Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

We Welcome The New Immigrants, John Defrain, Rochelle L. Dalla, Douglas A. Abbott, Julie Johnson

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

From the very beginning of this project we have focused on taking a balanced approach to identifying the strengths and challenges of new immigrants in the Great Plains. Discussions of change in our world invariably focus on problems, and only occasionally on the strengths. We set out to look at new immigrants from a different perspective, in our view, a more realistic perspective: seeing the inherent strengths they possess as newcomers to our region and the gifts they bring, and examining the cultural assets the newcomers and the longer-term residents all can rely upon in working together to meet the …

New Immigrants In The Great Plains: Strengths And Challenges

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Our colleague and friend Dr. Nick Stinnett, a former faculty member at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is a pioneer in research on strong families. Stinnett is now a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa. He has defined family strengths as:
those relationship patterns, interpersonal skills and competencies, and social and psychological characteristics which create a sense of positive family identity, promote satisfying and fulfilling interaction among family members, encourage the development of the potential of the family group and individual family members, and contribute to the family's ability to deal effectively …

Review Of Immigration, Colonisation Et Propagande: Du Reve Americain Au Reve Colonial By Serge Courville, J. David Wood

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This book is a true magnum opus-large in its 640 pages of text, and a major work of exploration well beyond the author's previous scholarly bailiwick. The period covered includes the seventeenth century to the 1930s but concentrates on the nineteenth century. Dividing its focus on two main subjects, the study first traces the stories of the European "migration fever" over the three centuries and offers a thorough commentary on how the discourse on migration developed in various European countries ("Theories et Propagande"). From an early date the British took a lead in publishing accounts of explorations, scientific reports, and …

East European Women And The Battle Of The Sexes In American Culture, Nanda Dimitrov

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

How do women from patriarchal cultures adapt to gender equality and feminism in the Great Plains? How do women from Eastern Europe change as a result of living in a gender-neutral environment? The study (I) identifies the major cultural differences that Eastern European women perceive between gender-related norms in Eastern Europe and the American Midwest, (2) examines the strategies that women use to cope with these differences, and (3) investigates when encounters with American feminists help and when they hinder immigrants' adaptation.

Eastern European culture is characterized by a greater separation of gender roles and little concern about sexism. Women …

A Case Study Of The Impact Of Population Influx On A Small Community In Nebraska, James Potter, Rodrigo Cantarero, X. Winson Yan, Steve Larrick, Blanca Ramirez-Salazar

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This paper discusses the impact of population influx on small communities using the city of Schuyler, NE, as a case study. As a small city of 4,000 some residents, Schuyler experienced a proportionally significant population influx in the past decade largely due to an increase of immigrant population. Unlike large cities, Schuyler has fewer resources to cope with the impact of a drastic population increase on its physical conditions and environment. The population expansion also impacted its previously homogeneous social and cultural environment. Through surveying long-time and newly arrived residents and comparing responses of the two groups, the study revealed …

Strengths And Challenges In Chinese Immigrant Families, Xiaolin Xie, Yan Xia, Zhi Zhou

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This qualitative study involved interviewing 40 Chinese Americans residing in Lincoln and Omaha, NE, and Naperville, IL, on their perceptions of family strengths and acculturative stress. Themes related to family strengths include family support leading to achieving a renewed sense of family, contextual support from friends and community, communication among family members, spiritual well-being, and balancing host and heritage cultures. Themes pertaining to acculturative stress are language barriers, loneliness, and loss of social status and identity at the early stage of immigration. New dimensions are being added to the current family strengths model. Implications for health professionals are provided.

Review Of American Arrivals: Anthropology Engages The New Immigration Edited By Nancy Foner, Mcc. Heyman

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Immigration to the United States since 1965, usually labeled "the new immigration," has several distinguishing features. First, the predominant source nations are in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, rather than Europe. The second is a new trend within this scenario, the diversification of destinations, such that migration involves not only Los Angeles and New York, but also numerous small cities in the Prairie and Great Plains states, locations that once received Europeans and Mexicans but have been little involved in international migration for decades. In order to understand the dramatic social and cultural changes stemming …

A Charismatic Iranian American Engineer, Jane Meehan

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This is the story of Iranian engineer Mostafa Jamshidi and his twenty-five years in Nebraska: his student days, his experiences with the immigration department and his eventual citizenship, his work history, and his personal life as told by his English teacher and surrogate mother, His language skills, soccer playing, and personality enabled him to combat his homesickness and the harassment of the immigration officials. The University of Nebraska at Omaha and the Nebraska Department of Roads gave him a place to learn and grow despite the time and geography in which he was born. The Great Plains, with its friendliness, …

Surviving English, Connie Schomburg

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Noncredit English as a Second Language (ESL) classes often serve as a starting place for new immigrants aged eighteen or older who want to learn "survival English." The students attending these classes are widely diverse in terms of motivations, educational and cultural backgrounds, English-language fluency, life experiences, and learning styles. Classes are designed to equip these adult learners with basic English-language abilities in the context of the situations they are likely to encounter daily at work and in the community. This personal essay explores the challenges faced and the strengths revealed by students in these classes as witnessed by an …

A View Of Sudanese Refugee Resettlement Through Nebraska’S Print Media, Mary Willis, Constance Fernald

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The print media has the potential to educate the general public about newly arriving Great Plains populations, influence refugee resettlement programs, and motivate volunteers to assist in transitions. Thus, accuracy of news items is crucial to successful assimilation of new populations to host communities. In this paper, we provide results from a content analysis of eight Nebraska newspapers regarding Sudanese refugees. We focus on refugee population descriptors, cultural characteristics, resettlement issues, and refugee goals to determine what could be learned about refugees from Sudan if one used local print media. Consistent with theories of stereotyping, results suggest that limited, and …

Concerns Of Hispanics And Service Providers In Southwest Missouri, James Wirth, Susan Dollar

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This descriptive study identifies the key concerns voiced by the Hispanic community and service providers in rural southwestern Missouri. Three surveys were conducted in 2001 with 381 Latino adults, Latino youth, and human service providers located in over 20 rural cities and towns throughout southwest Missouri. Demographic information, socioeconomic status, and mobility patterns of Latino respondents are profiled, and their housing, educational, and healthcare needs are reported. Language barriers, legal and documentation issues, a lack of job availability, and nonacceptance in the broader community are identified as key concerns of Latinos. Human-service providers identified language barriers, a lack of understanding …

Examining Strengths And Challenges Of Rapid Rural Immigration, Rochelle L. Dalla, Francisco Villarruel, Sheran C. Cramer, Gloria Gonzalez-Kruger

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Intensive, in-depth interviews were conducted with 45 non-Hispanic white residents of three rural Nebraska meatpacking communities. The purpose of the investigation was to document (I) perceptions of community change; (2) community-wide benefits of a new Latino population; and (3) strategies for strengthening multi-ethnic rural communities. Data were analyzed using Thematic Analyses (Aronson 1994). Application of the findings, for strengthening rural communities, is discussed.

The composition of rural populations is changing at a remarkable rate largely due to immigration (movement into a country in which one is not a native) and migration (movement within a country). The population growth of US …

Family, Peer, And Acculturative Correlates Of Prosocial Development Among Latinos, Maria Rosario T. De Guzman, Gustavo Carlo

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The present study was designed to examine the roles of family cohesion and adaptability, parent and peer attachment, and acculturation in predicting prosocial behavior tendencies in Latino adolescents from Nebraska, A total of 63 Latinos (M age = 14.52 years) from Lincoln, NE, completed measures of acculturation, parent and peer attachment, family adaptability and cohesion, and tendencies to perform prosocial behaviors. Results of a series of multiple regression analyses suggest that acculturation negatively predicted pro social behavior tendencies (i.e., the higher the level of acculturation, the lower the tendency to perform prosocial acts). Peer but not parent attachment, and family …

An Analysis Of Refugee Resettlement Patterns In The Great Plains, John Gaber, Sharon Gaber, Jeff Vincent, Darcy Boellstorff

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Great Plains communities have been experiencing an influx of refugees but many communities are unaware of the international and national context for refugee resettlement. This article explores patterns impacting US Great Plains communities. This leads to three specific questions: (1) How many refugees have been resettled since 1983 in the US, in comparison to the Great Plains region, and where are they? (2) What are the patterns of the refugees resettled in the US versus the Great Plains region? And, (3) What are some of the economic benefits that can be anticipated in the resettlement of refugees in the Great …

Great Plains Research, Volume 14, Number 2, Fall 2004 - Annual Index

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Annual Index

Review Of Native American Sovereignty On Trial: A Handbook With Cases, Laws, And Documents By Bryan H. Wildenthal, David Wilkins

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Native American Sovereignty on Trial is part of the On Trial series that examines complex and controversial legal issues with an eye toward providing students and other interested readers with an analytical and educational examination of how "the law in all its various forms-constitutional, statutory, judicial, political, and customary-has shaped and reshaped the world in which we live today."

Review Of Come To Texas: Enticing Immigrants, 1865-1915 By Barbara J. Rozek, Frank Van Nuys

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Citizens in the southernmost reaches of the Great Plains, as Barbara J. Rozek demonstrates in her exhaustively researched study, strove to convince all able-bodied individuals from other states and Europe to "Come to Texas." Rozek examines a fifty-year period, from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of World War I, in which energetic Texans produced a stunning collection of almanacs, brochures, letters, newspapers, and pamphlets, trusting in the power of the written word to entice migration into the state. "Committed Texans did this," she asserts, "with a vigor, a persistence, and a creativity not always found in …

Review Of Who Are Canada's Aboriginal Peoples? Recognition, Definition, And Jurisdiction Edited By Paul L. A. H. Chartrand, Roy Todd

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Official recognition of indigenous peoples in North America has been a slow and uneven process. Many groups in Canada and the United States remain unrecognized and are thus denied collective and individual rights. This book deals with legal policy relating to recognition of indigenous peoples, analyzing Canadian constitutional issues and case law with particular emphasis upon the Metis, and with some comparisons between Canada and the United States.

Review Of Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat And Poultry Industry In North America By Donald D. Stull And Michael J. Broadway, Kendall Thu

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Stull and Broadway capture fifteen years' experience examining structural shifts and community consequences of an increasingly industrialized meat production system in North America, with particular attention to the meatpacking sector. Their impressive, wide-ranging coverage of changing beef, poultry, and pork production systems and their influence on rural cultures will no doubt be a staple resource for scholars, policy makers, and communities in the Great Plains and elsewhere grappling with dramatic changes in our nation's food system.
An initial chapter aptly outlines the contours of agricultural industrialization, followed by a chapter each devoted specifically to the three major meat sectors. The …

Review Of Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement And Nagpra By Kathleen S. Fine-Dare, James Riding In

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Fine-Dare tells the story of the American Indian movement to recover human remains and cultural objects taken from them by non-Indians for the purposes of study, display, and profit from the viewpoint of an anthropologist supportive of Indian issues who wants her profession used in a more positive way regarding Native peoples. To her, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is a means for understanding boarder historical currents invol ving the treatment of Indians, whether bad, good, or indifferent. She argues that relating this history is vital for fathoming the complexities of repatriation that began during the …

Review Of Preserving The Sacred: Historical Perspectives On Ojibwa Midewiwin By Michael Angel, Katherine Pettipas

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This volume is a critical historiography of the nature and meaning of the Midewiwin as it was, and still is, practiced by southwestern, western, and northern Anishinaabeg (Ojibwa or Chippewa) in both Canada and the United States. A self-described "culturally sensitive outsider," Angel has approached his subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing heavily from religious studies and historic and ethnographic documentation. The origins and functions of the Midewiwin are examined within the contexts of Anishinaabeg religion and society. Angel takes issue with the classification of the Midewiwin as a "revitalization movement" or a "crisis cult" by demonstrating that the "essential …

Review Of Creek Indian Medicine Ways: The Enduring Power Of Mvskoke Religion By David Lewis, Jr. And Ann T. Jordan, Susan A. Miller

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This collaborative work by Mvskoke (Creek) medicine man David Lewis Jr. and Euro-American anthropologist Ann T. Jordan focuses on the heles-hayv tradition of medicine that Lewis's family has kept for generations through the forced relocation from the Southeast to the eastern margins of the southern Great Plains. Lewis's first-person narrative occupies the heart of the book: chapters titled "Kinds of Medicine People," "Selection of Medicine People," and "Memories of Childhood in a Medicine Family"; a chapter on the sacred story encoding much of the tradition's essential knowledge; chapters on vegetal pharmacopoeia, medical practices, and ceremonies; and a chapter titled "The …

Review Of Eye On The Future: Business People In Calgary And The Bow Valley, 1870- 1900 By Henry C. Klassen, Vernon Jones

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The city of Calgary is well known for its entrepreneurial spirit, often associated with the Calgary Stampede and Alberta's wildcatting oil and gas industry. For those interested in the early history of the city and the Bow Valley, Henry Klassen's Eye on the Future is both readable and enlightening. Concentrating on the years 1870 through 1900, Klassen captures Calgary's frontier blend of rural and emerging urban life well before the era of oil and gas.
Calgary's dynamic growth during this period was due to its geography. At the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers, the Edmonton Trail from the …

Review Of Uniting Mountain And Plain: Cities, Law, And Environmental Change Along The Front Range By Kathleen A. Brosnan, Richard Hogan

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Brosnan offers a remarkably well-researched and well-written analysis of the Colorado Front Range urban ecology, focusing on Denver (the financial and commercial capital), Colorado Springs (the tourist town), and Pueblo (the factory town). Denver's business leaders receive the bulk of the attention here, but their efforts to promote a diverse regional industrial hinterland lead the reader through the mining, farming, and grazing regions of nineteenth-century Colorado. The narrative does not follow localities so much as problems and possibilities, beginning with the problem of extinguishing Native American claims (chapter 2) and establishing irrigated agriculture (chapter 3). The histories of Colorado Springs …

Review Of Americanizing The West: Race, Immigrants, And Citizenship, 1890-1930 By Frank Van Nuys, Gerhard Grytz

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Americanizing the West is an eloquently written account of Progressive reformers' concerted efforts to Americanize immigrants and ethnics in the American West, with a specific focus on the Mountain and Southwest regions, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Americanization in the West was not a simple replica of similar efforts in the American East. In the West, Americanizers encountered a unique multicultural environment and the presence of ethnic groups who resided there well before the arrival of the first "Anglos" in the region. Euro-American pioneers pouring into the area during the second half of the nineteenth century increasingly …

Review Of The Trajectories Of Rural Life: New Perspectives On Rural Canada Edited By Raymond Blake And Andrew Nurse, Michael Gertler

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The Trajectories of Rural Life presents papers from a Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy conference designed to go "beyond the myths of rural Canada's past to develop a clear picture of the present reality from all perspectives .... " This could be a complicated project. The chapters range from research reports to policy essays, with notable diversity in terms of discipline and approach. Despite some lack of clarity in overall concept, many of the contributions shine through. In addition to chapters on the cultural reconstruction of rural life in Quebec, minority experiences in rural Atlantic Canada, family violence in rural …

Great Plains Research, Volume 14, Number 2, Fall 2004 - Editorial Matter

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Editorial Matter

Review Of Remaking The American Mainstream: Assimilation And Contemporary Immigration By Richard D. Alba And Victor Nee, Hal Barron

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Co-authored by two distinguished sociologists, this book is a valuable synthesis of scholarship on recent immigration to the United States that explores whether assimilation is still a viable theory for understanding the new arrivals' experiences. In a thorough and nuanced analysis comparing contemporary patterns of acculturation with those of earlier European and Asian immigrants, Alba and Nee argue strongly for the continued utility of the concept. Notwithstanding some serious caveats and concerns, they are extremely optimistic about the future of immigrants and of American society, which they see as increasingly more united by common social experiences than divided along ethnic …

An Interim Report Of A Viking-Age & Medieval Archaeofauna From Undir Junkarinsfløtti, Sandoy, Faroe Islands, Thomas H. Mcgovern, Colin Amundsen, Sophia Perdikaris, Ramona Harrison, Yekaterina Krivogorskaya

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Cooperative international excavations at the site of Undir Junkarinsfløtti (27020) in the village of Sandur on the island of Sandoy, Faroe Islands in May 2003 recovered a stratified bone - rich midden deposit extending from the Viking Age to the early medieval period. The animal bone collection contains domestic mammals (cattle, sheep, dog, goat, and pig) and substantial amounts of fish (mainly cod), birds (mainly puffin and guillemot), and shellfish (mainly limpet). While the current collection has the archaeological limitations inherent in column samples, it suggests persistence of substantial pig keeping into the 13th c, and strongly indicates a sustainable …

Brown-Headed Cowbirds In Grasslands: Their Habitats, Hosts, And Response To Management, Jill Shaffer, Christopher Goldade, Meghan Dinkins, Douglas Johnson, Lawrence Igl, Betty Euliss

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

The brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) is an obligate brood parasite whose numbers have increased in recent decades to the potential detriment of the species that they parasitize. Thus, most management efforts focus on discouraging brown-headed cowbird parasitism or controlling brown-headed cowbird populations. Keys to discouraging cowbird parasitism or controlling populations of brown-headed cowbirds in the Great Plains are maintaining large expanses of grassland, eliminating foraging areas (e.g., feedlots) and perch sites, and reducing the extent of overgrazed pastures.