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A History of Indigenous Women with Lily Gladstone: Ep 19 of Crash Course Native American History

YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dj8EjBQJD84
Previous: The History of Alaskan and Hawaiian Statehood: Ep 18 of Crash Course Native American History
Next: Modern Tribal Governments Explained: Ep 20 of Crash Course Native American History

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View count:110,559
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Duration:13:42
Uploaded:2025-10-14
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MLA Full: "A History of Indigenous Women with Lily Gladstone: Ep 19 of Crash Course Native American History." YouTube, uploaded by CrashCourse, 14 October 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj8EjBQJD84.
MLA Inline: (CrashCourse, 2025)
APA Full: CrashCourse. (2025, October 14). A History of Indigenous Women with Lily Gladstone: Ep 19 of Crash Course Native American History [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dj8EjBQJD84
APA Inline: (CrashCourse, 2025)
Chicago Full: CrashCourse, "A History of Indigenous Women with Lily Gladstone: Ep 19 of Crash Course Native American History.", October 14, 2025, YouTube, 13:42,
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dj8EjBQJD84.
Women have always played important roles in Native societies. In this episode of Crash Course Native American History, Lily Gladstone helps us unpack the ways Native women have shown up, as war heroes and peacemakers, and as matriarchs and activists.

Introduction: Divine Women 00:00
Matriarchal Societies 0:37
Native Women at War 2:01
Jikonsaseh 3:05
Ideas about Gender 4:48
Effects of Colonization 5:53
Violence Against Women Today 8:08
Native Activism 9:24
Review & Credits 12:42

Special thanks to "100 Years: One Woman's Fight for Justice" for use of their footage of Elouise Cobell / https://www.videoproject.org/100-Years.html

Sources:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g1BpQk_2qXtFeQBffoAT-rrogcKRaA2eNjeRCpmCrJ8/edit?usp=sharing

Want to know more about how this series was made? Learn more here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17yp3u28s40TdjyrJniIf4U9YA8wPtvQ1g1B-HSHQ2Q4/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.6vtzps565m2

***
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 (00:00) to (02:00)


Lily Gladstone: Native women have always had a sacred and powerful role in our communities, not only as aunties, mamas and grandma's — although those are some very important jobs, too — but also as holy women, healers, leaders. And across cultures and languages, native oral traditions are brimming with some pretty divine female figures: protectors of land and sea, creation and destruction, life and death. 

Hi, I'm Lily Gladstone, [in native language: "Hello, friends! My name is Eagle Woman, and I'm from The Blackfoot People."], and this is Crash Course: Native American History. 

[Theme music]

Well before Europeans arrived in what is now North America, native beliefs around gender were, and honestly still are, pretty diverse. In fact, many native American tribes are matriarchal, meaning women hold significant power in our communities, including as the primary decision makers. 

Matriarchal tribes,  then and now, tend to value ideas such as equality, consensus finding, gift giving, and peace building. 

For example, with Navajo, or Diné, mothers and grandmothers serve as the matriarchs, or the heads of individual clans. While men usually are leading in tribal meetings and making decisions about war, women have the final say when it comes to clan disputes. They can control their own land, their own livestock, their own crafts, and any money that they own, they keep.

Diné are also matrilineal, meaning that family heritage is passed through the mother's line.

This equality can be found through Diné spirituality, too. Both men and women are allowed to become medicine people, traditional healers who perform ceremonies for the sick. It's said that Asdzáá Nádleehe, or Changing Woman, explained it to the sun, the father of her children, like this: You are of sky, I am of earth. Remember, as different as we are, you and I, we are of one spirit. We are of equal worth.

 (02:00) to (04:00)


And back in the day, while Diné women didn't join raids or go to war, women in other tribes did, mine included. Her name was Running Eagle, Pi'tamaka. 

Among a lot of native nations, women would often lead war parties and participate in battles. 

How about Buffalo Calf Road Woman of the Northern Cheyenne in what is now Montana? In the late 1800s, she and her family were camping near a creek when a group of white soldiers attacked. When her brother fell in the fight, she rode into battle and rescued him. 

About a week later, with her Colt .45, Buffalo Calf Road Woman would fight in the battle of the Little Big Horn.And though we don’t know for sure, there are plenty of stories from several tribal nations that claim it was a woman who dealt Custer the final blow. 

Other native women took on the roles of leaders and diplomats in times of conflict. In fact, one of the strongest native American confederacies, the Haudenosaunee, was confounded by a native woman named Jikonsaseh. Let me tell you her story. 

Way back before European arrival, there were five warring nations: the Cayuga, the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca. Jikonsaseh didn't want any part of that war. But she lived along a war road, one that warriors from every nation travelled. 

So instead of shutting the door and turning them away, she offered shelter and food to anyone who came through. She even helped resolve arguments between members of different nations. 

Meanwhile, a man named Peacemaker was looking to end the war and unify the five nations, which makes sense, name like that.

After hearing about Jikonssaseh, Peacemaker set out to see her for himself. He told her about his vision for a unified nation, describing a longhouse with a representative from each nation in their own seat.

 (04:00) to (06:00)


But she was neutral and well liked, Peacemaker asked Jikonsaseh to assist him in establishing a system of governance based on peace. He gave her the name Mother of Nations, and she would go on to be instrumental in the foundation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Thanks in part to Jikonsaseh, Haudenosaunee Law recognises the equal responsibilities of women and men in all manners, which still guides their practices today. 

That's right, in that good way. And thats the story of Jikonsaseh.

All these women are definitely inspiring, but not every Native American tribe has treated women and men as equals, which has become something of a sticky misconception. And while it us flattering, it's also flattening, because it smooths out the diversity among Native American cultures. 

While we're all pretty awesome, we're also hundreds of different tribes with different cultures and values. Like not all tribes are matriarchal. Some divided labour strictly along gender lines, and others men held most of the wealth and power. And to add a further twist, native people think about gender in the same way as Europeans.

In Diné culture, for example, the Nádleehi embrace both masculine and feminine energies, and the Diné view them as sacred. 

And native Hawaiians have historically recognised people who identify as Mahu, a word that goes beyond gender and serves as a bridge between male and female. 

The point is, while plenty of native cultures had some equality between men a d women, there was also no single way of thinking about gender. 

But the onset of European colonisation disrupted gender roles, as it did so many other things.

 (06:00) to (08:00)


So many Europeans didn't vibe with the way women held power in many native societies. As Laguna Pueblo scholar, Paula Gunn Allen put it, "The colonisers saw (and rightly) that as long as women held unquestioned power of such magnitude, attempts at total conquest of the continents were bound to fail." 

Northern Cheyenne have a saying, "A nation is not defeated until the hearts of its women are on the ground."

So, colonisers got to work dismantling that power. They stripped native women of the roles and rights they had for centuries. At times, this looked like elevating men to positions of power, but more often than not, it came in the form of violence towards native women. 

Now, we're about to get into some dark history. This is heavy stuff, and it's important to take care.

Violence against native women wasn’t a passive by-product of colonisation. It was targeted and strategic. Women were often singled out because of their ability to bear children, the very thing that was seen as sacred by many tribes.

By killing native women, colonisers could destabilize native populations, which was part of a broader effort to destroy and replace native people with European settlers. That’s a core part of settler colonialism, which you can learn more about in episode 1. 

This violence had disastrous and widespread consequences. Thousands of native women were abused and killed, and tribal culture was permanently altered for many native nations, like the Choctaw, whose matrilineal system of lineage was marginalised by colonial society. 

Unfortunately, this type of violence continued to haunt the United States for centuries. It still does. 

For example, in the 1970s, the federal government authorised the secret sterilisation of thousands of native women, at least 36 of whom were under the age of 21.

 (08:00) to (10:00)


One study found that between 1973 and 1976, one in four American Indian women were sterilised without their consent. 

Some scholars have described violence against native women as rare in native American societies before the arrival of Europeans, though today, its a very different story. 

Native American women face some of the highest rates of violence in the nation, and nearly 96% of it is committed by non-natives.

The CDC's data from 2018 to 2023 shows that the third leading cause of death for native women ages 15 to 24 was homicide. And for ages 25 to 40, its in the top 10. 

Those numbers likely under-represent the actual scale of violence.

A 2022 report by Amnesty International found that most law enforcement agencies either don't record native women's ethnicity, mislabel them as Hispanic, or lump them into a catch-all category of other. This has caused an untold number of native women's stories to effectively disappear. 

To make matters worse, crimes in Indian country are difficult to bring to justice because in many cases, native American law enforcement isn’t able to prosecute non-native criminals. 

We get into this and other complications of federal Indian law in episode 16. 

Thankfully, native activism is making some headway on this front. The missing and murdered indigenous women movement, or MMIW, is spreading awareness and advocating for policy change to address the violence against indigenous women, indigenous fems, indigenous two spirit, and indigenous girls. 

And its making an impact. In 2020, thanks in part to this activism, the Not Invisible Act was signed into law. It created a federal mission to develop methods for identifying, reporting and responding to instances of missing persons, murder, and human trafficking on Indian lands and of Indians.

 (10:00) to (12:00)


The act itself was authored by then representative Deb Holland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo nation, and the first native woman to serve as US Secretary of the Interior. 

Hey, the first Indian head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. How revolutionary! Thank you, Deb. 

And of course, activism and leadership by native American women is nothing new, and extends beyond the scope of MMIW alone. 

Consider Ladonna Harris, a Comanche activist, who in the 1960s, spearheaded Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity, the very first inter-tribal coalition in the state. 

This was a big deal in an era when people from many different native nations had begun coming together and powerful ways to advocate for improved conditions. Harris went on to serve on Lynden B Johnson's National Council on Indian Opportunity, and later to Americans for Indian Opportunity, a much broader version of the work she'd begun in Oklahoma. 

And let's hear it for Elouise Cobell, also known as Yellow Bird Woman. She was a tribal elder, activist, banker, and a member of the Blackfeet Nation, who grew up hearing stories about tribal members not getting payments they were owed for use of their land held in trust by the federal government. 

Years later, when she became treasurer of the Blackfeet Nation, she witnessed evidence of it herself. She found records of oil being extracted from Blackfeet land, but no record of any payments. 

So, in 1996, Cobell led the charge in holding the government accountable. She brought a class action lawsuit against the United States for mismanaging trust funds of over 500,000 Native Americans.

It was a long fight, but in 2010, Cobell vs Salazar culminated in a $3.4 billion settlement that went toward getting tribal members the payments they were owed, restoring fractioned land to tribal governments, and starting a scholarship fund.

 (12:00) to (13:42)


Rest in peace, Elouise.

And plenty of non-native women have been inspired by the work of native women, including many early American feminists. 

Take Matilda Joslyn Gage, a 19th century leader in the women's suffrage movement. She grew up in New York state, where the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was based. You know, the one our girl Jikonsaseh helped established. 

As she and others became increasingly frustrated by resistance to the women's movement, they found inspiration in their indigenous neighbours. 

Gage once wrote of the Haudenosaunee, "Never was justice more perfect; never was civilisation higher."

The point is, native women impact more than just native history. We impact all history.

Despite centuries of oppression and violence, we're still here imparting wisdom, advocating for change, exercising leadership, and lifting up native voices, which is as important today as it ever was. 

In our next episode, we're going to take a look at the way modern tribal governments operate. Good luck, Che. 

Che Jim: Thanks, Lily. I want to be like her when I grow up. 

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