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Contested Lands, Contested Identities: Revisiting The Historical Geographies Of North America's Indigenous Peoples, Douglas Deur

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

In my work with the tribes and First Nations of western North America, I am told the same stories again and again. In intricate and sometimes gruesome detail, I am told how the white world, in its efforts to occupy and claim the western half of the continent over the last two centuries, employed myriad strategies—strategies of conquest—to separate indigenous peoples from their lands. And in these stories, tribal members, no matter their levels of education or backgrounds, recognize that the military conflicts, genocide, territorial dispossession and displacement, and enforced marginalization that has characterized Indian-white relations over this period cannot …