A Thorny Identification: Rosebuds as Symbols of Native Identity

Year 1998, Issue: 8, 13 - 27, 01.10.1998

Cath Oberholtzer

Abstract

Beginning early in the history of European presence in the James Bay region of subarctic Canada, numerous items of native Cree manufacture were sent, or taken back, to Europe. Although many of these older pieces have ended up in European museums, precise documentation of their origins has not. Only occasionally does sparse information identify either the geographic locale or the cultural ethnicity. The identities of the women who are known to have created these items were either unrecorded or ignored and remain forever anonymous. Subsumed within this anonymity are the women’s voices, their feelings, reactions, and responses to the European male presence.

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