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Reviews
A Necessary Balance: Gender and Power among Indians of the Columbia Plateau
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By Lillian A. Ackerman
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University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2003. Photographs, maps, tables, bibliography, index. 296 pages. $42.95 cloth.
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Reviewed by Rodney Frey
University of Idaho, Moscow
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| Lillian Ackerman's A Necessary Balance is an amazing and important work, filling a critical void not only in the ethnography of Plateau Indians but also generally in the study of American Indian gender roles and rights. The work describes the gender equality that orients, both in the past and in the present, the roles of men and women in the Plateau region of the Pacific Northwest. It is a social orientation that Ackerman maintains is a "necessary component" of the cultures of Plateau peoples (p. 3). While anchored in the ethnography of the tribes of the Colville Reservation of central Washington state, the work draws extensively on other Plateau Indian communities, such as the Nez Perces of Idaho, and even makes important comparisons with other North American tribal peoples, such as the Sioux of the Plains. Ackerman knows well the literature and ethnography of the Plateau peoples, and she brings that depth of perspective to provide a wealth of background information, which is nicely complemented with her own ethnographic observations and interviews to fully contextualize this study on gender. |
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Ackerman, a professor of anthropology at Washington State University, conducted her ethnographic field research on the Colville Indian Reservation and adjacent Indian communities between 1979 and 1986 and continued it through the 1990s. By having her findings reviewed by her tribal consultants before publication and by having the entire research agenda overseen by the Colville Tribal Council, Ackerman has addressed important ethical and methodological considerations in her research and findings. Such considerations are often neglected by other researchers. |
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Ackerman orients her ethnographic field research and her findings following Alice Schlegel's approach to gender status in "Toward a Theory of Sexual Stratification," in Sexual Stratification: A Cross-Cultural View (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977). The key constructs in that theory are power, authority, and autonomy. Power is defined as "the ability to exert control," authority is "the institutionalized right to make a decision and expect obedience," and autonomy entails "the right to independent action without control by others" (p. 23). Gender equality is defined "as the equal or balanced access of men and women to power, authority, and autonomy in four social spheres" — economic, domestic, political, and religious (p. 24). To fully explore continuity and changes in gender status, Ackerman considers three critical time periods, the traditional (primarily pre-1855), the formation of the reservation and forced acculturation, and the contemporary. It is these social spheres and temporal periods that oriented Ackerman's research and the presentation of her findings. |
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While a solid ethnographic work itself, A Necessary Balance has broader theoretical implications for gender studies in anthropology. In the concluding chapter, Ackerman briefly introduces many of the key anthropological theories relating to gender and critiques them in light of her own research findings. |
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Ackerman concludes that for the Colvilles, both of the past and in the past, gender equality is an essential component that is vividly expressed in the economic, domestic, political, and religious spheres. During the pre-reservation and forced acculturation periods, males and females "exercised mostly balanced, complementary rights" (p. 228), whereas during the contemporary period those rights were "mostly identical" (p. 228). She thus makes a very strong case that "separate but equal" does not equate to "separate [means] unequal or inferior" (p. 250). Ackerman goes on to maintain that, despite the influences of missionaries as well as the capitalistic influences brought on by the fur trade and farming acculturation, gender equality is fundamentally a reflection of the persistence of Colville culture and the retention of women's prominence in economic activities. Gender status is like a "rubber band" — it can be stretched by outsides forces attempting to subordinate women, but the gender roles always bounce back (p. 232). The Colvilles "have adapted modern economic conditions to fit their ideology of gender equality" (p. 251). |
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While very comprehensive in its scope and thorough in its documentation, A Necessary Balance is a highly readable and accessible work for all audiences. It could easily be adopted as a classroom textbook and should certainly be in the hands of everyone interested in Plateau peoples and gender roles. Lillian Ackerman is to be congratulated for bringing forth this exemplary ethnography. |
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