Placental Politics

CHamoru Women, White Womanhood, and Indigeneity under U.S. Colonialism in Guam
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4696-5270-2
Verlag: The University of North Carolina Press

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 550 g

Reihe: Critical Indigeneities

From 1898 until World War II, U.S. imperial expansion brought significant numbers of white American women to Guam, primarily as wives to naval officers stationed on the island. Indigenous CHamoru women engaged with navy wives in a range of settings, and they used their relationships with American women to forge new forms of social and political power. As Christine Taitano DeLisle explains, much of the interaction between these women occurred in the realms of health care, midwifery, child care, and education. DeLisle focuses specifically on the pattera, Indigenous nurse-midwives who served CHamoru families. Though they showed strong interest in modern delivery practices and other accoutrements of American modernity under U.S. naval hegemony, the pattera and other CHamoru women never abandoned deeply held Indigenous beliefs, values, and practices, especially those associated with inafa'maolek--a code of behavior through which individual, collective, and environmental balance, harmony, and well-being were stewarded and maintained.

DeLisle uses her evidence to argue for a "placental politics--a new conceptual paradigm for Indigenous women's political action. Drawing on oral histories, letters, photographs, military records, and more, DeLisle reveals how the entangled histories of CHamoru and white American women make us rethink the cultural politics of U.S. imperialism and the emergence of new Indigenous identities.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Delisle, Christine Taitano

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein

Über Autor(innen)

Christine Taitano DeLisle is assistant professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota.