US: Bird Woman Remembered

From Whig.com

Probably more than any other person in America, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau got to watch history being made firsthand without actually contributing to it. Best of all, he got to do this by the time he was 2 years old. But like most 2-year-olds, his story doesn't end there.

Around 1797, eight years before his son Jean was born, a French-Canadian explorer and trader named Toussaint Charbonneau had purchased two captured Shoshone Indian women and taken them as his wives. One was known as Bird Woman, while the other was known as Otter Woman.

Bird Woman gave birth to Jean Baptiste Charbonneau in 1805 at Fort Mandan, N.D. Fort Mandan was the place where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark stayed in the winter of 1804-05. In fact, Lewis and Clark hired Toussaint Charbonneau to serve as an interpreter to the Hidatsa Indians, and they allowed him to bring along his pregnant wife, Mrs. Charbonneau (aka Bird Woman).

Toussaint Charbonneau spoke no English and did not speak the Hidatsa language very well, but both his wives spoke it well. As a result, one of the wives -- the one known as Bird Woman -- went along on the Lewis and Clark expedition and was of more value to Lewis and Clark than Toussaint was.

Most Americans have never heard the names of Toussaint Charbonneau, Bird Woman or Jean Charbonneau. Bird Woman, though, became so well-known that she didn't even need to use her last name.

The name by which you know her is Sacajawea.

Canada: Funding For Missing Women in Limbo

From the Province:

After announcing in March that it would spend $10 million on the issue of murdered and missing aboriginal women in Canada, the federal government has sat on its hands, doing nothing, federal Liberals charged Wednesday.

Speaking in Winnipeg at the site of the three-day Assembly of First Nations national meeting, Liberal MP Anita Neville called the Conservative government's response since its announcement "tepid."

"Nothing has been forthcoming and we're waiting," she said.

It's believed that 580 aboriginal girls and women have been murdered or gone missing in Canada since 1970, more than half of them since 2000.

"It is, in our view, sexualized, racialized violence, and it requires a comprehensive strategy," said Neville, speaking at a news conference along with federal Liberal aboriginal affairs critic Todd Russell.

Neville said Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has promised a public inquiry into the matter.

Canada: Minority Women & Health

From UPI:

Immigrant women -- especially South Asian, West Asian or Arab women -- say they have trouble accessing healthcare in Canada, researchers found.

Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical and Evaluative Sciences found more than 50 percent of South Asian, West Asian or Arab adults say they were not very satisfied with their ability to get an appointment with a doctor for a regular checkup.

Nearly 40 percent of East and Southeast Asian and 34 percent of Aboriginal adults reported having difficulties when accessing a specialist compared with 22 percent of white Ontario residents.

The study also found that 15 percent of Canadian immigrants for less than five years do not have a primary care doctor, compared to 7.3 percent of Canadian-born men and women who say they don't have primary care doctor.

Indigenous Women & Cancer

From ABC News:

High rates of cervical cancer among Indigenous women should be combated with increased services, a gynaecologist who used to work in remote Northern Territory communities says.

Aboriginal women in the Territory are 10 times more likely to contract cervical cancer compared with women in the rest of the country, Dr Margaret Davy says.

The death rate is also much higher because the disease is often caught too late.

"The Indigenous women are no different from any other Australian," she said.

"But what is different is awareness of the disease, awareness of pap testing, awareness of reporting symptoms early and the ability of being able to access medical care."

The Northern Territory Health Department says the death rate from cervical cancer in the Territory has been reduced by more than 90 per cent in the past 15 years.

Indigenous Women - Invisible Women

From Ramiro Escobar @ Latin America Press:

"Mother Earth gives us life, and women give life too, so to defend life is defend the Earth," said Leonilda Zurita, leader of Bolivia´s Bartolina Sisa Federation of Campesina and Indigenous Women. Speaking at the first regional summit of indigenous women in the Peruvian highland city of Puno, Zurita and other prominent indigenous women leaders spoke out about the state and priorities of native women in Latin America.

The summit was part of the fourth Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples Abya Yala, or "living Earth" in the Kuna language of Panama, during which indigenous women discussed their importance and new proposals that linked the Earth, communal lands and equality.