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[NO SPEECH] [APPLAUSE]
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to begin by acknowledging that the lands in which we stand upon today are located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogohono-- the Cayuga Nation. The Gayogohono are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land.
The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York State, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogohono dispossession and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogohono people, past and present, to these lands and waters. Moreover, we acknowledge that Cornell University obtained 977,909 acres of expropriated Indigenous land through the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862.
To date, the university has neither officially acknowledged its complacency in this theft, nor has it offered any form of restitution to the hundreds of native communities impacted. With that said, today my talk will further add complexity and nuance to the relationship between Cornell University and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, whose traditional territories lie within the boundaries of what is colonially known as New York State.
From 1914 to 1942, Cornell's land-grant colleges received federal, state, and private funding to create extension programs and scholarships for Haudenosaunee women. In 1914, the Smith-Lever Act created a national Cooperative Extension Service that allowed home economists at Cornell to share their research with rural Black and Indigenous women. From 1917 to 1920, food conservation agent and recent Cornell graduate Gertrude Bauer taught Onondaga women the cost-saving measures Martha Van Rensselaer, founder and co-director of Cornell's Department of Home Economics, developed for the US Food Administration's Wartime Food Program.
In the 1920s, Cornell's female faculty continued to instruct Haudenosaunee women within the areas of food and nutrition through the Indian Extension Program in 1918. Albert Mann, then dean of the New York State College of Agriculture, consulted with a Quaker Physician Dr. Earl Bates to create an extension program for Haudenosaunee youth. In 1919, Dr. Bates received $10,000 from the state to offer short courses in agriculture and home economics during Cornell's winter session. In 1921, Dr. Bates requested that Cornell's Department of Home Economics create a special program for the women.
Van Rensselaer and her co-director Flora Rose went on to instruct Haudenosaunee women within the areas of food and nutrition, sanitation, dressmaking, and home management. Following their participation in the program, these women were instructed to become extension service agents themselves and share the knowledge they gained within homemaking demonstrations on their respective territories. Upon founding the New York State College of Home Economics in 1925, Van Rensselaer worked with the lineage organization known as Daughters of the American Revolution of which she was a part of to create a scholarship program for Haudenosaunee Women.
From 1929 to 1942, the Olive Whitman Memorial Scholarship supported five Haudenosaunee women who enrolled in the college as full-time students, yet only one young Haudenosaunee women, Henrietta Hoag, graduated with her four-year degree. In my talk today, I will briefly discuss each program as well as those Haudenosaunee women who negotiated and directed their engagement with home economics research on and off Cornell's campus.
In 1920-- excuse me, 2020 Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone reported on the Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890, both of which helped to transform expropriated Indigenous land into seed money for higher education. In the report, they identified Cornell University as the largest benefactor. In fact, John Parmenter has shown how Ezra Cornell and the university yielded nearly 1/3 of the total revenue generated by all participating states. While much attention has been given to how these funds supported New York state's college of agriculture, the act of 1862 also provided women with a quote unquote "back door" into the college.
As a Land-Grant university, Cornell became one of the first institutions in New York State to develop outreach programs that brought scientific information to women. This began in 1900 with a Cornell reading course for farmer's wives, which Van Rensselaer developed under the direction of the college's first dean Liberty Hyde Bailey. In 1907, she and rose gained a stronger foothold within the university by establishing the Department of Home Economics.
Due to their position within the College of Agriculture, Van Rensselaer and Rose justified the department's existence by emphasizing scientific approaches to homemaking and family life. Liberating women from the drudgery of repetitive household labor not only improved farm life but was also viewed by Cornell's female faculty as encouraging women to engage in other activities outside of the home and the farm-like politics. This is exemplified within Blanche Hazard's course on the Life of the Primitive Women, which she taught every spring at Cornell from 1914 to 1918 and later published as a reading course.
Hazard created this course a year after arriving at Cornell in 1913. She initially worked with Van Rensselaer to develop curriculum within the areas of women's studies. In anticipation of receiving the vote, Van Rensselaer and Hazard developed courses that encouraged Cornell students and rural women to become informed citizens and voters. This included their role in quote, "deciding the fate of the women of the Indian reservations scattered over the state from Cattaraugus to Saint Regis," end quote.
As citizens and future voters, Hazard argued that it was important for rural women to understand the material, intellectual, and spiritual practices of those Indigenous women who were denied forced citizenship and designated as wards of the state. The subjects Hazard explored in this course thus asked students and rural women to consider how they themselves would address the quote unquote "Indian problem" once given the opportunity to vote. Moreover, the course provided rural women with information on pre-industrial forms of making.
The industrialization of certain goods, like butter and other dairy products, at the turn of the 20th century resulted in a loss of income for New York farmers. In fact, many rural women who enrolled in the reading courses asked Van Rensselaer for information on possible income-producing pursuits. Starting in the 19-teens, rural women turned to the sale of pre industrial crafts and canned vegetables to earn a small income and provide domestic goods for their families. Hazard's course not only exposed Cornell students and rural women to sources of inspiration she had on loan from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, but also privileged them with the opportunity to learn directly from Onondaga women.
In 1914, Hazard worked with the New York State archaeologist Arthur C. Parker to identify two Onondaga women who would be willing to come to Cornell's campus and give a cooking and basket making demonstration to her class. The demonstrations were given by Onondaga clan mother and Mrs. Phoebe Lyons. And Mrs. Alice Van Every, wife of Onondaga Chief George Van Every. Their demonstrations coincided with the 1914 Cayuga Indian Festival, an event that took place on the shores of Beebe Lake on May 27 of that year.
Photograph of the event show faculty, staff, and students engaged in domestic labor historically undertaken by communal longhouses from the dressing of skins to the pounding of corn. According to the program, Mrs. Lyons and Mrs. Van Every supervised the preparation of meals and basketry while Onondaga Chief Eli Schenandoah oversaw the reenactment of religious ceremonies. Here they are shown standing alongside Cornell faculty and students dressed in costumes made by Annetta Warner's class in clothing design.
Prior to arriving at Cornell in 1913, Warner acquired a working knowledge of Native American art while studying under Arthur Wesley Dow in the summer of 1904. Dow was an American artist-- an art educator who encouraged his students to reduce the art of Indigenous peoples and places to a mere aesthetic. It is thus possible that Warner Dow's pedagogical approach while instructing her students to create costumes for the festival.
In fact, several of the women's costumes appropriated Haudenosaunee regalia housed within the New York State Museum. This included the design of a beaded wool skirt made by Caroline Parker in the previous century. A Seneca woman of the Wolf Clan Parker directed Lewis Henry Morgan's research on the Haudenosaunee in the 1850s. In addition to donning clothing that appropriated the regalia of Haudenosaunee women, Cornell faculty and students are shown in Black or brown face, a practice that drew negatively-- heavily, excuse me, upon racial stereotypes.
While Mrs. Lyons and Mrs. Van Every directed the representation of their cultural practices within the 1914 Cayuga Indian Festival, the event ultimately allowed Cornell faculty and students to extract and exploit Indigenous knowledge for their own benefit. Hazard's course and its subsequent circulation was thus progressive as well as deeply problematic. While this event marks the first exchange between the Onondaga Nation and Cornell's Department of Home Economics, instructing women within the areas of pre industrial making, like basketry, did not align with the department's mission to elevate the status of women's work through scientific research.
In the years to come, Cornell's female faculty developed extension programming that encouraged rural and Indigenous women to improve the home environment through science. The exchange between Onondaga women and home economists continued following the Smith-Lever act of 1914, which provided Land-Grant institutions financial support to disseminate scientific knowledge among rural communities. In 1915, the New York State College of Agriculture created Cornell Cooperative Extension that initially shared the college's resources and knowledge with New York farmers. In 1916, war emergency funds allowed Cornell's female faculty to offer extension programs on food conservation.
In 1917, Van Rensselaer sent Gertrude Bauer, a recent Cornell graduate to the Onondaga, to work with the Onondaga as a temporary food conservation agent. Photographs taken on the Onondaga Nation during World War I indicate how wartime food programs worked to transform rural and Indigenous women into quote, "patriotic keepers of the kitchen and the nation's food supply," end quote. Here we see a demonstration agent, most likely Bauer, showing several Onondaga women how to canned vegetables. The agent is elevated by a raised platform and surrounded by patriotic imagery and propaganda. For instance, the sign on the left reads we believe in Uncle Sam, while an American flag is hung directly above the agent's head, which quite literally places the US nation state above all else.
According to the county's newsletter, the flag was prominently displayed during every demonstration in Temperance Hall. The homemakers creed is also hung just below the stars and stripes along the top of the back wall. While the newsletter does not state whether the flag, star-spangled banners, or homemakers creed were removed after every demonstration, their decoration of Onondaga interior community spaces illustrates the direct correlation between Cornell Cooperative Extension and the suppression of Onondaga sovereignty. While the intention of Cooperative Extension was to improve the overall health, well-being, and status of rural communities in New York State, emphasizing gender hierarchies and difference in spheres of sociality and work, stood in direct opposition to Haudenosaunee forms of domestic labor that placed women in charge of land use and management.
As a matrilineal society, Haudenosaunee women are given important decision-making positions concerning land use and community welfare. This includes the planting, cultivating, and harvesting of the three sisters, beans, squash, and corn. Tending to the clearing, however, requires the cooperation of the entire community.
The planning of seeds is done cooperatively between the women, children, and elderly, whereas the men work to prepare the clearing by burning the fields and removing trees. While women oversee land use, the clearing itself is held in common, whereby a certain portion of crops are reserved for ceremony among other collective uses.
Haudenosaunee views on land ownership and management were thus in direct conflict with the education purported by extension service agents and the College of Agriculture, who viewed farming as a sole responsibility of the land owner rather than the community or women. Additional archival material, however, illustrates how Onondaga women negotiated and facilitated home demonstrations as a means of asserting their sovereignty and role as agricultural leaders.
Following the canning demonstration, several Onondaga women are shown gathered around a table. In this image, the agent is absent. Instead, the women are shown working together, learning from one another as they carry out their work. A perspective of food demonstrations as a form of a American patriotism is challenged by the angle of the camera lens that does not necessarily obfuscate the view of the American flag and homemaker's creed, but more so emphasizes the banner that reads OCC.
In the summer of 1917, several Onondaga women, perhaps those depicted within this very image, formed the Onondaga Conservation Club. As president, Mrs. Lovina Pearce, shown furthest from the camera lens on the left-hand side of the table, supervised demonstrations on the Onondaga Nation. Even though Mrs. Pearce was an Oneida woman of the Turtle Clan, she and her husband Honorary Onondaga Chief Andrew Pearce decided to raise their family on the Onondaga Nation.
From 1918 to 1920, several articles published in the county's newsletter indicate how Mrs. Pearce shaped and formalized extension work during this period. In December of 1918, Onondaga became the first county in New York State to bring together farm and home bureau work. The development of home bureaus in 1919 corresponded with the lapse of federal funding for wartime food programs. This led Cornell's female faculty, more specifically Ruby Green Smith, to establish the home bureau as part of Cornell Cooperative Extension. While these female-centered organizations allowed Cornell's female faculty to share their research with rural women, they also allowed Onondaga women to dictate how their knowledge and cultural practices were represented within the home bureau.
Through her role as president Mrs. Pearce was involved in the organization and dissemination of home bureau work across the county. In 1919, she gave a traditional cooking demonstration and lecture during the county's first annual Home Bureau Association meeting. In her lecture on traditional foodways, Mrs. Pearce demonstrated how agriculture and cooking were both viewed as forms of domestic labor by the Haudenosaunee.
Establishing the OCC thus allowed Haudenosaunee women to assert their roles as both agricultural leaders and homemakers within public demonstrations. Establishing the OCC also empowered Onondaga women to carry out home bureau work in spaces largely controlled and maintained by community members. For instance, meetings and demonstrations were at times held within or on the lawn of personal residences. In these settings it is highly unlikely that the American flag or homemaker's creed would have been prominently displayed like those hosted by white demonstration agents in Temperance Hall.
Moreover, establishing a joint organization enabled the OCC to collaborate with Onondaga farmers. In the summer of 1918, Mrs. Pearce organized a joint picnic, whereby all tribal members affiliated with the county's farm and home bureaus shared a meal on the lawn of her home, while farm and home bureau work fell under the purview of Cornell Cooperative Extension. Home bureaus functioned as autonomous organizations. They had their own elected officers, committees, meetings, and programs of work.
Public Historian Nancy Berlage also explained that the home bureau used the concept of the separate spheres to justify their presence with an agricultural extension. This Victorian concept associated men with the public sphere and production, whereas women were relegated to the private sphere and consumption. The picnic hosted by Mrs. Pearce thus refuted the notion that home bureau work was defined by separate spheres of work and sociality, rather her actions show how Haudenosaunee women relied on the support and participation of all members of their community to engage in domestic labor, which for the Haudenosaunee included agricultural production.
Following the summer of 1920, very little engagement, nor mention of the OCC is documented within the counties home bureau newsletter. However, this doesn't mean that Onondaga women no longer engaged in home bureau work. In fact, Cornell faculty and administration began to explore the possibility of receiving state funding to support the development of a special extension program for Haudenosaunee youth on Cornell's campus.
In 1918, Dean Mann first asked Dr. Bates to facilitate conversations between Haudenosaunee farmers and Cornell faculty. This began by surveying Haudenosaunee farms and their agricultural practices at Saint Regis, Tonawanda, Cattaraugus, and Allegany. Information gathered from the surveys informed the college's development of a special program for young Haudenosaunee men and women.
Apart from providing scholarships for Haudenosaunee youth to attend short courses at Cornell, the $10,000 Dr. Bates acquired from the state was used to bring Haudenosaunee leaders to Cornell's campus during farm week, an annual event that allowed the college to share its resources on agricultural production and technology with rural farmers and their wives. The Indian Extension program was offered during Cornell's winter session from 1920 to 1927. While Haudenosaunee men took courses on farm management and mechanics, fruit growing, and entomology, the women studied food and nutrition, clothing and textiles, sanitation, science, and home management.
Correspondence held within the RMC shows that Haudenosaunee leadership, like Mrs. Arthur Doxtator of the Seneca Nation, negotiated the application process and program of study. Initially, Dr. Bates suggested hosting a competition to recruit applicants. Haudenosaunee leaders, however, proposed to elect two young men and women from each nation to attend the program.
The decision to nominate four candidates from each nation aligns with the teachings of Seneca leader and prophet Handsome Lake. According to Seneca Historian John Mohawk, anti education sentiments shared by Haudenosaunee traditionalists are often misunderstood as a wholesale rejection of Western education. He explained that when placed in relation to Handsome Lake's teachings, Western education is neither praised, nor condemned, rather it is viewed as a means of negating the effects of settler colonialism on Haudenosaunee communities.
In 1913, Parker quoted Handsome Lake's views on education, quote, "This concerns education. It is concerning studying in English schools. Now let the Council appoint 12 people to study, two from each nation of the six. So many white people are about that you must study to know their ways," end quote.
Handsome Lake's views, therefore, may explain why the six nations appointed representatives to sit on the Cornell Indian boards and elect two men and two women from each nation to attend the program. Through the knowledge and understanding that came with education, these young men and women were charged with protecting themselves their land and their culture. However, the college attempted to regulate which nominees were accepted into the Indian Extension program.
In his correspondence with the Cornell Indian board, Dr. Bates revealed that those students with health conditions were barred from partaking in the program. In a letter addressed to Mrs. David Hill of the Onondaga Nation, Bates asked her to select another candidate for consideration, since the initial student she nominated Mabel Thomas had a hearing impairment. Requiring incoming students to pass physical exams allowed the university to restrict enrollment and impose their own selections upon Haudenosaunee leadership.
Furthermore, the test challenged the founding principal of the university as a place where quote, "any person can find instruction in any study," end quote. Handwritten letters, however, show that several Haudenosaunee women upheld their roles and responsibilities as delegates of the six nations while attending the program in addition to the work they undertook as home demonstration agents.
Initially, both men and women were enrolled in the same classes as other winter course students. As a result, the college offered discussion sections every Saturday morning to discuss how those enrolled in the program could use the knowledge they gained to quote, "improve reservation life once they returned home," end quote. In his correspondence, Dr. Bates, however, revealed that there would be no short courses for Haudenosaunee women during Cornell's 1921 winter session.
The reason he gave was that enrollment in the Department of Home Economics was too large to accommodate additional students. While this may have been the case, it is also likely that Haudenosaunee women were not allowed to enroll in regular courses at Cornell or were strongly discouraged from doing so. In his correspondence with Tuscarora student, Vera Henry, who was one of the first three Haudenosaunee women to attend Cornell's Indian Extension program in 1920, Dr. Bates explained, quote, "There are no four year courses open to Indians now, but if you two girls make good, I think we can arrange things afterwards," end quote.
Here Dr. Bates further contradicts the university's founding principle beyond impeding Haudenosaunee women with hearing impairments from taking part in the Indian Extension program. His correspondence suggests that the university barred all Haudenosaunee women from enrolling in degree earning programs. Correspondence between Dr. Bates and Inez Blackchief, another short course student in Seneca woman of the Deer Clan, suggests that she might have informed his decision to enroll Haudenosaunee women in agricultural courses for Cornell's 1921 winter session.
In her correspondence with Dr. Bates she wrote, quote, "I've been wondering and wondering what the Indian girls would study. I really think that the girls would enjoy and make use of poultry, floriculture, vegetable gardening, and even landscape art from what lectures we had one afternoon," end quote. In fact, two months after receiving Blackchief's letter, Dr. Bates consulted with Van Rensselaer and Rose if it would be possible to develop a special program for Haudenosaunee women prior to the start of Cornell's winter session.
In the following months, Rose shared with Dr. Bates the coursework she and Van Rensselaer developed. She explained that the women will receive quote, "practically a full program of work and complete coursework within the areas of nutrition, sanitation, and home management." The special program took six weeks prior to the start of the Indian Extension program of the 12 Haudenosaunee women who attended the program in 1921. 11 stayed on to take short courses in agriculture with the men. Their desire to engage in agricultural production and food conservation is also apparent in the work these women shared with their communities as Extension Service agents.
Following their enrollment in Cornell's Indian Extension program, Haudenosaunee youth were expected to work as farm and home bureau agents or become involved in their nation's agricultural societies and clubs. As Dr. Bates explained, quote, "these students were developed with the idea of service to their communities and being selected by their own people, they have a deep feeling of obligation to their homes," end quote. Even though several students went on to work in extension, how Haudenosaunee women chose to engage in home bureau work at times challenged the objectives of Cornell faculty and other extension agents.
Upon returning to Tonawanda, Blackchief formed the Tonawanda home bureau club with the assistance of Erie County Home Demonstration Agent Alice Bosserman. While Blackchief and Bosserman first offered dressmaking demonstrations, Blackchief explained to Dr. Bates that the women specifically requested demonstrations on gardening and canning. She wrote, quote, "Mrs. Bosserman suggested that we only take dressmaking, but the ladies seemed to differ. They especially want cooking and the canning demonstrations. So many want to know how to can vegetables," end quote.
In an interview with the Buffalo Courier-Express Blackchief further shared that many of the women were interested in canning because, quote, "most of them cultivate their own land and are interested in preserving the foods that they raise, beans, corn, potatoes, and fruit," end quote. Her remarks closely align with the role of Haudenosaunee women in overseeing the planting, harvesting, and preparation of the three sisters. Like Mrs. Pearson, the OCC, Blackchief, and the other members of the Tonawanda Home Bureau Club did not uphold the concept of the separate spheres when engaging in home bureau work. Instead, they explored subjects that allowed them to assert their nationhood and improve the lives and well-being of their communities.
While Haudenosaunee women continued to organize their own clubs and outreach programs in the 1930, the newly formed New York State College of Home Economics pursued other avenues for supporting the education of Haudenosaunee women at Cornell. The education of Haudenosaunee women on Cornell's campus continued well into the 1930s and early '40s. This was largely due to the development of the Olive Whitman Memorial Scholarship. Plans to develop the fund began in 1927 when Dr. Bates proposed the idea during an annual meeting for the Elmira chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
In his talk, he suggested that they create a scholarship fund for a quote unquote, "Real American daughter, instead of a marble arch for Mrs. Whitman," the late wife of New York Governor Charles Whitman, who was also a member of the DAR. In his papers, Dr. Bates attributed his proposal to Blackchief's role as president of the Tonawanda Home Bureau club. However, Van Rensselaer was also a member of the DAR's Cayuga chapter and most likely facilitated the relationships Dr. Bates established with the organization's members.
The initial funds the Elmira chapter raised for Mrs. Whitman's Memorial were put towards a scholarship fund for Haudenosaunee women. Within a period of four months, Dr. Bates had given more than 20 talks to DAR state chapters and managed to raise a total of approximately $10,000. Even though Dr. Bates and Van Rensselaer helped to establish the scholarship fund, the DAR greatly influenced who the funds were distributed to and how. Since most of the members had a college education, they explained to Dr. Bates that they were only interested in funding Haudenosaunee women enrolled in the college as full-time students.
In addition, one of the women, Annie Hatch, felt it was more beneficial to offer a general fund that would allow Haudenosaunee women to attend any college in New York State. In her correspondence with Dr. Bates, Hatch expressed her interest in funding a young Haudenosaunee woman to attend her alma mater Hartwick College. For these reasons, the $10,000 Dr. Bates raised was managed and distributed by the DAR themselves rather than Cornell. This led the organization to form a scholarship committee and play a role in the selection process.
Other committee members included Van Rensselaer, Mrs. Minnie Shenandoah-- an Oneida woman and chairman of the Cornell Indian Homemakers Board-- and Walter Kennedy-- Seneca chief and chairman of the Cornell Indian board. Like the Indian Extension Program, Haudenosaunee leadership were involved in nominating and selecting candidates. However, correspondence between DAR members and Cornell administrators reveal how racial biases and prejudices impacted the application process.
The first two Haudenosaunee women to receive the Olive Whitman Memorial Scholarship were Beulah Brailey, a young Tuscarora woman, and Blackchief. Yet neither woman received their four-year degree. According to the college's records, Brailey only attended Cornell for one year, while Blackchief had already received a four-year degree from the University of Rochester and therefore was designated as a special student. Despite earning their high school diplomas and receiving college credit, departmental correspondence reveals that Cornell faculty and staff questioned their presence on campus.
In 1931, an unidentified Cornell employee expressed concern for Brailey and Blackchief's performance to the chair of the scholarship committee. The employee explained that the women didn't have the usual prerequisites needed to enroll in the college as full-time students. First, they raised concern about Brailey and Blackchief's ability to graduate and attributed this to the student's limited knowledge of the hard sciences.
They proposed that these women had difficulty in grasping abstract applications of scientific research and rigor because of their upbringing. They suggested that the home environment educational systems or hereditary factors even, quote, "possibly failed to stimulate the development of habits of abstract thinking, of concentration, of industry, and of ability to take responsibility," end quote. The employee requested that the DAR only fund quote unquote "qualified students" and suggested that perhaps a special program be devised for these women.
The letter concluded by stating that Brailey and Blackchief were better off learning responsibility then being given scholarships for an education they weren't prepared to receive. They even insinuated that the scholarship was being used by these women as a quote unquote "handicap." This letter shows how Cornell faculty and administrators reproduced and perpetuated hegemonic views of domesticity and epistemology.
Furthermore, the letter is evidence of discrimination against those women who do not conform to the expectations of heteropatriarchal white settler society. The suggestion that these women were not fit to study the hard sciences or abstract concepts due to hereditary factors or their home environment was a critique of Indigenous kinship systems that took a communal approach to child rearing. Within matrilineal societies, the task of raising the next generation was a communal effort.
The education of Haudenosaunee youth did not occur within a classroom, but through everyday observations and interactions across generations in an extended family. Overall, the letter speaks to the level of racism and discrimination Haudenosaunee women faced on Cornell's campus. Even though Van Rensselaer and her colleagues have been credited with advancing opportunities for women in higher education, their use of scientific research to uplift women's work within the academy put forward a particular version of work and science that largely restricted women from claiming other sorts of expertise within the agricultural sector outside of domestic and communal spaces.
This is further represented within a mural Professor Virginia True painted in the halls of Martha Van Rensselaer Building on Cornell's campus in 1937. Entitled Home Economics, this mural illustrates how Cornell faculty and home demonstration agents related to the women whose lands they occupied. At the center of the mural, True painted a quote unquote "primitive woman," who is depicted without clothing and shown using a mortar and pestle, a form of household technology that visually represents in True's words the drudgery of housework.
She is surrounded by several important figures of the Home Economics Movement, including Van Rensselaer, Rose, and even Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. Each of these women were instrumental in the development, and dissemination, and implementation of home economics research across New York State. This is visually represented by their development of educational programs, extension services, reading clubs, and radio addresses shown to the left and right of the central figure.
Located immediately below is a young white-appearing child, who through True's use of strong diagonal lines is shown as the fruit of their labor. True's rendition of the quote unquote "primitive woman" and other racialized figures was not received well by the college. Shortly after completing the mural, True asked to quote, "cut down on her racial characteristics," end quote, of the figures. While True did not agree, the college ultimately decided to cover the mural with a curtain.
The solution not only failed to address the tensions represented within True's mural, but was also indicative of how home economists failed to review and address the racial biases and ideologies that shaped their definition and understanding of domesticity. The same biases and prejudices that inform the design and layout of True's mural were expressed within departmental correspondence concerning recipients of the Olive Whitman Memorial Scholarship. Instead of turning a blind eye, like they did with True's mural, administrators impeded additional Haudenosaunee women from applying by increasing requirements and enforcement thereof.
Despite the discrimination, Haudenosaunee women faced at Cornell in the 1930 and '40s, one recipient Henrietta Hoag graduated with her degree in 1940. Beyond satisfying her general requirements, Hoag found ways to assert her sovereignty as a Seneca woman of the Beaver Clan on Cornell's campus. This included her involvement in several extracurricular activities, including the fashion showcase costumes of many lands.
In the 1930's, Professor Beulah Blackmore, Cornell's first faculty member in clothing and textiles, worked with Cornell faculty, students, and missionaries on Furlough to curate an international fashion showcase during farm and home week. According to the press release, the showcase was intended to promote world peace by enhancing the audience's understanding and appreciation of the traditions and customs of diverse peoples and places. Through Hoag's donning of Seneca regalia in 1937, this included the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. However, the showcase was also problematic in that several white-appearing students were photographed in Black or brown face and dressed up in the fashions and identities that differed from that of their own.
In fact, Hoag wore an Indian sari for the 1938 showcase rather than the clothing of her own nation, which ultimately clashed with Blackmore's intention to foster respect for the dress practices of diverse peoples. In my conversations with Hoag's first son, Daniel Guilfoyle Jr, he attributed his mother's success to her role as vice president of the Cosmopolitan Club, which was the first club dedicated to international students at Cornell.
In the 1930's-- excuse me-- yes, in the 1930's, historian Alex [INAUDIBLE] argued that international students and minorities were often viewed by Cornell faculty as outsiders. One place they found acceptance on campus was through clubs like the Cosmopolitan. In fact, recognizing Hoag as an international student was an acknowledgment of sovereignty on the part of the Cosmopolitan Club. This is further supported by Guilfoyle's claims that his mother's involvement led her to form long-lasting friendships. This is also how she met her husband Daniel Guilfoyle Sr.
By engaging in extracurricular activities, Hoag was able to find community outside of the college in addition to the structures that empowered her to assert her sovereignty as a Haudenosaunee woman on Cornell's campus. To date, histories of home economics tend to articulate how the field benefited from and contributed to the Women's Suffrage Movement. However, very few studies have analyzed the field in relation to US Settler Colonialism. As seen with a primary source material, the scientific approaches developed and disseminated by Cornell's female faculty were at odds with Haudenosaunee views on home management and domesticity.
However, this doesn't mean that the field compromised the political agency of Indigenous women. In fact, Haudenosaunee women played a role in the creation and dissemination of home economics research during this period. My research shows that they negotiated and directed the programs Cornell Cooperative Extension carried out on their traditional territories, as well as found ways to assert their nationhood and sovereignty through home bureau work and extracurricular activities on Cornell's campus.
Throughout the research process, I found myself questioning why up until this point Haudenosaunee women have been excluded from histories of home economics at Cornell. What I came to realize was that the very methods and practices used to document and record these histories actively work to silence the voices of Haudenosaunee women. Like the ethnographic silencing of Indigenous female authorities in early anthropological discourse, Haudenosaunee women's materials are stored under the names of Cornell faculty rather than that of their own. For example, the letters of Haudenosaunee women who wrote to Dr. Bates, they are held within stacks of correspondence that is under his collection. In fact, all records pertaining to the Indian Extension Program and Cornell Indian boards are held within his papers leading to the assumption that he was primarily responsible for their creation which is not the case.
Furthermore, finding it simply identify recipients of the Olive Whitman Memorial Scholarship as quote unquote "Indian students," rather than according to their own names and tribal identities. This is problematic seeing that the word Indian has been used by settlers to reduce the multiplicity and complexity of Indigenous cultures and languages to a single monolithic image. Moreover, this word was used by Cornell faculty to describe those students who are of Indian and Native American descent.
With that said, I would like to end my presentation today by questioning, how these archival erasures might be addressed moving forward? In 2020, Cornell President Martha Pollack called for the creation of more just and equitable programming across Cornell's campuses. She expressed the importance of thinking and acting quote, "holistically to change structures and systems that inherently privilege some more than others," end quote. I argue that racial justice extends to how the university's histories are documented, as well as addressed in public programming.
Over the past 20 years, the RMC has created digital collections and exhibitions that document the experiences of early Black women at Cornell, as well as the college's contributions to the field of home economics more broadly. Yet, they do not explore the stories of Haudenosaunee women despite containing a plethora of material that illustrates how these women actively shaped Cooperative Extension and did so in ways that improve the lives and well-being of their communities. In this regard, the archival practice is used to document record and preserve the college's history function, much like that of the curtain used to cover up True's mural.
Therefore, I would like to conclude with a call to action. What methods and practices might we use to redress archival practices that as Pollock stated quote, "inherently privileged some more than others," end quote. This question is especially important as we approach the 100 year anniversary of the New York State College of home economics. How might we represent more equitable and just histories of home economics at Cornell both within and outside of the archive as we move forward into the next century? Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Any questions? Yeah.
AUDIENCE: I'm curious in responding to your first question. Are there examples of what other institutions have done in terms of different methods and practices to redress these issues?
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: I personally have not seen these issues addressed. And this actually takes up one chapter of my dissertation. And I look at archival erasures in several other collections throughout the Northeast.
So I haven't personally seen ways of rectifying some of these issues-- I wouldn't say absences-- but the way in which things are-- the language that's used and how it's framed, but I will say that even though the folders or the collection state Indian students, their names and tribal identities are actually identified in the very materials and correspondence in the folders. So it could be something as simple as going through and seeing which folders are marked Indian or Native American. And also, I think it would be really important because, I mean, Indians use for students who are coming from India. So it's also been hard to track who is who and what are their identities based on some of those descriptors that are used.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: The archival field, though, I think is conscious of that. There's committees. And, actually, if you would write to me and tell me, we have online finding aids. And we can add scope notes, and we can add all that information. So a lot of times we're relying on patrons to let us know.
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Yeah, of course. Yeah, I have a whole list of everything, and that'd be great. Thanks. Yeah, Brenda.
AUDIENCE: Just to follow up, in the past two or three years, there's been an inclusive description task force within the library that's looking at different solutions for getting better description, including retroactively describing things that were probably described when they came here 75 years ago or something. People are on it.
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: That's good to know.
AUDIENCE: And [INAUDIBLE].
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Yeah. Yeah, John.
AUDIENCE: Can you talk a little bit about the context of the timing of this program here at Cornell? My understanding of Haudenosaunee communities in the early 20th century in New York State is they're fairly self-contained economies with relatively little interaction with outside communities. So I'm kind of curious as to what the reasoning was as to why it sort of starts around World War I and seems to peter out prior to World War II if I read you correctly there. I would just be curious to hear a little bit about what the rationale for it at that time was.
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Well, I will say that in Dr. Bates's papers, he did spend a fair amount of time proposing ideas as to how to get farm and home bureau agents into communities because they had a hard time doing that in fact. And that's why the Indian Extension Program came about.
And I would say that based on the correspondence that I read that the Onondaga Conservation Club, establishing that, I think in many ways-- because Dr. Bates did address that in one letter where he says that, oh, we don't actually need to bring agents, extension agents, into these communities. We need to have them come to Cornell-- have them be trained so that they can then go back and be the leaders in their own communities. So I think those initial conversations that happened actually during farm and home week between dean, Dr. Bates, and Van Rensselaer were instrumental in kind of coming up with ideas as to how to engage Haudenosaunee communities.
AUDIENCE: I was really interested to see the Virginia True mural and the thoughts about the curtain. You're advising the Dean of the College of Human Ecology. What guidance would you provide on-- how should we be thinking about that mural now?
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: I think one of the things that has really struck me is the attention that has been drawn to the Morrill Land-Grant Acts. And I think honestly there's not been enough conversation about how Home Economics was impacted by that, and how in many ways it benefited, and how it contributed to that. And so I think it would be interesting to place that particular mural in conversation with the Morrill Land-Grant Acts and think about the field's connection to those histories and how that played out here.
And I think it's also interesting to note that the very year that mural was being painted was the year that Henrietta Hoag came to Cornell's campus and received the Olive Whitman Memorial Scholarship. So I wonder that type of presence, what that had and how that impacted her, because I didn't talk about it, but her family was instrumental in having Dr. Bates and some of the faculty come to his farm at Allegany. He was the one who informed their visit back in 1919. So she had a working knowledge, perhaps even met them upon that visit. So she had a working knowledge of the university's relationship.
AUDIENCE: You talked in the second to last slide about the public exhibition or the digital exhibitions that have been created on the part of the library to really address [INAUDIBLE] comment here. And so can you talk about-- I understand that this fellowship results in an online exhibition. Can you talk about that?
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Yeah. So that wasn't actually a stipulation of the fellowship. That was something that I took upon myself. And so I think it's-- right now it's a question of what platform to use because I know there's some issues with the spotlight platform which I've used before.
So maybe having a conversation with Eileen or perhaps using the blogs that we have here at Cornell to make sure that this information is disseminated beyond just Cornell's community. And that was very much a reason why I wanted to do a public exhibition because this is public scholarship. I spoke with Haudenosaunee families whose relatives and descendants I talked about today,
As you saw, they supplied me with photographs. And so making sure that those histories and stories are publicly available and that people can engage with them. And to not have this just secluded, again, to the archive or to the university is something that I think is really important and is really great about these resources, but I think we need to start engaging in more work and producing more public scholarship.
Yeah. Thank you. [INAUDIBLE] Any other questions? Yeah. Oh, sorry.
AUDIENCE: Is that part of your dissertation too? Is this part of your dissertation?
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Yeah, this is a chapter.
AUDIENCE: So you'll be writing it.
AUDIENCE: It's written.
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Oh, it's already written. It's-- yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah. No, this was a 80 page chapter. Yeah.
AUDIENCE: So I was interested-- the statement about women would like to learn about canning, and horticulture, and floriculture. And they come to Cornell and they're in the College of Home Economics, where they able to essentially get some of the training that they were also hoping-- envisioning for themselves? I imagine they're women and Native American and breaking into it, it was breaking into fields that were not home economics.
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Right. So actually at the time-- you're talking about the Indian Extension real quick?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Yeah. Yeah. So the College of Home Economics hadn't been founded yet. In fact, it was at that time there was the department and then the school, but they started off taking courses solely in agriculture. And then in 1920-- and there was only three Haudenosaunee women that year.
And then in 1921 is when they started the home economics program and brought in 12 for the remaining years. And they had them come two years-- so to two winter sessions back to back. But I think the women were very smart.
In their letters, they very much spoke to Dr. Bates's ego very much so. I think even Blackchief at one point says, I know you always will get your way. And I hope you're fighting for us girls. I know you always do and always will.
AUDIENCE: Good luck to you.
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think they knew what to say in order to make sure that they received the instruction that they wanted.
AUDIENCE: Right.
LYNDA XEPOLEAS: Thank you.
How and why did Hodinohso´:nih women choose to receive an education in home economics from Cornell during the first half of the twentieth century? These were the basic questions Lynda May Xepoleas, PhD ’23 in Fiber Science and Apparel Design, and recipient of the College of Human Ecology's Graduate Summer Archival Research Fellowship, explored as she undertook extensive archival research within Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections last summer. In this curatorial talk, Xepoleas presents her research findings, and discusses how she chose to foreground the voices and stories of Hodinohso´:nih women for her graduate research at Cornell.
