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American Indian national movements, asserting a common Indian interest and identity as distinct from tribal interests and identities, have been a significant part of the American experience throughout most of this century, but one virtually unknown even to historians. Here for the first time Pan-Indian movements are examined comprehensively and comparatively. The opening chapter provides the historical background for the development of modern Pan-Indianism. The first major Pan-Indian reform organization, the Society of American Indians (SAI), was founded in 1911. Led by middle-class, educated Indians. The SAI adapted many of the reform ideas of the Progressive Era to Indian purposes. The SAI rejected the old dream of restoring tribal cultures and worked instead for an Indian future identified with the broader American society, to be realized through education and legislation. During the twenties, the SAI declined and the direction of Pan-Indian efforts shifted. Pan-Indian fraternal movements arose that were more in keeping with the spirit of the times than was reformism. Based in towns and cities, the fraternal orders and social clubs provided a means for urban Indians to retain or regain an Indian identity. In the meantime, an Indian religious movement, the peyote cult, spread far beyond its Oklahoma heartland, gaining Indian adherents in many parts of the country. Abandoning the messianic hopes of earlier Pan-Indian religions, the peyote cult developed as a religion of accommodation, a blending of elements from many tribes and from Christianity as well. In 1918 Oklahoma peyotists incorporated the first Native American Church as a defense against a campaign to outlaw the use of peyote by Indians. During the succeeding decade churches were organized in other states. The Indian New Deal, which radically changed governmental policy, provided a new context for Pan-Indianism. The author examines briefly developments since 1934. Her concluding chapter places the various Pan-Indian movements in historical perspective. The research for this study included extensive use of a wide variety of primary sources—journals published by 1he Indian groups, collections of documents and letters, governmental records, and interviews with Indians, anthropologists, and government officials.
During the twenties, the SAI declined and the direction of Pan-Indian efforts shifted. Pan-Indian fraternal movements arose that were more in keeping with the spirit of the times than was reformism. Based in towns and cities, the fraternal orders and social clubs provided a means for urban Indians to retain or regain an Indian identity. The Indian New Deal, which radically changed governmental policy, provided a new context for Pan-Indianism.The author examines briefly developments since 1934. Her concluding chapter places the various Pan-Indian movements in historical perspective.The research for this study included extensive use of a wide variety of primary sources—journals published by 1he Indian groups, collections of documents and letters, governmental records, and interviews with Indians, anthropologists, and government officials." -- Publisher.
This single-volume book contends that reshaping the paradigm of American Indian identity, blood quantum, and racial distinctions can positively impact the future of the Indian community within America and America itself. This academic compendium examines the complexities associated with Indian identity in North America, including the various social, political, and legal issues impacting Indian expression in different periods; the European influence on how self-governing tribal communities define the rights of citizenship within their own communities; and the effect of Indian mascots, Thanksgiving, and other cultural appropriations taking place within American society on the Indian community. The book looks at and proposes solutions to the controversies surrounding the Indian tribal nations and their people. The authors—all leading advocates of Indian progress—argue that tribal governments and communities should reconsider the notion of what comprises Indian identity, and in doing so, they compare and contrast how indigenous people around the world define themselves and their communities. Chapters address complex questions under the discourse of Indian law, history, philosophy, education, political science, anthropology, art, psychology, and civil rights. Topics covered in depth include blood quantum, racial distinctions, First Nations, and tribal citizenship.
Native peoples of North America still face an uncertain future due to their unstable political, legal, and economic positions. Views of their predicament continue to be dominated by non-Indian writers. In response, a dozen Native American writers here reclaim their rightful role as influential "voices" in debates about Native communities. These scholars examine crucial issues of politics, law, and religion in the context of ongoing Native American resistance to the dominant culture. They particularly show how the writings of Vine Deloria, Jr., have shaped and challenged American Indian scholarship in these areas since 1960s. They provide key insights into Deloria's thought, while introducing some critical issues confronting Native nations. Collectively, these essays take up four important themes: indigenous societies as the embodiment of cultures of resistance, legal resistance to western oppression against indigenous nations, contemporary Native religious practices, and Native intellectual challenges to academia. Essays address indigenous perspectives on topics usually treated by non-Indians, such as role of women in Indian society, the importance of sacred sites to American Indian religious identity, and relationship of native language to indigenous autonomy. A closing essay by Deloria, in vintage form, reminds Native Americans of their responsibilities and obligations to one another and to past and future generations. This book argues for renewed cultivation of a Native American Studies that is more Indian-centered.
Does activism matter? This book answers with a clear "yes." American Indian Ethnic Renewal traces the growth of the American Indian population over the past forty years, when the number of Native Americans grew from fewer than one-half million in 1950 to nearly 2 million in 1990. This quadrupling of the American Indian population cannot be explained by rising birth rates, declining death rates, or immigration. Instead, the growth in the number of American Indians is the result of an increased willingness of Americans to identify themselves as Indians. What is driving this increased ethnic identification? In American Indian Ethnic Renewal, Joane Nagel identifies several historical forces which have converged to create an urban Indian population base, a reservation and urban Indian organizational infrastructure, and a broad cultural climate of ethnic pride and militancy. Central among these forces was federal Indian "Termination" policy which, ironically, was designed to assimilate and de-tribalize Native America. Reactions against Termination were nurtured by the Civil Rights era atmosphere of ethnic pride to become a central focus of the native rights activist movement known as "Red Power." This resurgence of American Indian ethnic pride inspired increased Indian ethnic identification, launched a renaissance in American Indian culture, language, art, and spirituality, and eventually contributed to the replacement of Termination with new federal policies affirming tribal Self- Determination. American Indian Ethnic Renewal offers a general theory of ethnic resurgence which stresses both structure and agency--the role of politics and the importance of collective and individual action--in understanding how ethnic groups revitalize and reinvent themselves. Scholars and students of American Indians, social movements and activism, and recent United States history, as well as the general reader interested in Native American life, will all find this an engaging and informative work.
"In discussing a wide array of legal, biological, and sociocultural definitions, Eva Garroutte documents how these have frequently been manipulated by the federal government, by tribal officials, and by Indian and non-Indian individuals to gain political, social, or economic advantage. Whether or not one agrees with her solutions, anyone seriously concerned with contemporary American Indian issues should read this book."—Garrick Bailey, editor of The Osage and the Invisible World "Real Indians is a remarkably candid, engaging, and compelling book. It tells the important and often controversial story of how 'Indian-ness' is negotiated in American culture by indigenous peoples, policy makers, and scholars."—Robert Wuthnow, author of Creative Spirituality "Eva Marie Garroutte has done an exemplary job of combining scholarly sources, personal accounts, interview data, and self-reflection to catalog and examine the ways in which individual and collective identities are asserted, negotiated, and revitalized. She invites readers to imagine an intellectual space where scholarly and traditional ways of knowing and telling come face to face in an epistemological landscape where the ‘traditions’ of social science and 'radical indigenism' can confront one another in constructive dialogue."—Joane Nagel, author of Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality
... Racial shifter ... are people who have changed their racial self-identification from non-Indian to Indian on the U.S. census. Many racial shifters are people who, while looking for their roots, have recently discovered their Native American ancestry ...
For decades, most American Indians have lived in cities, not on reservations or in rural areas. Still, scholars, policymakers, and popular culture often regard Indians first as reservation peoples, living apart from non-Native Americans. In this book, Nicolas Rosenthal reorients our understanding of the experience of American Indians by tracing their migration to cities, exploring the formation of urban Indian communities, and delving into the shifting relationships between reservations and urban areas from the early twentieth century to the present. With a focus on Los Angeles, which by 1970 had more Native American inhabitants than any place outside the Navajo reservation, Reimagining Indian Country shows how cities have played a defining role in modern American Indian life and examines the evolution of Native American identity in recent decades. Rosenthal emphasizes the lived experiences of Native migrants in realms including education, labor, health, housing, and social and political activism to understand how they adapted to an urban environment, and to consider how they formed--and continue to form--new identities. Though still connected to the places where indigenous peoples have preserved their culture, Rosenthal argues that Indian identity must be understood as dynamic and fully enmeshed in modern global networks.
This beautiful book presents a fascinating array of complete women's and girls' outfits dating from the 1830s to the present, including dresses, shawls, shoes, belts, bags, fans, and hair accessories. Also included is historical and contemporary background information on Native life and Native women and their dress. To accompany a major exhibit of the same name at the NMAI in March 2007.
Winner of the Beatrice Medicine Award In south-central Oklahoma and much of “Indian Country,” using an Indigenous language is colloquially referred to as “talking Indian.” Among older Chickasaw community members, the phrase is used more often than the name of the specific language, Chikashshanompa’ or Chickasaw. As author Jenny L. Davis explains, this colloquialism reflects the strong connections between languages and both individual and communal identities when talking as an Indian is intimately tied up with the heritage language(s) of the community, even as the number of speakers declines. Today a tribe of more than sixty thousand members, the Chickasaw Nation was one of the Native nations removed from their homelands to Oklahoma between 1837 and 1838. According to Davis, the Chickasaw’s dispersion from their lands contributed to their disconnection from their language over time: by 2010 the number of Chickasaw speakers had radically declined to fewer than seventy-five speakers. In Talking Indian, Davis—a member of the Chickasaw Nation—offers the first book-length ethnography of language revitalization in a U.S. tribe removed from its homelands. She shows how in the case of the Chickasaw Nation, language programs are intertwined with economic growth that dramatically reshape the social realities within the tribe. She explains how this economic expansion allows the tribe to fund various language-learning forums, with the additional benefit of creating well-paid and socially significant roles for Chickasaw speakers. Davis also illustrates how language revitalization efforts are impacted by the growing trend of tribal citizens relocating back to the Nation.