"It is true to say white women were subordinated in settler-colonial society. It is not true to say they were bystanders to the colonial enterprise, and it is certainly not accurate to imply they were victims of comparable standing to the colonized populations. In fact, white women were often among colonialism's most vociferous proponents.
Had Summers widened her scope a little, she would have seen that there was a third role white women played in Europe's colonies: that of the Great White Mother. It was through harnessing the Great White Mother that white women were able to access a form of limited power through maternalistic intervention into the lives of Aboriginal women.
Margaret D. Jacobs uses the term "maternal colonialism" to describe the role played by white women in the removal of Indigenous children from their families in Australia and the American west. Focusing on the sixty years from 1880 to 1940, Jacobs uncovers a history of white women far removed from the usual image of steadfast pioneers who were ignorant of the reality of the colonial project.
As in other colonial outposts of empire, white women in Australia quickly learned to navigate European colonialism to their advantage, leveraging their status as both a subordinate class and a privileged class to "simultaneously collaborate with and confound colonial aims."
When it came to the removal and institutionalization of Indigenous children, colonialism was "largely a feminine domain, defined primarily around mothering, particularly targeted at Indigenous women, and implemented largely by white women." White women decided that the removal of Indigenous children was "women's work for women."
Chapter 5, White Tears/Brown Scars- Ruby Hamad
