Keeping ‘Togetherness’: A Me-Wuk Family History of Mothers, Women, and Matriarchs in 20th Century California Restricted; Files Only
Sarah, Mercedes (Spring 2025)
Abstract
What can the journey of one Me-Wuk family or individual reveal about the complex experiences of Native women in California during the 20th century? This thesis follows the family of Zandra Bietz, a Me-Wuk Tribal Elder, through the 20th century as each generation grappled with adversity and carved out lives that retained kinship and culture. While the themes of preservation, resistance, and resilience increasingly shape the study of Native peoples in California, this thesis complements such work by applying a gendered lens that highlights the perspectives and contributions of Native women in these efforts. This thesis asserts that the tenacity of Me-Wuk women played, and continues to play, a vital role in protecting, sharing, and preserving kinship and culture while navigating instability and change. Embracing the act of co-creation, the analysis and narrative of this thesis is shaped by the oral history of Me-Wuk narrators, Zandra Bietz and her daughters, Dore Bietz and Tara Stengal, citing their personal archives alongside those of institutions. Chapter one explores how Me-Wuk mothers contended with the instability enforced by colonization, recognizing their efforts to keep their families connected to one another and to their people and culture by utilizing several methods such as marriage, employment, and migration. Chapter two examines how Me-Wuk women navigated assimilative and individualizing conditions like education, work, and urban migration, underscoring how these women engaged in such pursuits with savviness, taking what was useful and leaving behind what was not to find personal enjoyment both in and beyond their Me-Wuk community. Chapter three shifts to consider how Me-Wuk Matriarchs, like Zandra Bietz, continue to exercise their responsibility for the keeping and passing down of knowledge, specifically through material culture, by exploring her personal archive of photography, visual art, baskets, and jewelry. This approach allows for not only a family’s experience to be contextualized, but for Me-Wuk history to become personal and intimate, communicating more than just narratives of hardship and catastrophe but ones of love and belonging too.
Table of Contents
Author's Note … ii
Introduction … 1
Chapter One: Mothers … 21
Chapter Two: Women … 46
Chapter Three: Matriarchs … 76
Conclusion … 108
Bibliography… 112
About this Honors Thesis
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File download under embargo until 22 May 2026 | 2025-04-09 05:44:28 -0400 | File download under embargo until 22 May 2026 |
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