Contact Zones · Default Product

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Contact Zones locates Canadian women’s history within colonial and imperial systems. As both colonizer and colonized (sometimes even simultaneously), women were uniquely positioned at the axis of the colonial encounter – the so-called “contact zone” – between Aboriginals and newcomers. Some women were able to transgress the bounds of social expectation, while others reluctantly conformed to them. Aboriginal women such as E. Pauline Johnson, Bernice Loft, and Ethel Brant Monture shaped identities for themselves in both worlds. By recognizing the necessity to “perform,” they enchanted and educated white audiences across Canada. On the other side of the coin, newcomers imposed increasing regulation on Aboriginal women’s bodies. Missionaries, for example, preached the virtues of Christian conjugality over mixed-race and polygamous marriages, especially those that hadn’t been ratified by the church. The Department of Indian Affairs agents withheld treaty payments or removed the children of Aboriginal women who did not “properly” perform their duties as wives and mothers. In short, Aboriginal women were expected to consent to moral, sexual, and marital rules that white women were already

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