The main focus of this article is not on consideration of gender and women in northern indigenous peoples, other indigenous ones, and furthermore any kind of minorities. Rather, I will consider how this argument relates to gender studies and feminism up to now, and what reconsideration it has been bringing to them, paying special attention to the issue of “woman” category. Feminism and gender studies, as we all know, have gone through a lot of critique as well as achievements. In particular, there has been much debate over the criticism of the easy generalization of “woman” category, which has been pointed out especially by black feminism and postcolonial theories. In recent years, along with the term “intersectionality”, the issue of gender is attracting attention as being intricately intertwined with other differences such as race, ethnicity, class, age, and ability/disability. This highlights that there is also a problem in rethinking “woman” category and gender in terms of diversity. In this article I would like to follow up on these discussions and touch on the fact that it is common not only to gender issues but also to other issues of difference.

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Gender and sexuality within Native North American societies had long been neglected in historical studies until recent years. This is because there has been a substantial limitation in the availability of historical documents on Native North Americans. Accessible documents are usually those of Europeans or Euro-Americans since most Native North Americans were nonliterate. Because of this limitation, those documents often include cultural misunderstandings and biases toward Native North Americans. Besides this limitation of documents, scholars’ attitudes toward Native North Americans had also been a problem. Many scholars, especially historians, tended to see heterosexual native men as representatives of Native North American societies when they studied natives. For that reason, most historical studies had not paid enough attention to the roles and statuses of women, gender relations, gender fluidity, and diverse sexualities within native societies. To conquer those problems of studies on Native North American gender and sexuality, historians and anthropologists have made great efforts to reevaluate the limited non-native documents, including historic anthropological field notes, especially in a newly developed academic field known as ethnohistory. Today, many historical, anthropological, and ethnohistorical studies reveal diverse gender relations and sexualities in various native communities before and after European　and Euro-American colonization. In this article, I review the rich fruits of those Native North American gender and sexuality studies.

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On July 25, 2022, in Canada, the Pope issued an apology for the abuse suffered in the past by children of　Indigenous peoples in the country's church-run residential schools. Indigenous peoples and communities suffer from　trauma and cannot recover from the continuing intergenerational violence. In particular, Indigenous women experience　different forms of violence: they are three times more at risk of violence than other non-Indigenous women. Since the　2010s, Canadian society has begun to consider the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women as a social　phenomenon. In 2019, the national committee of inquiry set up by the Canadian government issued the final report,　which was described as “genocide” of various forms of violence against Indigenous peoples including women and　2SLGBTQQIA people. Thus, in my article, I will first show the oppressive situations of Indigenous women from the　point of view of both social relations between the sexes and colonialism; then, I will highlight a commitment led by　Indigenous women to heal their traumas and change the world.

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Since 2005, I have been researching the relationship between Yukon First Nations and animals, and through this research, it became clear that spiritual practices can be found in various situations as techniques to support people's lives. However, the significant differences have become clear between what has been seen when I first began to conduct fieldwork in Yukon and what is described in the literature from the 1900s. In particular, a significant difference is that people known as Medicine Men with strong spiritual powers used to be predominantly men, but in recent years they are more often women. Taboos against plants/animals and ideas about medicines made from plants and animals have also changed significantly, with some differences depending on the species and the method of catching and gathering them. In this article, I will focus on the background of these changes, and discuss how spiritual power is needed in different situations, and point out that social changes, particularly changes in gender roles and social relationships due to the shift toward sedentarization, have become a factor in these changes.

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Today's Ainu are experiencing a wave of feminism and a pervasive awareness of human rights in Japanese society. On the other hand, the cultural revival movement is also an excavation of the values of previous generations, and sexism is heavily involved. For example, acts with prestige, such as religious ceremonies, official speeches and spectacular performances, were considered to be the responsibility of men. Among subsistence activities, fishing and hunting were often areas to which women were not allowed access. This also forced women to marry, as they “cannot live without a man”. These ‘traditional cultures’ were recorded from the 18th to 20th centuries. Many of the areas that are ideologically male-dominated were also practised by women, and their contribution to the formation of the records that remain today is considerable. I have been interested in the ‘human gender’ and the ‘gender of the gods’ in Ainu society and have examined their formation processes. Here, with regard to human gender, the possibility that it was rapidly strengthened after modernization is described.

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Ainu has historically separated traditional customs and labor by gender. For example, Ainu wood craft works have been made and succeeded by men. While, weaving and needle works have been practiced by women. “Sinuye” were only tattooed by women as a symbol of beauty and as a talisman for their life after death. Gender bias is also revealed in the expression of Ainu artists' work when they pursue connections to their forerunners, that is, those with they share historical experiences. On the other hand, in modern Japanese society led by the Japanese (Wajin), the majority, art has been regarded as intellectual and has long been ranked higher than crafts and separated from them. This separation has structurally conceived gender and marginalized Ainu art. I will examine the relationship between the dual gender structure surrounding this formative expression in the Ainu society and the Wajin society led by the Japanese.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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