Indigenous and European cultures were very different when it came to gender relations. The indigenous lived based off of an egalitarian society where women were just as important as men and shared fairly essential everyday duties. The Indigenous are more open minded about premarital sexual intercourse and two-spirit individuals (person who identifies as both female and male). On the other hand, the Europeans believed that men had the upper hand in everything and were superior to all women. They had the mindset that women were inferior, therefor stayed home and did the bare minimum. Premarital sexual intercourse was not even spoken of because it was an inappropriate topic for Europeans that shouldn’t of even been thought of.
The Indigenous society is very similar to our contemporary Western culture because we share the appreciation of both women and male tasks that are completed daily. In both cultures, men and woman are very much needed to fulfill important tasks. In today’s society, as much as we think genders are finally seen as important figures, there are still defects when it comes to trying to keep the equality of genders while the indigenous never had these issues. In this case, we would share a similarity with the European culture where women are not getting enough recognition.
The Europeans were very amazed and shocked when they encountered the indigenous because of how clever they are to identify male and females as equally relevant as one another and see no reason to discriminate one gender from another. Over the recent years, I clearly realized that woman are taking a stand and proving their point across that both genders are just as equally needed in the work force, political world and so on…
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