The month of March is officially Women's History Month here in the U.S. As a woman of color, I often feel that my womanhood is overlooked since I am more likely to be placed in the minority part of the phrase "women and minorities." History is too often "his" stories, and even during Women's History Month, the lives, stories and current activism of Native American, Black, Latina and Asian American women get short shrift.

So for the next three weeks, I'll be focusing on where we, as women of color, fit into women's history.



I decided to start first with indigenous women, native to the Americas.

Growing up, the only native American women I ever learned about in school were Pocahontas and Sacajawea. As a teenager in New York City, little did I realize that when I went out dancing salsa to the sound of Cheo Feliciano singing Anacaona, the lyrics were about the first indigenous female ruler (casica) documented in the New World "discovered" by the Spanish.

Anacaona's fate was to be hanged, and the rape and murder of her sister Tainos, and Native American women here on the mainland, would be repeated countless times in the decades and centuries to come.

She was born in Yaguana (today the town of Léogane, Haiti) in 1474. During Christopher Columbus's visit to the chiefdom of Jaragua in the southwest of Haiti in late 1496, Anacaona and her brother Bohechío appeared as equal negotiators. On that occasion, described by Bartolomé de las Casas in Historia de las Indias, Columbus successfully negotiated for tribute that consisted of food and cotton for the struggling Spanish settlers under his command. The visit is described as having taken place in a friendly atmosphere. Several months later, Columbus arrived with a caravel to collect a part of the tribute. Anacaona and Behechío had sailed briefly aboard the caravel, near today's Port-au-Prince in the Gulf of Gonâve. Anacaona became chief of Jaragua after her brothers death. Her husband Caonabo, suspected of having organized the attack on La Navidad (Spanish settlement on northern Haiti), was captured by Alonso de Ojeda and shipped to Spain, dying in a shipwreck during the journey. The Taínos, being ill-treated by the conquerors, revolted, and made a long war against them. During a feast organized by eight regional chieftains to honor Anacaona, who was friendly to the Spaniards, Spanish Governor Nicolás de Ovando ordered the meeting house set on fire. He arrested Anacaona and her Taíno noblemen, all of whom, being accused of conspiracy, were executed. While others were shot, Anacaona was executed by hanging. She was twenty-nine years old.

I open one of my women's studies classes each year with her story. Sadly, few students have ever heard of her. And yet we all get our heads filled with the mythology of Columbus and "Indians."

It would be impossible for me to cover, in one essay, the lives and contributions of all the Native American women who have played a key role in our history and society.

(Continue reading below the fold)