In celebration of Women’s History Month, the National Museum of the American Indian is presenting Without a Whisper: Konnon:Kwe, a film about the untold history of Native women’s influence on the early women’s rights movement in the United States.
Without a Whisper uncovers the hidden history of the profound influence Indigenous women had on the beginnings of the women’s rights movement in the United States. Before the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls in 1848, European colonial women lacked even the most basic rights, while Haudenosaunee women had a potent political and spiritual voice and authority in all aspects of their lives. The contact that the early suffragists had with Haudenosaunee women in New York state shaped their thinking and had a vital impact on their struggle for equality that is taken for granted today. The film follows Mohawk Bear Clan Mother Louise Herne and Professor Sally Roesch Wagner as they seek to correct the historical narrative about the origins of women’s rights in the United States.
Panel Discussion
View a virtual panel discussion among Bear Clan Mother Louise Herne (Mohawk), Sally Roesch Wagner, Founder and Executive Director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation and Center for Social Justice Dialogue, and filmmaker Katsitsionni Fox (Mohawk), moderated by Vision Maker Media’s Director of Programs and Projects Georgiana Lee-Ausan (Navajo).