was especially new for European settlers as in Europe, everyone was generally heavily clothed. The Europeans saw how Native American women dressed, and they took it as an invitation to rape and assault them. This caused a shift in the gender roles. The Native men were soon protecting the women and were always on the lookout for European settlers "hunting" for the women and children. This caused change in the roles because the women's jobs could not be completed as they were on a day to day basis before the Europeans came.

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The Europeans assaulting the Native women and stopping them from doing their jobs shows the start of the decline of freedom for Native women. Due to the Europeans wanting to take control over Native American communities, the women's rights steadily declined as soon as the Europeans started trade and business with them. This effected the community because the women were kind of the main post holding the most power and authority. The europeans caused a shift of the freedom and human rights for the women.

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In 1644, Rev. John Megalopensis complained that Native American women were “obliged to prepare the Land, to mow, to plant, and do everything; the Men do nothing except hunting, fishing, and going to War against their Enemies. . .” (Teachinghistory.org) Many europeans described the Native women to be a type of "slave" to the men, mostly because of how much more labor the women had than the men. From the Native American point of view, the women's roles showed balance. The Native American women had more authority and power than the European women. The men had more of the public roles like hunting and warfare while the women had more of the internal operations like the owning of family housing, food production, and gathering food. As a result of the women holding more of the roles that were essential to the tribe's welfare, they held the most political, economic, and social power. After contact with the europeans, women’s authority steadily declined because of cultural assimilation. European men demanded they deal with Native men in trade negotiations instead of women,  and ministers demanded that the Natives follow the Christian modes of patriarchy and gendered division of labor which changed men to farmers and women to housekeepers. The European contact changed the Native Women's roles and daily life.

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As a result of the European men demanding that they trade with only men, the Native women were pushed into roles, such as the housewife, which they were not comfortable with. This supports my claim because it showcases the importance of freedom in the women's life. However, the decline of freedom was almost a direct effect of the European settlers arriving. This shift in roles forced by the Europeans impacted the community because the men had to learn the skills that the women mastered in, and the women were pushed back into more of the background roles, robbing them of their political and economic power.

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American Indian Women. (n.d.). Teachinghistory.Org. https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/23931

Wishart, David J. “Native American Gender Roles.” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.gen.026.xml.

Srivastava, Chelsey. “Native American Women and Their Defiance of Imposed Gender Roles.” Page 21-30 Southern New Hampshire University, June 2017, https://academicarchive.snhu.edu/bitstream/handle/10474/3192/his2017srivastava.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y