Abstract

This study features the self-described title "Sky Woman's Great Granddaughters: A Narrative Inquiry into Kanienkehaka women's Identity." Examined are liberal, socialist, and feminist world views that address the external authentication of Kanienkehaka identity and its impact on the lives of eight women from the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada. The Canadian liberal nation-state's philosophical tradition of individual liberty contrasts from what we observe in the lives of these eight women. Canada extends the right to its citizens to be self-authenticating and to pursue one's projects. Deliberative individuals enter into a dialogue with like-minded individuals to achieve consensus about a conception of the good life. This philosophy is the basis for Canada's criteria to authenticate who is fit to be a citizen of this country. However, authenticated Indians were accorded 'special status', translated using liberal philosophical criteria into legislation like the Indian Act. This Act governs every aspect of modern Indian life. This study focuses in particular on Kanienkehaka women who are victims of a process of authentication through intellectual colonization by feminism which poses as an authority to authenticate what is truly feminine. These eight women, through critical reflection, become self-authenticating as they describe the impact of these philosophical traditions on their lives and what they did to overcome the disorienting effects of the liberal and feminist traditions. This study finds that Indian Act Mohawk identity is a rigid construct, in contrast to the understanding of identity communicated by these women. When expressing one's Kanienkehaka identity, primacy lies in the interdependencies found in a unity of self, family, and of community