When you live on the West Coast like I do, attending conferences can be somewhat tricky. They don’t tend to come this way very often. And as anyone who is flying out to this year’s CHA knows, it is really expensive to fly across the country. This situation is still more complicated when it comes to international conferences, many of which tend to be held in Europe. So I was pleasantly surprised when I heard that the International Federation for Research in Women’s History would be coming to Vancouver in 2018. For those who have never heard of this organization, the International Federation for Research in Women’s History (or IRFWH) is an international organization dedicated to encouraging, coordinating, and facilitating research on women’s history all across the world. Holding the conference in Vancouver wasn’t originally the plan – the 2018 conference was supposed to be held at Santa Barbara, but ongoing travel restrictions made it impractical to host an international conference in the US right now, so conference organizers, specifically Eileen Boris, moved the conference north. And guess which lucky blogger got to go? Why me, of course. 😉 So, in today’s blog, I’m going to take the opportunity to reflect on my experiences, discuss some of the cool papers I saw presented, and how the theme of storytelling connects us all.
Women’s History Conferences
First off, I’ve always found that there is something special about women’s history conferences. Don’t get me, wrong, I always have fun at the CHA. But in my experience, women’s history conferences are much more relaxed and mellow, with a much more supportive community. The entire atmosphere seems more genial, and comments and discussion tend to be more constructive than critical, focusing on how to improve the work of those presenting. I was also super impressed by how comfortable people felt sharing their preferred pronouns, just as a normal part of an introduction. (Random aside: I live in hope that we will someday repeat the awesome Canadian Committee on Women’s History 2010 conference). Additionally, it was super exciting to get to hang out with so many cool historians at a conference that was dominated by women-identified, gender-queer, and non-binary scholars, looking at issues of women’s and gender history.
Oral Interviewing and Online Archiving with the Archive of Lesbian Oral Testimony
The first session that I attended was a workshop with the people behind the Archive of Lesbian Oral Testimony (ALOT).The workshop was led by archivist Meghan Walley (Elise Chenier was supposed to be there, but couldn’t attend due to illness). As someone who does oral history in her own research and is a big fan of (ALOT), I knew that this wasn’t something I could miss. Walley started off by talking about how the project began, and the emphasis on community-engaged archival work. The bulk of the workshop centred around their “Bridging the Gap” initiative, which facilitated the inclusion of more queer voices in the archival record in an accessible way by inviting members of the public to conduct and submit their own interviews. Prospective interviewers were provided with a number of resources to help them get started, from training in conducting oral histories, including a webinar, and consent forms as well as helpful information about how to upload the interview to their website. As Walley noted, this approach helped to break down barriers between academia and the public, include the stories of same-sex and same-gender attracted women, honour their work, facilitate activism by connecting to queerness in the past, build community, and empower participants through research.
I was particularly struck by their conscientious and detailed discussion of access, use, and privacy. The archive itself is a mix of public and private/semi-private documents and interviews. What’s more, name use is limited throughout the collection unless explicit permission is acquired, and the names of participants will not appear on Google searches. This helps protect the identities of participants from being outed without their consent or knowledge. Finally, ALOT has a strict take-down policy, and will remove or restrict content upon request. I thought this was a really fantastic and thoughtful approach to dealing with the issue of privacy while also making the collection accessible to the public.
Indigenous and Immigrant Women’s Feminist Activism, 1950s-1980s
As some of you are already aware, I am lucky enough to be involved in a new SSHRC grant by Margaret Little, Lynne Marks, and Sarah Nickel, “Alternative Visions: The Politics of Motherhood and Family Among Indigenous, Immigrant, and Low-Income Activist Women’s Groups in Canada, 1960s-1980s.” Which I am obviously super jazzed about. And, even better, all three of these wonderful scholars presentedaspects of their own research on this project at the conference. Nickel presented “Sewing the Threads of Resistance: Twentieth-Century Indian Homemaker Clubs in Canada’s West” as part of the first plenary, while Marks and Little presented on “Family Matters: Divisions Between Immigrant Women Activists and Mainstream Feminists in Ontario and BC, 1960s-1980s” in a separate panel. While dealing with very different populations, both of these presentations demonstrated how Indigenous and immigrant women’s’ feminist activism has often been overlooked in the historical record because it differed from mainstream, white, middle-class feminism.
“A Bridge Too Far? Transgressive Relationships/Transgressing Historiographies in Canadian Women’s History”
I was lucky enough to be able to present a paper on this fantastic panel. The panel was chaired by Adele Perry and featured Laura Ishiguro, myself, Maddie Knickerbocker, and Sarah Nickel. The goal of the panel was to bring together scholars who worked in completely different fields to learn from one another while also discussing transgressive relationships between women. Ishiguro discussed the relationship between a Black woman (Annie Jones) and a white woman (Sarah Friar Greer) whose lives intersected for a short period in BC in the 1870s. I discussed the relationships between Jewish domestic and non-Jewish domestic workers in postwar Montreal, and how these relationships both transgressed and affirmed the boundaries of class, race, ethnicity, religion, and nationality. Knickerbocker discussed how two white settler women, Mary Lipsett and Mildred Thornton, appropriated Indigenous culture to enhance their status in settler society. And Nickel focused on Rosemary Brown’s speech at the 1975 BC Indian Homemaker’s Club dinner commemorating the International Women’s Year, calling for feminist women of colour and the Indigenous women’s movement to fight alongside each other. It was a pretty awesome panel, if I do say so myself! I was particularly struck by the really thoughtful analysis all of my co-panelists demonstrated, and our reluctant conclusion that in many cases, racial barriers just could not be overcome. I was also particularly struck Ishiguro’s discussion on the level of proof that is required, and “which stories are missed and lost when we require certainty.” So much to think about!
Women, Resources, and Colonialism in North America and Beyond
You know I was excited to see this panel, since I woke up at 6 am to do it. FYI: I am not a morning person. Brittany Luby and Kesia Kvill spoke on how, during WW1, settlers encroached upon Indigenous crops, agriculture, and foodways with the government’s emphasis on “eating local” and “harvesting wild fields.” They traced how blueberries were transformed from an Indigenous food into a Canadian one. Katrina Jagodinsky discussed how Black, Chinese, Indigenous, and white women in the nineteenth century used habeas corpusto protest their confinement. She focused specifically on the growing trans-Pacific trade network connecting settler states, and the women who were trafficked within the cedar trade. Finally, Adele Perry explored the connections between water, gender, and colonialism in the construction of the Greater Winnipeg Water District Aqueduct, and how the arrival of water officials, labourers, and their families (including white women) proved to be exceptionally disruptive to Anishinaabe culture and women. All of these papers were, again, fantastic, though I was particularly impressed by Luby’s discussion of how she approached Kvill to do this work, and the importance of mentorship in our community.
An International Perspective
Generally speaking, academics tend to stick pretty close to home when it comes to their research. The demands of the profession and the extremely limited amount of time available for research means that we don’t have the opportunity to read as widely as many of us would like. For me, this is what makes international conferences so important. They provide an opportunity to learn from and engage with scholars from all around the world. The keynote and plenary sessions were, I think, particularly strong evidence of this. The keynote conversation featured Sarah Nickel, Lynette Russell, and Maylei Blackwell, whole respectively spoke on Indigenous feminist movements in western Canada, Australia, and in Mexico. The plenary session, on migrants and movements (extremely topical) featured Emma Amador, Ethel Tungohan, Annelise Orleck, and Hessed Torres discussing how migrant women have become politically organized during the recent migration crisis. What’s more, not only are conferences such as this an opportunity for us to reach across disciplinary and geographical divides, there is much to be learned from scholars who work on similar topics in different times and places. For instance, I was particularly struck by Danielle Philips-Cunningham’s presentation, “Intimacies of Race in the Home: Irish Immigrant and Southern Black Domestic Workers, 1880-1920.” Many of the same patterns that I saw in my research were present in her paper, particularly with respect to how Irish women tried to align themselves with white labour to improve their status.
Indigenous Women and Two-Spirit Folk in Vancouver
Far and away, my favourite part of the conference was the amazing walking tour hosted by Skwxwu7mesh/Stó:lō/Metis/Hawaiian/Swiss artist, ethnobotanist, and storyteller T’uy’tant-Cease Wyss. For anyone who knows Vancouver, Wyss took our group down to Canada Place, right behind Waterfront Station. There we sat, facing the waterfront, while Wyss shared stories and songs from her family’s history, the Kanaka family. She told a wonderful version of the Two Sisters story, a Skwxwu7mesh legend about two sisters who served as peacemakers during a period of strife, and were honoured by their father by being transformed into mountain peaks. The Skwxwu7mesh call these peaks the Two Sisters, but they are better known in Vancouver as the Lions. (You can read a version of the legend, recorded by E. Pauline Johnson, here). Wyss also shared stories of her many-times great-grandmothers, the establishment of Kanaka Ranch, and how Skwxwu7mesh women were instrumental in rescuing survivors of Vancouver’s Great Fire of 1886. During the fire, Skwxwu7mesh women crossed Burrard Islet from North Vancouver over and over again, rescuing survivors who had gathered along Vancouver’s shore. It was an honour and a privilege to hear these stories.
Social Media
The biggest disappoint at this conference was the almost complete lack of any activity on social media. I cannot find a single social media account for IFRWH 2018, or even the federation itself. And unlike many conferences these days, there was no official hashtag. I think this was a really significant missed opportunity. While I didn’t live-tweet the conference (my bad) several others did! You can check out the #IFRWH2018 hashtag to learn more about the presentations. I would draw your attention particularly to Maddie Knickerbocker’s live-tweeting of the keynote conversation that I mentioned above here, which includes Sarah Nickel’s presentation that I mentioned above. A.K. Afferez live-tweeted the panel on “Transnational Feminism and the Challenges of Translation,” including Nesrine Bessaih’s talk on Quebec feminists and Our Bodies, Ourselves and Arianne Des Rochers’s talk “‘I am Kwe:’ Translationg Indigenous Feminist Authors in a Transnational Perspective,” which focused on work by Lee Maracle and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. You can also see pictures of my panel here and here.
Concluding Thoughts
I am so happy that I had the chance to attend the IFRWH 2018 conference. I learned so much, and it was so wonderful to be able to hang out people that I usually only get to see once a year at the CHA! But my most significant takeaway is the continuing importance of storytelling as historical and political work. During the plenary, Eileen Boris noted that “knowledge is power.” In a world that seems to make less and less sense every day, we must to look to the past to provide lessons for the future. The historical experiences of women, gender queer, and non-binary folk must be brought to the forefront, if we are ever to understand how power is gendered. Christine Blasey Ford showed how powerful women’s words and women’s stories can be, why research on women’s history is so vital, and how sharing women’s stories is a feminist act. As Sarah Nickel noted, the silence of the past may seem deafening, sometimes, “revolution sounds like a whisper.”
I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog post! If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice. And don’t forget to check back on Sunday for a brand new Canadian history roundup. See you then!
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