June 6–7, 2009

June 6–7, 2009 marks the two days of the women’s meetings in the Molotschna Colony, a crisis gathering whose written record becomes part of the action it documents. Through discussions about the assaults, religious authority, family responsibilities, and departure, the women try to decide what can be known and done within a community that denies them both safety and literacy. The minutes, made by August Epp at Ona Friesen’s request, preserve their deliberations but also reveal how testimony must pass through a male recorder and translator to reach the page.

A Record Made Under Unequal Conditions

The meetings were organized hastily by Agata Friesen and Greta Loewen in response to assaults that had haunted the colony for several years. By the time the women assembled, the supposed supernatural assailants had been identified as eight men from Molotschna, some closely related to the women they had attacked. The gathering therefore addresses not an abstract danger but a crisis rooted inside the community and its family structures.

August Epp records the proceedings because the women are illiterate and cannot make the minutes themselves. Ona asks him to record the meetings and create a document about them. This arrangement gives the women a written account, but the account is necessarily mediated: they speak Plautdietsch, which August translates quickly into English before writing. He explains that Plautdietsch is unwritten and known within the colony, while the minutes themselves are intended to be in English. The record thus depends on the very language and literacy that the women have been denied.

The women meet in a hayloft rather than in a kitchen, where children would be underfoot. For the discussion of their choices, Ona gives August a large sheet of brown paper used to package cheese and meat. She asks him to list the pros and cons of the options on it, knowing that none of the women can read what he writes. They intend to keep the sheet in the hayloft as an artifact for others to discover. Its purpose is not limited to helping the immediate discussion: it is also a message directed toward a future reader.

Debate, Authority, and the Meaning of Forgiveness

The women consider three responses: doing nothing, staying to fight, or leaving. Although Salome Friesen has argued that doing nothing is not a real option, the women allow it to appear on the ballot as a way of making the choice more empowering. Mejal Loewen challenges Salome’s authority to decide what counts as an option. The disagreement between the Friesen and Loewen families is part of the deliberation, but the women agree that the two families will weigh the alternatives and decide how best to proceed.

Ona connects the debate about leaving to the colony’s refusal to provide counseling after the assaults. The elders and bishop have argued that counseling is unnecessary because the women were unconscious when the attacks occurred. Ona asks what the women can be required or able to forgive if they are told the events either did not happen to them in a meaningful sense or cannot be understood. Her reasoning widens the question beyond the immediate injuries: ignorance of the world, she suggests, cannot itself prove that a person is free.

The meetings also confront who is permitted to interpret religious teaching. Salome identifies male interpretation of the Bible, handed down to women who cannot read, as a specific source of disadvantage. Ona agrees that the inability to read or write weakens the women’s position in any dispute about scripture. The conflict over literacy is therefore not merely about recording the meetings; it also shapes who can claim religious knowledge and whose interpretation is treated as authoritative.

Salome describes women as excluded from membership in the colony’s power while being made subject to its rules. In her account, even adolescent boys are expected to direct women, influence their fate, interpret scripture, and punish them. Greta’s response links this social order to the colony’s treatment of women compared with its animals. The discussion turns the decision about whether to leave into a judgment on the community that has made women’s lives subordinate and unsafe.

Different Responsibilities, Shared Risks

The choices under discussion do not affect every woman in the same way. Ona is pregnant and keeps an empty feed pail beside her because of nausea. When others attempt to arrange a marriage between her and Julius Penner, she refuses, saying that he deserves better and that marriage to her would taint him because she is not a virgin. The elders regard her as beyond redemption because of Narfa, while her unborn child is expected to be raised by another colony family, perhaps even the family of one of the men involved in the assaults. Her circumstances make the meeting’s questions about safety, choice, and belonging immediate and personal.

The proposed departure also raises the question of which children may accompany the women. Fifteen-year-old boys are already with the men, and boys twelve and under may join the women, but the position of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds is disputed. Salome fears that the boys will be left in the care of men and could themselves become targets if the accused men return. August answers that boys of that age can pose risks, but also argues that they are children capable of being taught. He sees them as in need of direction, love, and patience rather than as beyond reform. The exchange makes the boundary between protection and exclusion one of the meeting’s unresolved practical concerns.

The burden of departure is also visible in the mothers’ separation from sons. Agata comforts Salome over leaving Aaron behind for the time being, suggesting that the grief may strengthen the women’s effort to build a better colony. Mejal, despite her recurring disagreements with Salome, crosses the table to embrace her during the crisis. Their moment of solidarity does not erase their differences; it shows how the immediate pressures of the decision can bring them together.

Preparation and the Unfinished Archive

As the meetings approach their end, Nettie reports that the small children are ready: they have been cleaned, fed, and provided with clothing, linen, boots, and hats packed for departure. Not everyone will go. Cornelius will remain because his mother belongs to the group choosing to do nothing, and he has no choice but to stay with her. The news disappoints the young women, who are fond of him, but the gathering recognizes that the women cannot assume every person will be free to leave.

At the close of the recorded action, August remembers the minutes and notebooks he has left on the table. He retrieves them and asks Salome to give them to Ona. Salome points out the contradiction: Ona cannot read the papers August has written for her. That exchange condenses the promise and limitation of the two-day record. The women have produced a deliberation, a list of options, and an intended artifact for later discovery, yet access to their own words still depends on a literate intermediary. June 6–7 is therefore both a moment of collective decision-making and a threshold in the making of its archive: the women speak, while the document that carries their speech remains partly outside their control.