Visual talks by Max Dashu: featured for 2018
Women's Power, Women's Oppression, Women's History
Women's power and speech are contested in patriarchal systems. We need women's history to understand how this colonization came to be, and how it operates. Patriarchy is not a human default, but a historical process with a material basis. Its patterns of domination are a series of overlays embedded over time in culture, socialization and behavior, and they intersect with other systems of domination. Women remain divided, a necessary condition of domination; and our resistance is still subject to silencing and repression, including witch hunts. We need to know what women's freedom and authority look like, in societies that do not colonize us on the basis of sex, and recover the positive heritages that are our birthright.
The Cosmic Weaver
Creator goddesses and spinners of fate around the world: Neith, "Mother of the Gods" in Egypt, and the Seventh Nummo of the Dogon. Xi Wangmu, the cosmic pivot of the Big Dipper, and the Weaver Maiden in China. The Moirae of Greece and the Roman Parcae. Grandmother Spider in the Mississippian and Pueblo cultures, as well as in Navajo tradition. Maya Chak Chel and Aztec Tocí / Tlazolteotl, and Takutsi Nakawé of the Huichol. Weaver in the Moon in Iroquois and other North American sacred story. The Wyrd Sisters in Britain, Scandinavian Norns, Fatas and Sudice and Laimas. And more from the Andaman Islands, Iraq, Bali, Aotearoa, Peru, and among the Kuna of Panamá
Amazons and Women Warriors
Amazon legends, archaeology, and history! we sort out the real from male fantasy, in Ukraine, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Brazil, Greece, Italy, Egypt, India, China, Japan, Iran, Bulgaria, Vietnam, Mongolia. Feast your eyes on Odissi Amazons in the Udyagiri caves; Vlasta and her Czech Amazons; Yennega in Burkino Faso, and the Amazons of Dahomey; Lozen, Chiricahua Apache medicine warrior; warrior women of the Great Plains and Alto Perú. Plus a taste of Amazons in modern culture and feminist art.
Rebel Shamans: Women Confront Empire
Priestesses, diviners and medicine women stand out as leaders of aboriginal liberation movements against conquest, empire, and cultural colonization. This visual presentation looks at how Indigenous and Diasporic women draw on their cultural traditions to resist colonization. More >
Witches and Pagans: Down to the Roots
The spiritual heritages of pagan Europe: wisewomen, healers, seers, enchantresses and nightfarers. Women’s sacraments of spinning, weaving, herbcraft, divination, sacred dance and incantation. Fatas, faeries, and the “good women who go by night” with the Old Goddess: Diana, Holle, Nicnevin, Abundia, Andra Mari, Perchta. More >
Witch Hunts
The early modern witch-hunt Terror was the crucible of modern "Western Civilization." It had a profound impact on women's status -- and bodies, speech, mobility, sexuality. The witch craze was escalated through torture trials, targeting females, the old, disabled, queer, poor, and minorities as "devil-worshippers." More >Persecutory Culture
In these times, we need to understand the mechanisms of persecution: the demonization of targeted social groups and the violence perpetuated against them. We look at witch hunts, pogroms, crusades, exorcism, lynchings, ducking stools, bridles for "scolds" and enslaved people, persecution of same-sex loving and gender non-conforming people, and the demonization of non-Abrahamic religions.
Canaanite and Hebrew Goddesses
Coming soon! Dangerous Women: They Fight Back
Patriarchies: a global view of women's oppression
What is patriarchy, in all of its structures of lordship, how did it come into being, how is it enforced, and by whom? how resisted? how do systems of male dominance relate to conquest, enslavement, colonization and class structures? How is opposition suborned through divide and conquer? More >
All titles are live visual presentations. 90 minutes, with extra time
for discussion and questions (60-minute version also available).
Requirements: digital projector, cables, screen, mic
"We can't afford to overlook the importance of knowledge as power, and culture as a medium that propagates values and behaviors, that interprets the world to us. Those who have withheld knowledge about women's power, as well as the vast diversity of cultures that have existed on this planet, understood that demoralizing women would make it easier to subordinate us. If you can't conceive of being free as a woman - or as any other oppressed group of people - how are you going to sustain the hope and courage and effort necessary to create change? Beyond that, we need to be able to envision how things might be different, as Indigenous cultures, especially the mother-right cultures, can teach us. Ways of doing things differently, egalitarian ways that respect everyone, that live by values that revere the entire web of life." --Max Dashú
For descriptions of more Suppressed Histories presentations,
see the current catalog of digital presentations.Suppressed Histories Archives | Articles | Woman Shaman DVD
