.:. Restoring Women to Cultural Memory .:.
The Suppressed Histories Archivesuncovers the realities of women's
lives, internationally and across time, asking questions abbout mother-right, female spheres of power, and about patriarchy and slavery, conquest and aboriginality. About Indigenous philosophies—and the
historical chemistry of their repression, and even more importantly, their
role in resisting oppression.
A global perspective on women’s
history offers fresh and diverse conceptions of women's power, as
well as of men and gender borders. It overturns stereotypes of race and class, and the structures of domination that enforce them. It
digs under the usual story of lords and rulers, looking for hidden
strands, and reweaves knowledge from the divided fields of history, archaeology, linguistics and folk
tradition.
So we cast a wide arc,
looking for patterns and gaps and contradictions which, where vested
power interests are at stake, are trigger points for controversy.
Some of the flashpoints are women's sovereignty and self-determination; the ancient female icons; gender-egalitarian matricultures; patriarchal systems of control, including class systems and enslavement; witch-hunts and persecution of "heresies" such as Goddess reverence and ecstatic ceremonies; and conquest, empires, and ideologies of domination. Read more:Why we need women's history.
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The Suppressed Histories Archives is in the process of reorganizing as a non-profit educational resource. We aim to educate the public about global women's history and cultural studies, making knowledge widely accessible through open access articles, photo essays, videos and other digital media, as well as through live presentation and exhibits.
Max Dashu founded the Suppressed Histories Archives in January of 1970 to research and document women's history on a global scale. She wanted to find out if there were any societies in the world where women were free, and to understand how systems of domination establish and perpetuate themselves. Since then she has built a collection of some 50,000 images and 100 visual presentations, as well as producing numerous articles, photo essays, books, and videos fleshing out the cultural heritages that have been hidden from us.
