American Indian Culture and Research Journal

INTRODUCTION For more than a century, anthropological interest in the status of aboriginal women of North America has been shaped primarily by theoretical debates concerning the complex relationships between women’s changing social position, social evolution, and economic transformation and, more recently, the penetration of colonizing state societies. Since the 1970s’ however, feminist scholars have redirected theoretical attention either to interpretations of how gender categories are conceptualized, symbolized, and privileged or to historical materialist analyses of women’s status as measured by their relative autonomy and dependence, their control over human and economic resources, and their capacity to exercise public authority. Historical materialists have concentrated on documentary research in their efforts to assess the impact of colonialism on women’s sociopolitical status. They have embarked on case studies to understand how the articulation between marginal community economies and capitalism establishes the material bases of women’s empowerment.