ABSTRACT
Due to historical circumstances, the Seminoles are rather like immigrants even though they are Native Americans. The Seminoles claim South and Central Florida as their current homeland primarily as a result of Andrew Jackson's policy to move all Indians of the Southeast westward to Oklahoma. The surviving Seminoles established lands and tribal recognition within Florida. In addition, in the interview responses, personal authority surfaced frequently along with traditional power in relation to the women's personal perceptions of power as well as the perception they have of themselves specifically as women in the Seminole culture. The overall results of the survey indicated that the Native American women preferred all of the alternatives to the traditional power paradigm, and it is obvious that of these alternatives they identified most strongly with the personal authority attributes. Although the women generally agreed with aspects of empowerment, their level of agreement was noticeably weaker than with personal authority and reciprocal empowerment.
