Indigenous Studies Commons^™

Conceptualizations Of Wisdom In The Native American Community, Lamar Smith

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This qualitative study examined implicit theories of wisdom in a sample of adult individuals who identified as Native American. The research question focused on definitions of wisdom as they exist in the Native American Community. A total of eight participants were asked to answer the question “What is wisdom and how does one become wise?”. Interviews approximately 60 minutes in length revealed several themes in participant’s conceptualizations of wisdom. The study revealed that participants believed wisdom to be based on fundamental building blocks of a worldview of interconnectedness, a collectivist social structure, and an individual value system promoting of personal …

American Indian Easter Eggs, Mark G. Thiel

Library Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Motivation In The Portland Chinuk Wawa Language Community, Abigail Elaina Pecore

Dissertations and Theses

Throughout the world, languages are becoming extinct at an alarming rate. Perhaps half of the 6,000-7,000 languages worldwide will go extinct in the next 50-100 years. One of these dying languages, Chinook Jargon or Chinuk Wawa, a language found in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, is in the process of being revitalized through the concerted efforts of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (CTGR). Reasons to revitalize endangered languages often seem irrelevant to our modern daily lives, and revitalizing these languages is a difficult process requiring much dedication, commitment, and persistence. In light of this significant struggle, understanding …

Review Of Holy Ground, Healing Water: Cultural Landscapes At Waconda Lake, Kansas. By Donald J. Blakeslee., Lauren W. Ritterbush

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In Holy Ground, Healing Water readers are treated to a historical journey through the changing cultural landscapes of the Waconda Lake area, northcentral Kansas. This region provides the setting for discussion of unique and representative Native American and EuroAmerican cultural developments in the Great Plains. Don Blakeslee, anthropologist with Wichita State University, briefly reviews roughly 13,000 years ofNative traditions, based on archaeological investigations in the region, then discusses the Pawnee Trail, early European and Euro-American expeditions, complex Native-Native and Native-Euro-American interactions during the 19th century, sacred and secular perceptions and uses of Waconda Spring, and Lincoln Park, a local example …

Review Of Generous Man - Ahxs-I-Tapina: Essays In Memory Of Colin Taylor, Plains Indian Ethnologist. Edited By Arni Brownstone And Hugh Dempsey., Daniel C. Swan

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This volume celebrates Colin Taylor's contributions to North American ethnology through the presentation 251 of 14 research articles that reflect the diversity and vigor of Taylor's scholarship. Taylor spent his entire life in the Sussex region of southeastern England and the majority of his career teaching at the University of Hastings. His interest in Native Americans began with a boyhood fascination that matured into a disciplined and enduring passion for research and scholarly discourse. Arni Brownstone and Hugh Dempsey, two respected scholars and close friends and colleagues of Taylor, edited the volume. The three of them, along with John C. …

Review Of Integrating Aboriginal Perspectives Into The School Curriculum: Purposes, Possibilities, And Challenges. By Yatta Kanu., Jim Silver

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This is an excellent book about an issue of importance for the future of cities in the Canadian prairies and Great Plains. It examines the difficult task of integrating Aboriginal cultural knowledge into school curricula. In the first chapter Yatta Kanu explains why this matters. In subsequent chapters she draws upon field research over the period 2003- 2007 with 84 Aboriginal students and 18 teachers in six low-income, inner-city schools in a Canadian prairie city with a large Aboriginal population. She brings together the results of an integrated series of research studies, each building on the one before, and the …

Review Of First Nations Education Policy In Canada: Progress Or Gridlock? By Jerry Paquette And Gerald Fallon., Mark Aquash

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

It is a daunting challenge to identify, define, and make sense of First Nations education in Canada. Much of our understanding of current First Nations education is determined by mainstream media. First Nation citizens are continuously reported to be in a deficit compared to their dominant Canadian counterparts. When we take a deeper look into First Nations education, however, we find a great diversity of both successes and challenges, based largely on the fact that there are 614 First Nation communities in Canada. Policies regarding First Nations education have blanketed all regions of Canada from the Maritimes to the Woodlands, …

Review Of Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council And The Origins Of Native Activism. By Bradley G. Shreve. Foreword By Shirley Hill Witt, Bruce E. Johansen

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

While many histories of the "Red Power" movement trace its origins to the founding of the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis during 1968 and the occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay a year later, Bradley G. Shreve offers a compelling case that youth activism began during the 1950s, most notably in the Southwest. The Kiva Club (University of New Mexico), the Tribe of Many Feathers (Brigham Young University), and the Sequoyah Club of Oklahoma, among others, joined into the Regional Indian Youth Council in 1959 and the National Indian Youth Council in 1961. In contrast to AIM, which …

Review Of Light From Ancient Campfires: Archaeological Evidence For Native Lifeways On The Northern Plains. By Trevor R. Peck., Matthew Boyd

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Despite the relatively long legacy of professional archaeological research in the northern Great Plains, few comprehensive syntheses of the region's 13,000- year human history have been produced in recent years. This is particularly the case for the Canadian side of the region, which has tended to be overlooked in most scholarly summaries of Great Plains prehistory. The shadowy nature of the Canadian prairies to the wider community of Plains archaeologists is not due to a lack of archaeological research in the region-Alberta, alone, has over 35,000 registered sites-but instead reflects the poor dissemination ofCRM (Culture Resource Management) reports and other …

Review Of Wives And Husbands: Gender And Age In Southern Arapaho History. By Loretta Fowler., Kathleen S. Fine-Dare

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Wives and Husbands will likely become a classic of ethnographically informed historical anthropology. From the moment distinguished anthropologist Loretta Fowler's work opens with its account of Little Raven and Walking Backward-a brother and sister born in the early nineteenth century who lived to see great changes- to its final pages, which offer at least ten "new lines of research" that scholars might do well to follow to correct errors regarding everything from women's status under change to the "reidentification process" undergone by educated Arapahos returning to their communities, a wide variety of readers will find themselves engaged in a book …

“We Will Hold Our Land:” The Cherokee People In Postrevolutionary North America, 1781-1792, Kevin T. Barksdale

History Faculty Research

In June of 1783, Spain’s newly-appointed Governor of Louisiana Estevan Miro convened a conference of southeastern Indians in Pensacola with representatives from the dominant regional Amerindian groups, including the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creeks in attendance. Among the attendees at the West Florida congress was a small contingent of Chickamauga Cherokee, led by their principal chief Dragging Canoe. During the parlay, Governor Miro implored the Indians to “not be afraid of the Americans,” promised to provide guns and ammunition in their ongoing efforts to prevent the further loss of their lands, and urged them to “continue to fight against American” westerners.

Recent Investigations Of Mission Period Activity On Sapelo Island, Georgia, Richard W. Jeffries, Christopher R. Moore

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Prior to their retreat to Florida in 1684, Muskogean-speaking Guale Indians inhabited much of what is now the Georgia coast. The arrival of Spanish missionaries in Florida and Georgia in the mid-1500s began what is known archaeologically as the mission period (1568-1684), a time of sustained interaction between the Spanish and the Guale people. Over time, population loss due to European-introduced diseases and conflict with English-backed Native American slave raiders resulted in a drastic reconfiguration of Guale society and the abandonment of the Guale's ancestral homeland (Worth 2007).

Sapelo Island (Figure 6.1) is the site of at least one Spanish …

Indian Agency In Spanish Florida: Some New Findings From Mission Santa Catalina De Guale, David Hurst Thomas

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The resurgence of Spanish mission archaeology in the American Southeast over the last three decades demonstrates the fallacy of the rigid and misleading Borderlands perspective on Franciscan-American Indian interactions. While engaging in the archaeology of Mission Santa Catalina de Guale, I suggested a broader-based,"cubist" approach toward the Spanish Borderlands history to seek, "multiple, simultaneous views of the subject" (Thomas 1989:7). Archaeology can indeed provide a critically important window through which to glimpse the Native American and European interactions in the Borderlands as elsewhere. By "democratizing" the past, archaeologists are framing new perspectives on minority populations and their experiences with dominant …

From Where I Am Standing: Indigenous Narrative And Photo Documentary, Nestor R. Veloz Passalacqua

Ethnic Studies

Latin American Indigenous Peoples (LAIP) are a marginalized segment in Latin America. They inhabit a sub-America and are forced to migrate due to socio-political struggle and cultural coercion. LAIP experience a transnational and transborder migration that reflects the quality of cultural hybridity and of regional, ethnic, and cultural crossings. The purpose of this study is to research LAIP ways of reclaiming and reproducing cultural practices that elicit Indigenous awareness, knowledge, and ethnic identification in a transnational setting. The study examines through interviews and photographs transborder experiences and the lives of the participants. As a result, the project reveals that LAIP …

The Debate Over Indian Removal In The 1830s, George William Goss

Graduate Masters Theses

The US in the 1830s debated the relationship between the US and Indian Communities of North America. The principles calling for equal rights and political democracy were in contradiction with the principles calling for the US to follow colonial principles of the European empires that had begun to invade North America in the late 1400s. The colonies that had revolted against British rule in the late 1700s continued their expansion of settlements and political incorporation. The proposal of Indian Removal was a straightforward expression of that expansionism. There was a national campaign developed in support of the Indian resistance, particularly …

The Establishment Of The United States National Parks And The Eviction Of Indigenous People, Emily A. Vernizzi

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Archaeoparasitology Of Chaco Canyon, Rachel Paseka

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Ancient cultures of the Colorado Plateau have been a focus of archaeoparasitology since its inception, and a vast parasitological history is recorded in coprolites preserved in this arid region. The inhabitants of Chaco Canyon dominated Ancestral Puebloan culture between 1050 and 1120 AD and were responsible for the construction of great towns, road systems, and early agriculture. Analysis of the parasites preserved in fecal remains contributes to an increased knowledge of ancient Chacoan health and culture. Nineteen coprolites from four sites in Chaco Canyon were rehydrated and analyzed microscopically for parasite remains. Rhabditiform and filariform nematode larvae were found from …

The Lived Experiences Of Participants In The Euchee/Yuchi Language Project: A Phenomenological Study Of Language Preservation, Jessica Park

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Native languages are disappearing quickly in this country, but there are many programs that are underway trying to save Native languages before they are gone. One such program is the Euchee/Yuchi Language Project which uses a modified version of the Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program (MALLP). Elder language speakers, masters, and younger members of the tribe, apprentices, meet daily in a two-hour language session. The goal of the session is to immerse the apprentices in the language by using conversational Euchee/Yuchi in the form of lessons, props, and presentations, so they can learn the language quickly. The purpose of this study …

Jackpot! A Legal History Of Indian Gaming In California, Aaron Peardon

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Indian Gaming has transformed the economic, political, and sociological landscape of California. The growth of Indian casinos has had a profound impact on both Indian and non-Indian communities alike. California tribes took the lead in legalizing Indian Gaming throughout the nation. The efforts of California tribes in the legislative and political process have enabled many tribal groups to rise out of poverty and to gain prosperity that would otherwise be impossible to achieve. They have also brought increased revenue to local communities and have provided thousands of jobs to all Californians.

This thesis discusses the historical relationships between Native American …

Exploratory Studies Into Possible Uses Of Calcareous Dolostone On The Shivwits Plateau, Jennifer Durk, Lauren Falvey, Karen G. Harry

Festival of Communities: UG Symposium (Posters)

Excavations at pueblo habitation sites on the Shivwits Plateau suggest that calcareous dolostone was regularly procured and used by the inhabitants of the Mt. Dellenbaugh region. Calcareous dolostone, a soft, powdery calcium carbonate, is not local to these sites but was presumably procured from somewhere beneath the rim of the Grand Canyon. In this poster, we present the results of exploratory experiments into possible uses of this resource. Specifically, we evaluate the performance characteristics of powdered dolostone with reference to two activities: pigment production and ceramic manufacture.