Working on the Domestic Frontier.

Native American women; Household employees; Social conditions of Native Americans; Assimilation (Sociology); White women; United States. Bureau of Indian Affairs; Social history

San Francisco Bay Area (Calif.); California; United States

The author focuses on female American Indian domestic servants working in white women's households from 1920 to 1940 in the San Francisco Bay area, California. The author claims the women were able to assert their independence through a continuation of their cultural values of gender and sexuality. The author also asserts that despite this show of independence, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was able to preserve its power over the women by controlling the children who were born to the women while they were in service. The author discusses the BIA's policy of assimilation, the relationship between American Indian servants, white women, and BIA matrons, and the social lives and conditions of American Indian servants.