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Red Woman, White Dreams: Searching for Sacagawea

2006; Feminist Studies; Volume: 32; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/20459103

2153-3873

Laura E. Donaldson, Diane Glancy, Joseph Bruchac, Joyce Hunsaker Badgley,

Latin American and Latino Studies

IN HER EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO Reading Native American Women, Ines Hernandez-Avila (Nez Perce/Latina) noted that one of the most significant tasks of a vigorous and healing Native American women's studies is recovering the stories of our precursors.... For some, for many, their stories have been hidden, overlooked. It is time for them to come out. If the formal recollection and recording of the lives and works of these ancestor precursors enable Native women to remember and imagine themselves, then several recently published books make a major contri bution to this process through their focus on one of North America's most famous-although highly mythologized-indigenous women: the young Shoshone mother named Sacagawea. The status of Sacagawea as a revered national icon intensified during the recent bicentennial (2004 2007) commemoration of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Indeed, the U.S. Mint chose to adorn its official Corps of Discovery golden dollar with her face, and her name marks many of North America's towns, rivers, and mountains. Such prominent visibility has not only re-ignited national debates about Sacagawea's role in facilitating Euro-American colonialism, but also elicited critical and creative interventions by con temporary Native poets and storytellers. Returning to historical sources,