The Women's National Indian
Association (WNIA) was a volunteer organization of middle- and upper-class white
women that grew out of Philadelphia's First Baptist Church's Home Missionary
Society in 1877. The WNIA initially served as a reform association until the
Indian Rights Association took over much of its political work, enabling members
to return to their missionary roots and fund more than sixty mission stations
across the country. It lasted until 1951.
Although
most often viewed as simply an Indian reform association, WNIA members also
engaged in broad philanthropic and humanitarian non-Indian work and were at times
able to rise above Indian reformers' negative assimilationist policy and fund
modern reservation hospitals, promote Native arts, purchase homes for landless
Indians of Northern California, and establish a missionary station actually requested
by a small Mission Indian group.
The leading expert on the WNIA, Valerie
Sherer Mathes rigorously documents their progressive efforts to present a
balanced history of the organization, ensuring their legacy alongside other
volunteer groups such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the National
Woman Suffrage Association, the American Woman Suffrage Association, and the
General Federation of Women's Clubs.
