Citizens United must not stand.

Right on. That’s who I’m using and citing in MY research. But this post doesn’t claim that this work isn’t being done or doesn’t exist. It claims that this research isn’t being recognized, rewarded, or cited the way that big studies of “empire” or “the early American West” are.

BTW, I didn’t make the claim that Natives on the great plains and great basin engaged in menstrual seclusion. That comes out of my research on the Wabanaki, whose gender segregation traditions are very well documented. I’ve also read studies that suggest that menstrual seclusion was practiced by the Cherokee, and may still be in some Cherokee communities. I just thought that the practice of menstrual seclusion by some historical Native communities was too perfect a metaphor to pass up. But I can see your point that it may have suggested a universal practice that was in fact local and situational.

While I respect your scholarship, I question your use of such language as “But is it really an intervention for which modern historians should be congratulated when we assume that historical Native Americans were rational and had their own politics?” Living in societies of any kind is in itself political organization, and I’m wondering what constitutes “rational,” and if rationality can be measured scientifically and applied as a quantitative measurement rather than thrown about in a gleeful, racist manner as you chose to do in this particular sentence. Perhaps you were using hyperbole; regardless, there are female American Indian graduate students and professors doing amazing work in this field, who you could have found by doing a Google search and consulted before making sweeping generalizations about a broad swath of the country with cultural practices that vary significantly from nation to nation. Perhaps their studies might have uncovered some of the answers to the questions you ask in your post.

(And aside from being sexist, it’s also heterocentric. Not all women were “wives,” and not all men had wives.