Since the colonization of indigenous peoples in North America, the roles of Native women within their societies have been concealed or, at best, misunderstood. By examining gender status, and particularly power, in ten culture areas, this volume, edited by Laura F. Klein and Lillian A. Ackerman, seeks to draw away the curtain of silence surrounding the lives of Native North American women.

Power is understood to be manifested in a multiplicity of ways: through cosmology, economic control, and formal hierarchy. In the Native societies examined, power is continually created and redefined through individual life stages and through the history of the society. The important issue is autonomy-whether, or to what extent, individuals are autonomous in living their lives. Each author demonstrates that women in a particular cultural area of aboriginal North America had (and have) more power than many previous observers have claimed.