Native American Heritage Month

Two common questions asked in archaeological investigations are: where did a particular culture come from, and which living cultures is it related to? In this book, Robert A. Cook brings a theoretically and methodologically holistic perspective to his study on the origins and continuity of Native American villages in the North American Midcontinent. He shows that to affiliate archaeological remains with descendant communities fully we need to unaffiliate some of our well-established archaeological constructs. Cook demonstrates how and why Native American villages formed and responded to events such as migration, environment and agricultural developments. He focuses on the big picture of cultural relatedness over broad regions and the amount of social detail that can be gleaned from archaeological and biological data, as well as oral histories.

The remarkable story of the innovative legal strategies Native Americans have used to protect their religious rights From North Dakota's Standing Rock encampments to Arizona's San Francisco Peaks, Native Americans have repeatedly asserted legal rights to religious freedom to protect their sacred places, practices, objects, knowledge, and ancestral remains. But these claims have met with little success in court because Native American communal traditions don't fit easily into modern Western definitions of religion. In Defend the Sacred, Michael McNally explores how, in response to this situation, Native peoples have creatively turned to other legal means to safeguard what matters to them. To articulate their claims, Native peoples have resourcefully used the languages of cultural resources under environmental and historic preservation law; of sovereignty under treaty-based federal Indian law; and, increasingly, of Indigenous rights under international human rights law. Along the way, Native nations still draw on the rhetorical power of religious freedom to gain legislative and regulatory successes beyond the First Amendment. The story of Native American advocates and their struggle to protect their liberties, Defend the Sacred casts new light on discussions of religious freedom, cultural resource management, and the vitality of Indigenous religions today.

After a career of working and living with Native Americans and studying their traditions, Barre Toelken has written this sweeping study of Native American folklore in the West. Within a framework of performance theory, cultural worldview, and collaborative research, he examines Native American visual arts, dance, oral tradition (story and song), humor, and patterns of thinking and discovery to demonstrate what can be gleaned from Indian traditions by Natives and non-Natives alike. In the process he considers popular distortions of Indian beliefs, demystifies many traditions by showing how they can be comprehended within their cultural contexts, considers why some aspects of Native American life are not meant to be understood by or shared with outsiders, and emphasizes how much can be learned through sensitivity to and awareness of cultural values.

In Under Prairie Skies, C. Thomas Shay asks and answers the question, What role did plants play in the lives of early inhabitants of the northern Great Plains? Since humans arrived at the end of the Ice Age, plants played important roles as Native peoples learned which were valuable foods, which held medicinal value, and which were best for crafts. Incorporating Native voices, ethnobotanical studies, personal stories, and research techniques, Under Prairie Skies shows how, since the end of the Ice Age, plants have held a central place in the lives of Native peoples. Eventually some groups cultivated seed-bearing annuals and, later, fields of maize and other crops. Throughout history, their lives became linked with the land, both materially and spiritually.  

Chief Standing Bear of the Ponca Nation faced arrest for leaving the U.S. government's reservation, without its permission, for the love of his son and his people. Standing Bear fought for his freedom not through armed resistance but with bold action, strong testimony, and heartfelt eloquence. He knew he and his people had suffered a great injustice. Standing Bear wanted the right to live and die with his family on the beloved land of his Ponca ancestors, located within the Great Plains of Nebraska. In telling his story, Standing Bear's Quest for Freedom relates an unprecedented civil rights victory for Native Americans: for the first time, in 1879, a federal court declared a Native American to be a "person"--a human being with the right to file an action for a redress of grievances in a federal court, like every other person in the United States. Standing Bear's victory in Standing Bear v. Crook began a national movement of reforming Native American rights--albeit a slow one. Because of the courage and leadership of Chief Standing Bear, the pervasive spirit of indifference of most Americans toward Native Americans was disrupted by this historic decision. America would never be the same.

Between 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in South Dakota. But detention at the Indian Asylum, as families experienced it, was not the beginning or end of the story. For them, Canton Asylum was one of many places of imposed removal and confinement, including reservations, boarding schools, orphanages, and prison-hospitals. Despite the long reach of institutionalization for those forcibly held at the Asylum, the tenacity of relationships extended within and beyond institutional walls. In this accessible and innovative work, Susan Burch tells the story of the Indigenous people--families, communities, and nations, across generations to the present day--who have experienced the impact of this history. Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, Burch reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the places that held them. Committed expands the boundaries of Native American history, disability studies, and U.S. social and cultural history generally.

As Elissa Washuta makes the transition from college kid to independent adult, she finds herself overwhelmed by the calamities piling up in her brain. When her mood-stabilizing medications aren’t threatening her life, they’re shoving her from depression to mania and back in the space of an hour. Her crisis of American Indian identity bleeds into other areas of self-doubt; mental illness, sexual trauma, ethnic identity, and independence become intertwined. Sifting through the scraps of her past in seventeen formally inventive chapters, Washuta aligns the strictures of her Catholic school education with Cosmopolitan‘s mandates for womanhood, views memories through the distorting lens of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and contrasts her bipolar highs and lows with those of Britney Spears and Kurt Cobain. Built on the bones of fundamental identity questions as contorted by a distressed brain, My Body Is a Book of Rules pulls no punches in its self-deprecating and ferocious look at human fallibility.

Off the Reservation gives us the best of Allen's political essays, literary criticism, and personal reflections. In section one, "Haggles/gynosophies" (haggles being a persuasive speech in which a hag engages), Allen offers powerful critiques of the Western social constructs of proprietorship, literacy, individualism, and "rape culture" contrasted with the communal and spiritual connection to the earth that characterizes native societies. "Wyrds/orthographies" presents some of the best analysis of Native American literature of the late twentieth century, including the work of N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Mary Tallmountain

'Tribes and Tribulations' selects topics from the 17th century onwards as examples of some commonly held but erroneous views on Indian-white relationships, including stereotypes of Indians as mascots.

This book, in two volumes, breathes fresh air empirically, methodologically, and theoretically into understanding the rich ceremonial lives, the philosophical-religious knowledge, and the impressive material feats and labor organization that distinguish Hopewell Indians of central Ohio and neighboring regions during the first centuries CE.

This book explores how the media frame environmental and scientific disputes faced by American Indian communities. Most people will never know what it is like to live on an Indian reservation in North America, or what it means to identify as an American Indian. However, when conflicts embroil Indigenous folk, as shown by the protests over a crude oil pipeline in 2016 and 2017, camera crews and reporters descend on "the rez" to cover the event. The focus of the book is how stories frame clashes in Indian Country surrounding environmental and scientific disputes, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline construction, and the discovery of an ancient skeleton in Washington. The narratives told over social media and news programs often fail to capture the issues of key importance to Native Americans, such as sovereignty: the right to self- governance. The book offers insight into how the history of Indian-settler relations sets the stage for modern clashes, and examines American Indian knowledge systems, and how they take a back seat to mainstream approaches to science in discourse

The aim of this Element is to foreground Native American conceptions of sovereignty and power in order to refine the place of settler colonialism in American colonial and early republican history. It argues that Indigenous concepts of sovereignty were rooted in complex metaphorical language, in historical understandings of alliance, and in mobility in a landscape of layered interconnections of power. Where some versions of the interpretive paradigm of settler colonialism emphasise the violent 'elimination of the native', this work reveals that diplomatic transactions between the Iroquois Confederacy and British colonial and imperial agents reveal a hybrid language of alliance, sovereignty and territory. These languages and concepts of inter-cultural diplomacy provide contexts that suggest a more nuanced and dynamic relationship between colonialism and Indigenous power.

"Misconceptions continue to shape public perceptions of American Indians. Deeply ingrained cultural fictions, what Jentz (history, North Hennepin Community College) refers to as myths, have had a lasting hold on popular understanding of Native Americans. In this readable and engaging overview, Jentz provides an important corrective, one that not only catalogs key stories and stereotypes but also lays a foundation for challenging them. As the title indicates, Jentz seeks to demystify seven fundamental ideas about American Indians through critical histories. Following a helpful introductory discussion, he devotes a chapter to each myth. Specifically, he unpacks (1) the noble savage, (2) the ignoble savage, (3) wilderness and wildness, (4) the vanishing native, (5) the authentic Indian, (6) the ecological Indian, and (7) the mystical native. Throughout, Jentz employs clear language and tangible examples to clarify each myth and its significance. [T]his work will greatly benefit nonspecialists, including high school teachers and students. The volume will be useful as either a textbook in introductory courses in Native American studies or as secondary reading. Summing Up: Highly recommended. " --C. R. King, Washington State University, in Choice

The issue of Native American mascots in sports raises passions but also a raft of often-unasked questions. Which voices get a hearing in an argument? What meanings do we ascribe to mascots? Who do these Indians and warriors really represent? Andrew C. Billings and Jason Edward Black go beyond the media bluster to reassess the mascot controversy. Their multi-dimensional study delves into the textual, visual, and ritualistic and performative aspects of sports mascots. Their original research, meanwhile, surveys sports fans themselves on their thoughts when a specific mascot faces censure. The result is a book that merges critical-cultural analysis with qualitative data to offer an innovative approach to understanding the camps and fault lines on each side of the issue, the stakes in mascot debates, whether common ground can exist and, if so, how we might find it.

Dawnland Voices calls attention to the little-known but extraordinarily rich literary traditions of New England's Native Americans. This pathbreaking anthology includes both classic and contemporary literary works from ten New England indigenous nations: the Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi'kmaq, Mohegan, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Schaghticoke, and Wampanoag.   Through literary collaboration and recovery, Siobhan Senier and Native tribal historians and scholars have crafted a unique volume covering a variety of genres and historical periods. From the earliest petroglyphs and petitions to contemporary stories and hip-hop poetry, this volume highlights the diversity and strength of New England Native literary traditions. Dawnland Voices introduces readers to the compelling and unique literary heritage in New England, banishing the misconception that "real" Indians and their traditions vanished from that region centuries ago.  

Little Big Bully begins with a question asked of a collective and troubled we - how did we come to this? In answer, this book offers personal myth, American and Native American contexts, and allegories driven by women's resistance to narcissists, stalkers, and harassers. These poems are immediate, personal, political, cultural, even futuristic object lessons.

"In the Presence of the sun is a celebration of extraordinary works of extraordinary range. It is informed with wonder and delight, sorrow and joy, the evanescence of seasons and the persistence of the human spirit. It is a concentration of riches, a distillation of thirty years in which the creative impulse is defined, refined, and sustained. Here are the best expressions of a man who is intensely alive to the world and whose vision reaches to the horizon and beyond. Scott Momaday inhabits the element of language easily. He is at home there. He is a man made of words." "A glorious testament to our Native American past, this book features over seventy poems, sixteen new stories about the great tribal shields that delve into the deeper meaning of legend, love and loss, as well as an entire section devoted to Billy the Kid." "The words, poems, and stories are enhanced by Momaday's complementary images. His drawings are in turn fine, bold, provocative, and moving. Momaday's eye is penetrating, truly interpretive. His vision is original. He enables us to see in a way we have not seen before." "Scott Momaday calls upon his Kiowa background to give us echoes of ancient oral tradition. His use of traditional English poetic forms is both fluent and exact. His voice is ancestral and contemporary, profoundly American and genuinely universal. Here, at his best, is one of the truly distinguished poets, storytellers, and artists of our time."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

2010 Maverick Award winner, 2011 Aesop Prize Winner - Children's folklore section, and a 2011 Eisner Award Nominee.   All cultures have tales of the trickster - a crafty creature or being who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. He disrupts the order of things, often humiliating others and sometimes himself. In Native American traditions, the trickster takes many forms, from coyote or rabbit to raccoon or raven. The first graphic anthology of Native American trickster tales, Trickster brings together Native American folklore and the world of comics.   In Trickster, 24 Native storytellers were paired with 24 comic artists, telling cultural tales from across America. Ranging from serious and dramatic to funny and sometimes downright fiendish, these tales bring tricksters back into popular culture.