Susan Bernardin

Trading Gazes reconstructs the rich biographical and historical contexts explaining these women's presence in different Native communities of the North American West. Their photographs not only record the unprecedented opportunities available for Euro-American women eager to shed gender restrictions, but also reveal how women's newfound mobility depended on the increasing restrictions placed on Native Americans in this era. By tracing the complex, often unexpected relationships forged between these women, their cameras, and the Native subjects of their photographs, Trading Gazes offers a new focus for recovering women's histories in the West while bringing attention to the complicated legacies of these images for Native and non-Native viewers.