An Ethnohistorical Analysis of Micmac Male and Female Economic Roles

Abstract

Until recently, historians and ethnographers ignored the differential effects of Western modernization or the introduction of Western technological and economic patterns on sex roles in non-European cultures. While this differential effect is now observed in rapidly modernizing societies in the twentieth century, it has not been examined for New World cultures which first experienced European contact centuries ago. Ethnohistorical and ethnographic data for the Micmac of Nova Scotia indicates that a continual transformation of male and female economic roles occurred for the Micmac as they experienced the dominant Euro-Canadian culture over a 400 year period. From the Micmac case study it is concluded that modernization is one step in the process of economic differentiation between men and women and that this process is determined by various factors of economic differentiation for any given ethnohistorical period. The impact of Western culture on native North American populations has been studied by historian and anthropologist alike. Both disciplines have neglected the effects of this contact on the sex roles of aboriginal populations, while concentrating on the more obvious areas of social change such as demography, material culture and political organization. Historians, relying upon early accounts of Indian life, are oblivious to the inherent androcentric cultural bias of their sources. Ethnographers, approaching Native American groups synchronically, often assume a relatively static relationship existing between men and women, projecting backward in time the status and role of contemporary Native American women. A careful re-examination of the ethnohistorical record is requisite not only to ascertain these aboriginal sex roles but also to observe how these roles were altered during the ensuing years of contact with the dominant Euro-American culture. This study, using ethnohistorical and ethnographic data, examines the alteration and adaptation of Micmac male and female roles over a long time period-four hundred years, in the context of the broader changes which their society experienced as a minority population of Nova Scotia. There are difficulties encountered in attempting to reconstruct aboriginal sex roles, as others have indicated (Brown 1969; Leacock 1978). Since the archaeological record reveals little about the economic roles of men and women, prehistoric data is sorely lacking on pre-contact sex roles. Written records about the early contact period, although available, contain two serious flaws. The descriptive accounts often reflect a native population previously exposed to intermittent European visits which have already altered traditional aboriginal economic bases and social patterns. In addition, these records contain the cultural and historical biases of their 16th and 17th century authors. The difficulties this ethnohistorical data presents can be overcome by a critical reading of these records and by a comparison with appropriate contemporary ethnographic data such as Lee's (1972) study of the !Kung which presents a more com