Refusing Settler Domesticity: Native Women's Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program
Traces young Native women’s lives and experiences as Bay Area domestic workers

In the early twentieth century, the Bay Area Outing Program coercively recruited over a thousand Native girls and women from boarding schools to labor as live—in domestic workers across the San Francisco Bay Area. Outing removed Native people from their communities and transferred them to white homes, farms, and businesses to work as menial laborers. In exchange for room, board, and meager pay, Native women and girls as young as twelve cooked, cleaned, and lived in the homes of their employers. Despite oppressive living and working conditions, they strategically resisted the worst aspects of outing, including Indian child removal, sexual surveillance, criminalization, and exploitation. Throughout, they forged social connections and navigated relationships to refuse domestication and assert their agency.

In this groundbreaking work, historian Caitlin Keliiaa examines Native women’s lived experiences of federal policy and connects outing to the region’s longer history of coerced Native labor. Refusing Settler Domesticity explores the unexpected story of Native women in the Bay Area, decades before Indian Relocation, illuminating the women who helped shape the Bay Area Indian community as we know it today. This book, as indictment, expands the existing work on Indian boarding schools, urban Indians, and the history of California and the West.

1145528165
Refusing Settler Domesticity: Native Women's Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program
Traces young Native women’s lives and experiences as Bay Area domestic workers

In the early twentieth century, the Bay Area Outing Program coercively recruited over a thousand Native girls and women from boarding schools to labor as live—in domestic workers across the San Francisco Bay Area. Outing removed Native people from their communities and transferred them to white homes, farms, and businesses to work as menial laborers. In exchange for room, board, and meager pay, Native women and girls as young as twelve cooked, cleaned, and lived in the homes of their employers. Despite oppressive living and working conditions, they strategically resisted the worst aspects of outing, including Indian child removal, sexual surveillance, criminalization, and exploitation. Throughout, they forged social connections and navigated relationships to refuse domestication and assert their agency.

In this groundbreaking work, historian Caitlin Keliiaa examines Native women’s lived experiences of federal policy and connects outing to the region’s longer history of coerced Native labor. Refusing Settler Domesticity explores the unexpected story of Native women in the Bay Area, decades before Indian Relocation, illuminating the women who helped shape the Bay Area Indian community as we know it today. This book, as indictment, expands the existing work on Indian boarding schools, urban Indians, and the history of California and the West.

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Refusing Settler Domesticity: Native Women's Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program

Refusing Settler Domesticity: Native Women's Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program

Refusing Settler Domesticity: Native Women's Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program

Refusing Settler Domesticity: Native Women's Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program

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Overview

Traces young Native women’s lives and experiences as Bay Area domestic workers

In the early twentieth century, the Bay Area Outing Program coercively recruited over a thousand Native girls and women from boarding schools to labor as live—in domestic workers across the San Francisco Bay Area. Outing removed Native people from their communities and transferred them to white homes, farms, and businesses to work as menial laborers. In exchange for room, board, and meager pay, Native women and girls as young as twelve cooked, cleaned, and lived in the homes of their employers. Despite oppressive living and working conditions, they strategically resisted the worst aspects of outing, including Indian child removal, sexual surveillance, criminalization, and exploitation. Throughout, they forged social connections and navigated relationships to refuse domestication and assert their agency.

In this groundbreaking work, historian Caitlin Keliiaa examines Native women’s lived experiences of federal policy and connects outing to the region’s longer history of coerced Native labor. Refusing Settler Domesticity explores the unexpected story of Native women in the Bay Area, decades before Indian Relocation, illuminating the women who helped shape the Bay Area Indian community as we know it today. This book, as indictment, expands the existing work on Indian boarding schools, urban Indians, and the history of California and the West.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780295753003
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Publication date: 10/22/2024
Series: Indigenous Confluences
Pages: 298
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Caitlin Keliiaa is assistant professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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