Join author Caitlin Keliiaa for a discussion of her book Refusing Settler Domesticity: Native Women’s Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program.
About Caitlin Keliiaa:
"I am a feminist historian versant in the fields of Native American Studies, Labor Studies, Gender Studies, and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. I am an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. My research explores the intersections of race, gender, and labor and their historical consequences. Broadly, I research 20th-century Native experiences in the West. My scholarship excavates histories of “outing” programs, Indian labor exploitation, dispossession and surveillance of Native bodies. My last name is pronounced 'keh-LEE-EE-ah-ah.' Hear it here."
About Refusing Settler Domesticity:
"In Northern California’s San Francisco Bay Area, behind the façade of luxurious homes, lie traces of a once thriving project of government assimilation. From 1918 to roughly 1942, the Bay Area Outing Program coercively recruited thousands of Native women from U.S. Indian boarding schools to work as live-in housemaids in homes across the region.
My book, Refusing Settler Domesticity Native Women's Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program, unpacks this far-reaching system that created an exploitative labor market. I ask the overarching question: Within the confines of domestic labor, how did Native women comply with, resist, and negotiate their circumstances?
Theoretically, I situate the program within California’s long history of colonial Indian labor exploitation and I center Native women’s resistance. In this way, I enrich this labor history with voices and perspectives that challenge the notion of Native women as passive subjects. Methodologically, I use qualitative data analysis software to examine more than 4,000 outing-related documents. At the heart of this study are Native women’s voices uncovered from the archive.
As an interdisciplinary historian, I employ a range of methods. I draw insight from the fields of history, ethnic studies, feminist studies, education, and settler colonial theory."
Wheelchair accessible. Request sign language interpreter, real-time captioning, materials in large print, braille, or other accommodations by calling 510-981-6195 (Library) or the 510-981-6347 (City of Berkeley TDD line). Please refrain from scented products during public programs. This program is made possible by the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library.
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Literacy, Learning & Lectures | Cultural & Heritage | Authors, Books & Writing |
