How Native American Women Inspired the Women’s Suffrage Movement

November is Native American Heritage Month – a time to honor and celebrate the traditions, contributions, and accomplishments of our Native communities.   

This month we want to acknowledge the Native women of the Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy — members of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscaro nations, known collectively as the Haudenosaunee. Many don’t know that the Native women of Haudenosaunee played a vital role in the women’s suffrage movement. Their way of living — equal participation in their government and societal roles — heavily influenced the movement’s early stages. However, it’s important to note that Native women were actively excluded from the movement, which largely focused on the welfare of the white middle class. 

The Haudenosaunee’s History of Gender Equality 

For over 1000 years, Native Nation women have had a political voice in their tribal communities – a right that white women had only received 100 years ago. 

The Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy, to this day, is a society based on female authority that empowers women to maintain their identities and rights to their bodies, property, political voices, and children. Historically, Haudenosaunee women have controlled their nation’s economies, handled property concerns, and participated in all decision-making processes. While chiefs tend to be male, Haudenosaunee women oversee their election. 

Notably, Haudenosaunee women hold both the power to elect a chief and to remove him if he is found guilty of murder, theft, or sexual assault. “Justice [is] largely served by women,” and men who have been charged with sexual assault are not only disqualified from holding office but also face serious punitive action. 

Where equality wasn’t historically present, the Haudenosaunee women fought for it. In the seventeenth century, Haudenosaunee women staged one of the first known feminist rebellions on the continent, using their authority over familial and agricultural life to gain veto power over all wars. Their success gave them equal voices in matters of defense, a field that, even in the contemporary US, is largely male-dominated. 

When colonialists arrived and began interacting with Indigenous people, they were troubled to find Haudenosaunee women negotiating treaties, and asked that they be removed from interactions. However, unlike in European cultures, where women rarely had rights to their own property, Haudenosaunee women had to approve any negotiation involving land.   

Haudenosaunee Women’s Influence on the Suffragists  

Leaders of the women’s suffragist movement, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Lucretia Mott were heavily influenced by the powerful roles Native women played in Haudenosaunee communities.   

In 1848, Lucretia Mott and her husband visited the Seneca people, where they experienced firsthand how political power was shared equally among everyone in society. When Mott traveled back to New York, she shared stories about her experience and how Native women played important roles in their communities.