Mccallum Chapter Summary

The Settler Complex, settler schemes avoided revealing their reliance on a population [they were] simultaneously seeking to eliminate”. Several scholars suggests that “Natives” were unsuitable to settlement schemes even when they remained in their own country. As well, Indigenous women’s history is under-researched, as studies on Indigenous peoples are focused mainly on men. McCallum addresses this “omission by concentrating on employment through a female lens, using examples of work usually undertaken by women, such as hairdressing, nursing, and domestic work.” Her book considers the importance of Indigenous women in the economic cycle, arguing that men were not the only breadwinners for women’s labour whether waged or unwaged, was essential and necessary for survival.

The removal of Indigenous peoples from territory, or into residential school’s or by the 1950’s restrictive urban employment programs is what unfolds in Mary Jane McCallum monograph. The Department of Indian Affairs and National Heath and Welfare play important roles in placing women in positions of employment which is prominent in McCallum’s discourse. This book concentrates on for case studies: domestic labour before 1940, the hairdressing and beauty culture of the 1950s and 1960s, the growth of community health in the 1970s, and activism in the nursing profession in the 1980s. Through interactive interviews, life histories, and written records, McCallum offers an persuasive argument surrounding how Indigenous women’s employment has been affected by colonization and assimilation. All the studies included in the book include training placement programs, and the involvement of the government with the state of Aboriginal women’s lives in health, education, and community