The Old Lady Trill, the Victory Yell: The Power of Women in Native American Literature

From warrior women to female deities who control the cycle of life, female characters in Native American literature exhibit a social and spiritual empowerment that is quite different from the average Pocahontas we are used to seeing in mainstream literature. This work argues that a tribal construct of gender relations, where the relationship between male and female roles is complementary rather than hierarchical, accounts for the existence of these empowered female characters in Native Amer...