Native American Studies Commons^™

Unveiling Legacies: Exploring And Analyzing Cultural Artifacts In The Higbee Collection, Samantha Staller

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Anthropology and the Cummings Center to find ways to properly analyze an archaeological collection's artifacts to understand the overall significance of everything better. Before starting my research, I came up with the following questions: Can any artifacts be considered culturally affiliated? Is everything in the collection authentic? What is the overall background of the collection? Does this collection have any connection to Ohio history? Can anything in the collection be dated? Throughout the research, I will create an Excel inventory list to include qualitative and quantitative data from the artifacts to give insight into what is included in the Higbee …

Kelp Guardians Can Save The World: A Food Sovereignty Lab Report Of The Ghvtlh-K’Vsh Shu'-Srnelh-'I~ (Kelp Guardians) California Sea Grant, Delaney A. Schroeder-Echavarria

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

As partners of the Ghvtlh-k’vsh Shu'-srnelh-'i~ (Kelp Guardians) California Sea Grant project, the Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab and Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute has actively engaged with local educators, Tribal organizations, and Tribal Nations to create youth-centered curricula, researched through a community-based participatory research lens. This is demonstrated through an innovative approach to recruiting and retaining Indigenous youth and community interest in coastal and marine ecosystems and resources by connecting with Indigenous cultural practices, Indigenous sciences, and community-based programs to encourage future careers. The Kelp Guardians project is led by the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation (TDN or Nation) and includes various …

Weaving Threads Of Identity: A Qualitative Study On Reconnecting Indigenous Folx, Rachael L. Fuller

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This research is a qualitative phenomenological inquiry into reconnecting Indigenous participants’ experiences in how they navigate and integrate their cultural heritage, identity, and intergenerational experiences to shape their present and future lives. Previous literature examines characterizing Indigeneity, navigating multiple spaces, and culture as wellness. Rooted in Tribal Critical Race Theory, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine participants who self-identified as Indigenous. A thematic analysis highlighted six themes of reconnection: a) oppression, b) ancestors, c) belonging, d) barriers to reconnection, e) learning, and f) connection with community. This research makes a contribution to the growing Indigenous identity literature by providing an …

Workable Seams, Jackson Mills Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In Jackson Mills Smith’s Workable Seams, readers encounter the stories, landscapes, and lives of rural Knox County, Indiana, from the oscillating vantage of a Hoosier boy raised with a Cajun sensibility. After relocating from Louisiana to the river bottoms of the crossroad state at a young age, the speaker gradually uncovers a local history only previously understood in fragmentary shards and fading glimpses.

Alternating between semi-lyrical embodied experiences and memories, documentary pieces in conversation with the state’s historical archive, and the retelling of exaggerated local yarns, poetry is a means of inquiry in Workable Seams. Topics range from …

An Overview Of Nagpra And The 2024 Revisions, Emily V. Owens-Barber

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Section 11 of the National Museum of the American Indian Act (NMAIA) was added to public law in 1989. This required the Smithsonian Museum to repatriate any human remains or funerary objects associated with Native American Ancestry back to their tribes. In 1990, The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was added to federal legislation expanding on this section and requiring that every federally funded institution in the United States that held Native American Remains or funerary objects in their collection must follow this regulation to continue to receive federal funding. Nearly 33 years later in the autumn …

Feminine Felons: Violent Offenders' Intersectional Experiences In Twentieth-Century Montana, Cassidy Ann Vander Voort

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper explores the treatment of violent female offenders in Montana in both the media and prison system from 1900-1960. Women of all races faced gender discrimination from both the carceral system and popular media. Local newspapers sensationalized crimes committed by female offenders, portraying them as women who lived outside of the expectations of womanhood in the twentieth century. Newspapers and courts placed women into two categories: “mad/sad” female offenders, who received forgiveness for their crimes; or unforgivable, “bad” offenders. Crime did not determine these categorizations; instead, gender expectations of the white middle class shaped female criminals’ treatment. If these …

Worn History: The Biography And Value Transformation Of Emma Sansaver's Dress, Lauren I. Stgeorge

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines the life of Emma Sansaver’s beaded buckskin dress as both a material object and a cultural witness. Worn during her time at the Fort Shaw Government Industrial Indian Boarding School and the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, the dress intersects with assimilationist policy, Indigenous resilience, public spectacle, and personal memory. Unlike the regalia of her teammates, Emma’s dress was preserved, first by Emma herself, then by her descendants, and continues to be cared for and displayed in educational and institutional settings today.

Using the theoretical frameworks of Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff, this project approaches the dress …

Place-Based Learning Practices: A Diptych Case Study Of Human And More-Than-Human Relationality At The Tribal And Western Academic Institutional Interface, Karley M. Rojas-Vienneau

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The ‘Place-Based Learning Practices Project’ is a graduate project under the Native American Studies Department Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab and Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute (FSL). Making contributions at the intersection of Western academia and Indigenous science, it imagines and realizes content, policies, and protocols surrounding two case studies and the larger cal poly humboldt (cph) institution which respect, honor, and uplift Indigenous sovereignty and resurgence in partnership with the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe and the greater regional tribal community. Encompassing two projects internal and external to the institution, I aim to address the construction of controlled and protective environments …

Indigenous-Industrial Heritage: Centering Indigenous Voices In Minnesota's Iron Range, Larissa A. Juip

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Industrial heritage refers to the material remains, sites, landscapes, and practices associated with industrial and extractive activities. As a field, it has historically been concerned with the conservation, management, and interpretation of industrial sites and activities and forms a central narrative within Minnesota's museums. Yet such accounts often privilege object-centered narratives while silencing the presence, knowledge, and contributions of Indigenous and Descendant communities, obscuring their enduring relationships to extractive landscapes. In recent decades, critiques of traditional industrial heritage approaches have identified gaps in the discipline related to the exclusion of marginalized populations, including Indigenous Peoples. Minnesota is home to eleven …

Re-Indigenizing And Collaboratively Tending Urban Greenspaces, Divinity Nnenne Adewale

University Honors Theses

This work details the active process of land tending with the intention of re-Indigenization in the Pacific Northwest at several Portland sites; The Native American Student Community Center, PSU Oak Savanna, and the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. Land tending is an intuitive process, one rooted in love and respect for life of all forms as well as becoming the perpetual student; land tending is not a skill to be mastered, only practiced. Unlike environmental management, tending cannot be done separate from the earth, in a classroom or otherwise. Connections are what tending is built on top of: the foundation; effort …

Methods In Environmental Studies, Erika Dunagan, Maya Mendoza, Posey Graber, Alex Cullins, Emma Mcginnis, Ally Nepomuceno, Isabella Buchan

Featured Student Work

This publication is a collection of undergraduate research conducted in the Methods in Environmental Studies course at the University of San Francisco in Fall 2024. The student-led projects explore the intersections of place, policy, ecology, and cultural identity through applied environmental research methodologies. Topics include a decolonial examination of the Forest Park Mound Group and Indigenous resilience in St. Louis; a comparative study of Navajo cosmology and ecological justice; a social and environmental impact assessment of Costa Rica’s National Decarbonization Plan; a psychogeographical analysis of Golden Gate Park and its impact on the psyche, emotions, behaviour, and health of urban …

Guns, Glass, And Metal And The Applications Of Traditional Technology In The 19th Century Southern Platte, Aaron Toussaint

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I investigate how Indigenous communities of the North American Central Plains navigated settler-colonialism by adapting traditional hunting technology. To frame this I ask, how and why traditional technology was favored over introduced firearm technology? I investigate this by examining archaeological collections from Fort Vasquez and the Coffin's Buffalo Kill Site, ethnographic history of the Central Plains, Indigenous ledger art, and interviewing a ledger artist. This study uses a multifaceted theoretical approach to connect hybrid projectile point artifacts, with Indigenous historic documentation, to recognize Indigenous agency in the 19th century. This thesis counters historic narratives of the 19th …

November 20, 2024 Nagpra And Tribal Relations Committee Meeting Minutes, Bryan Morey

University NAGPRA and Tribal Relations Committee

Minutes from the November 20, 2024 meeting of Western Kentucky University's NAGPRA and Tribal Relations Committee. The meeting was conducted via Zoom.

Powerpoint: Charges Of Forgery: Roger Williams And The Narragansett Deed To Providence, Heather Marie Rockwell, Jeroen Van Den Hurk Ph.D., William Leeman, Liza Tietjen

Rare Book Salon Fall 2024: Charges of Forgery

In the Fall 2024 Rare Book Salon, Salve’s archivist and faculty with expertise in the fields of archaeology, cultural and historic preservation, and history engage in a multidisciplinary discussion spanning Indigenous histories and land evidence. In this 1896 paper from Salve Special Collections on the authenticity of the 1638 deed to Moshassuck, which would become the site of Providence, George Paine uses legal evidence and primary sources to examine the document signed by Sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi that conveyed the land rights to the English colonizer.

The Diyinii Of Naachid: Diné Rhetoric As Ritual, Edward L. Karshner

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Rhetoric is far more than a theory of communication or the antiquated ancestor of freshman composition courses. As a system, rhetoric is the process that directs, on the one hand, individual experiences with the world and structures, and on the other, the stories cultures tell about themselves. These foundational narratives (myths) reveal a culture’s metaphysical understanding of the nature of reality, the psychological understanding of human nature, and the epistemological notion of what can be known. Using the Diné Bahané, this paper will explore Diné rhetoric as naachid, an inclusive, outward-directed communication model of problem solving which functions …

The Process Of Healing Individual And Communal Traumatic Experiences Through Natural And Cultural Reconnection In Silko’S Ceremony, Zeina Y. Ghanem

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

Trauma is central in Leslie Silko's Ceremony (1977), however, Tayo and the Laguna Pueblo community also experience healing through reconnecting with the land and its nature. Critiques by Aaron DeRosa, Alexandra Ganser, Michelle Satterlee, and Martin Premoli converge on the theme of trauma, each offering unique insights. DeRosa expands on the notion of cultural trauma and its impact on individuals and communities, advocating for adaptive cultural responses to trauma. Ganser explores Tayo's struggle with violence and identity, advocating for inclusive ceremonial practices. Satterlee emphasizes Tayo's embodiment of cultural struggle and connection to the land, while Premoli extends this to include …

Patterns Of Pride Lesson Plan, Elizabeth Thomas

P-12 Lesson Plans

In this art lesson for upper elementary students, we study the art of Jeffrey Gibson from the Zuckerman Museum of Art exhibition Jeffrey Gibson: They Teach Love, from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundations and analyze his contemporary post-modern artistic contributions alongside contemporary traditional Native American bead weaving and historical Native American bead weaving. We consider how to make visual patterns from aspects of our cultural identity and how how to make a bead weaving art project in the elementary art classroom. This lesson plan pairs Georgia Visual Art standards with third grade Social Studies standards.

October 31, 2024 Nagpra And Tribal Relations Commitee Meeting Minutes, Bryan Morey

University NAGPRA and Tribal Relations Committee

Minutes from the October 31, 2024 meeting of Western Kentucky University's NAGPRA and Tribal Relations Committee. The meeting was conducted via Zoom.

Rights Of Nature: The Indigenous-Led Movement For Sovereignty And A Sustainable Future, Kathryn Schug, Ted Gordon

The Journal of Social Encounters

The rights of nature movement works to grant legal rights to beings other than humans. Led by Indigenous communities across the globe, the movement is grounded in commonly shared Indigenous beliefs that regard non-human beings as are our relatives and as deserving of the same legal rights as humans. Grounded in Indigenous worldviews, the rights of nature movement pursues the twin goals of creating an environmentally sustainable future and enshrining legal protections for Indigenous values and practices. This article explores how the White Earth Nation, a federally recognized Ojibwe tribal government in Minnesota became the first in the United States …

September 26, 2024 Nagpra And Tribal Relations Commitee Meeting Minutes, Bryan Morey

University NAGPRA and Tribal Relations Committee

Minutes from WKU's NAGPRA and Tribal Relations Committee's September 2024 meeting held via Zoom.