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Full-Text Articles in American Studies
“Native American Folk Song Suite”: A Study Of Traditional Native American Melodies, The Role Of Music In Native American Society, And Its Translation To The Modern Wind Ensemble, Preston Parker
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Music holds a sacred place for the many Native American tribes of the United States. Over the past 150 years, ethnomusicologists Dr. Theodore Baker (1851-1934), Dr. Frances Densmore (1867-1957), and John Donald Robb (1892-1989) have preserved these songs by sitting down with indigenous Native Americans and recording their music straight from the source. Through these recordings, these ethnomusicologists created a springboard for composers, including myself, to study the past and create new music that honors the traditions and culture of Native Americans. I have applied my new knowledge of these musical techniques and traditions to create a work for wind …
Entwined Threads Of Red And Black: The Hidden History Of Indigenous Enslavement In Louisiana, 1699-1824, Leila K. Blackbird
Entwined Threads Of Red And Black: The Hidden History Of Indigenous Enslavement In Louisiana, 1699-1824, Leila K. Blackbird
University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
Contrary to nationalist teleologies, the enslavement of Native Americans was not a small and isolated practice in the territories that now comprise the United States. This thesis is a case study of its history in Louisiana from European contact through the Early American Period, utilizing French Superior Council and Spanish judicial records, Louisiana Supreme Court case files, statistical analysis of slave records, and the synthesis and reinterpretation of existing scholarship. This paper primarily argues that it was through anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity and with the utilization of socially constructed racial designations that “Indianness” was controlled and exploited, and that Native Americans …
Performing Authentic Savagery: National Myth-Making And Indigenous Survival At American World's Fairs, 1893-1904, Hannah Facknitz
Performing Authentic Savagery: National Myth-Making And Indigenous Survival At American World's Fairs, 1893-1904, Hannah Facknitz
Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
The late nineteenth century in America was a period of intense change, where society took on the project of describing what exactly made America what it was. An important vehicle for this exploration of identity was the world’s fair. This paper analyzes the Chicago World Columbian Exposition of 1893, the Omaha Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898, and the St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 and their depictions of Indigenous North Americans which were closely tied up in the current project of national myth making. A three-way conflict emerges in this study between contemporary anthropologists, entertainment professionals, and so-called …
The "Noble Savage" In American Music And Literature, 1790-1855, Jacob Mathew Somers
The "Noble Savage" In American Music And Literature, 1790-1855, Jacob Mathew Somers
Theses, Dissertations and Capstones
In the aftermath of the War of 1812, America entered a period of unprecedented territorial expansion, economic growth, and political unity. During this time American intellectuals, writers, and musicians began to contemplate the possibility of a national high culture to match the country’s glorious social and political achievements. Newly founded periodicals urged American authors and artists to adopt national themes and materials to replace those imported from abroad, and for the first time Americans began producing their own literary, artistic, and musical works on a previously inconceivable scale. Though American writers and composers explored a wide range of “national themes,” …
Northwest Coast Native American Art: The Relationship Between Museums, Native Americans And Artists, Karrie E. Myers
Northwest Coast Native American Art: The Relationship Between Museums, Native Americans And Artists, Karrie E. Myers
Museum Studies Theses
Museums today have many responsibilities, including protecting and understanding objects in their care. Many also have relationships with groups of people whose items or artworks are housed within their institutions. This paper explores the relationship between museums and Northwest Coast Native Americans and their artists. Participating museums include those in and out of the Northwest Coast region, such as the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the Burke Museum, the Royal British Columbia Museum, the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Museum. Museum professionals who conducted research for some of these museums included Franz Boas, …
Claiming The Best Of Both Worlds: Mixed Heritage Children Of The Pacific Northwest Fur Trade And The Formation Of Identity, Alanna Cameron Beason
Claiming The Best Of Both Worlds: Mixed Heritage Children Of The Pacific Northwest Fur Trade And The Formation Of Identity, Alanna Cameron Beason
All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023
The fur trade in the Pacific Northwest, a region encompassing Oregon, Washington, Idaho, the western half of Montana, and British Columbia, supplied the needed ingredients for the formation of a distinctive identity to form among the mixed heritage children born to indigenous women and men of the fur trade. This thesis examined how this identity formed in some the leading families of the time. The MacDonald’s, McKay’s, and the Tolmie’s all embraced both sides of their parental cultures and used them to create and defend their own sense of identity and community. Language was an important aspect of this new …
A Contested Future: Buffalo Bill's Wild West, Native American Performers, And The Military's Struggle For Control Over Indian Affairs 1868-1898, Alexander Erez Echelman
A Contested Future: Buffalo Bill's Wild West, Native American Performers, And The Military's Struggle For Control Over Indian Affairs 1868-1898, Alexander Erez Echelman
Senior Projects Spring 2015
My project explores how and why William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody glorified the military's wars against Native Americans on the Great Plains through his career as a showman in the United States and in Europe. The military's and the Interior Department's competition for control over Indian Affairs allowed Buffalo Bill to support the army's image by adhering to popular white supremacist ideas in the nation. I look at how Buffalo Bill used his Native American performers to exemplify the military's peace keeping skills in the West while devaluing the Interior Department's authority in Indian Affairs.
Native Newspapers: The Emergence Of The American Indian Press 1960-Present, Russell M. Page
Native Newspapers: The Emergence Of The American Indian Press 1960-Present, Russell M. Page
CMC Senior Theses
During the 1960s and 1970s, tribes across Indian Country struggled for tribal sovereignty against “termination” policies that aimed to disintegrate the federal government’s trust responsibilities and treaty obligations to tribes and assimilate all Indians into mainstream society. Individual tribes, pan-Indian organizations, and militant Red Power activists rose up in resistance to these policies and fought for self-determination: a preservation of Indian distinctiveness and social and political autonomy. This thesis examines a crucial, but often overlooked, element of the self-determination movement. Hundreds of tribal and national-scope activist newspapers emerged during this era and became the authentic voices of American Indians and …