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The Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Influence on Women's Rights

A lecture by Sally Roesch Wagner

Imagine that women had the right to choose all political representatives, and to remove from office anyone who didn't address the wishes and needs of the people. Haudenosaunee (traditional Iroquois) women have had that responsibility - and more - since long before Christopher Columbus came to these shores. Pre-contact, Native American women generally had a status which would be the envy of United States women, even today. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, the two major theoreticians of the early women's rights movement, had direct knowledge of the Haudenosaunee, writing about the superior social, political, religious, and economic status of women in the Iroquois nations. Their work for women's rights, Wagner argues, was inspired by the vision they received from the Haudenosaunee of gender balance and harmony.

Click the links below to view a video of this lecture, recorded by Essential Dissent:

Part 1
Part 2

This lecture is available from January 1, 2006 to January 1, 2012

Can be tailored to a high school audience

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Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner

Executive Director, Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation

One of the first women to receive a doctorate for work in women's studies in the United States (UC Santa Cruz, 1978), Dr. Wagner is also a founder of one of the country's first women's studies programs at California State University, Sacramento (1970). A women's studies professor for 37 years and now Executive Director of the Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, New York, Wagner is the nation's foremost authority on Matilda Joslyn Gage. Wagner's recent titles include: She Who Holds the Sky: Matilda Joslyn Gage (Sky Carrier Press, 2003); Introduction to the reprint of Matilda Joslyn Gage's 1893 classic Woman, Church and State (Humanity Books, 2002); and Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists (Native Voices, 2001). Dr. Wagner also appeared in the Ken Burns documentary, Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Telephone:	(315) 727-8816
Address:	P.O. Box 442 210 East Genesee Street Fayetteville, NY  13066
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Other Available Lectures by Sally Roesch Wagner:

• Matilda Joslyn Gage: Bringing Her Into History

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