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Relationship Between Religion And Native American Identity, Gennaro W. Milo

Graduate Research Posters

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a relationship between religious affiliation and Native American Identity. Based on the findings of this study, a component of a Native American's Identity is their religious affiliation. To contribute to the research on Native American and Alaskan Native identity, this study targeted the teenage demographic of ages 12 to 19 years old. Over growing concern, expressed by tribal elders, about a loss of cultural identity amongst teens, this study investigates a connection between a teen’s sense of identity and their religious affiliation (Quigley, 2019). This study used a multiple-choice …

Cultural Appropriation And The Plains' Indian Headdress, Marisa Wood

Auctus: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

“Cultural appropriation” can be defined as the borrowing from someone else’s culture without their permission and without acknowledgement to the victim culture’s past. Recently there has been a conversation taking place between Native American communities and non-Indian communities over cases of cultural appropriation, specifically the misuse of the Plains’ Indian headdress, which Natives compare to the Medal of Honor. The “hipster subculture”, which can be defined as a generally pro-consumerist, anti-capitalist group of middle-to-upper class non-Indian Americans, has selectively appropriated aspects of many minority cultures; this action has heavily trended toward aspects of Native American culture. As a result, Native …

Cultural Appropriation Of The Plains Native American Headdress In The 21st Century By Middle-To-Upper Class American Non-Indians, Marisa Wood

Undergraduate Research Posters

My research addresses the cultural appropriation of the Plains’ Native American headdress by middle to upper class American non-Indians belonging to the hipster subculture. The hipster subculture appropriates minority cultures while also receiving the benefits of the majority culture to which they belong. The hipster subculture is influenced by a generally limited knowledge of Native American culture and the trends pressed by corporations. Native Americans also contribute to stereotype continuation in order to make money.

I reviewed six journal articles addressing culture appropriation in fashion, spirituality and stereotypes as well as six journal articles addressing the relationship between identity and …

[Review Of] Mark Rifkin. When Did Indians Become Straight? Kinship, The History Of Sexuality, And Native Sovereignty, Lindsey Schneider

Ethnic Studies Review

Mark Rifkin's second monograph. When Did Indians Become Straight, is an intellectually rigorous and theoretically dense work that explores the relationship between Indigenous political formations and heteronormativity by presenting a literary history of sexuality that spans the last two centuries. Rifkin argues that the settler state's investment in, and enforcement of, heterosexuality as the basic organizing structure of society is a response to the fact that "Indigeneity puts the state in crisis by raising fundamental questions about the legitimacy of its (continued) existence" (37). As a result, Indigenous geopolitical alliances that exceed liberal state logics of what counts as "proper …

[Review Of] Edward Charles Valandra. Not Without Our Consent: Lakota Resistance To Termination, 1950-59, Marlon D. Sherman

Ethnic Studies Review

Although South Dakota is the home territory of many Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nations, it has often been a dangerous place to be an Indian, especially in the western half of the state, where most of the tribal lands lie. Ranchers, miners and others have a long history of trying to lay claim to those lands, using, alternately, quasi-legal and violent means.

[Review Of] Jim Zwick. Inuit Entertainers In The United States, Brian Baker

Ethnic Studies Review

The stories documented in this book about Inuit entertainers in the United States reveals important events and circumstances pertaining to the lived experiences of Esther Eneutseak and her daughter Columbia, "the only Eskimo born in the United States," during a time period (1890s-1920s) when the indigenous peoples to North America participated in world fairs and expositions as living exhibits. Were these indigenous people as cultural performers in control of their own lives? Did they possess the power and authority to make their own decisions on their own terms? In an attempt to answer these questions, the author, Jim Zwick, makes …

"Their Sleep Is To Be Desecrated": California's Central Valley Project And The Wintu People Of Northern California, 1938- 1943, April Farnham

Ethnic Studies Review

The morning of July 14, 1944, was intended to be a moment of celebration for the City of Redding, California. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes had been scheduled to arrive in the booming city to dedicate Shasta Dam, a national reclamation project of great pride to local citizens and construction workers. Just days prior, however, the dedication ceremony had been canceled due to the inability of Ickes to leave Washington D.C.. Instead, a small group of U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) officials, Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) officials, and local city officials quietly gathered within the dam's $19,400,000 …

[Review Of] Robert Utley, Battlefield And Classroom: An Autobiography Of Richard Henry Pratt, Sarah R. Shillinger

Ethnic Studies Review

Battlefield and classroom is an important book that looks at a crucial era in American Indian history. Robert Utley's notes have done an excellent job in making Richard Pratt and his motivations and impact on American Indian tribal life accessible to the average reader while retaining the book's value as a scholarly work. It is a must read for those attempting to understand the importance of the boarding school era. With this book, Utley has successfully reopened the debate that has surrounded Richard Pratt and his motives.

[Review Of] John M. Coward. The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity In The Press, 1820-90, Cynthia R. Kasee

Ethnic Studies Review

It will not come as news to people familiar with Native American history the role the print medium has played in costructing [constructing] public images of indigenous Americans. What is refreshing is the way in which Coward offers his insights on the matter. He has chosen the period of the United States' most feverish expansion into "the West," a time when newspapers and related print sources were most active in defining now-common stereotypes of both sides in the ensuing conflicts.

[Review Of] Bruce E. Johansen, (Ed.) The Encyclopedia Of Native American Economic History, Robert Mark Silverman

Ethnic Studies Review

The Encyclopedia of Native American Economic History offers a unique perspective on economic development in North America, primarily because it constantly reminds the reader of the fundamental contradictions that this process has entailed. A view of economic processes fundamentally different from orthodox scholarly analysis emerges in many of the volume's entries. In total a picture of economic activity is projected that links consumption, cultural conflict, social and ecological reproduction, and the transformation of group identity. This volume takes exploratory steps toward the development of alternative explanations of economic growth and change in society, particularly as these processes relate to the …

[Review Of] Raymond A. Bucko. The Lakota Ritual Of The Sweat Lodge, James V. Fenelon

Ethnic Studies Review

This well-researched book presents an excellent anthropological discussion of the "ritual" aspects of the "sweat lodge" as practiced among some Lakota, while posing some very thorny problems in terms of treatment of religion, knowledge and spirituality among Native American people (Deloria, 1995).

[Review Of] Peter C. Rollins And John E. O'Connor, Eds. Hollywood's Indians: The Portrayal Of The Native American In Film, Connie Jacobs

Ethnic Studies Review

Hollywood inherited conflicting myths of Native Americans: barbaric savages or "Noble Savage." Influenced by the latter romantic view, James Fenimore Cooper in print and George Catlin and Edward Curtis in art conveyed to an American public a portrait of a noble but vanishing race of America's first people. The dime store novels and Wild West shows of the late 1800s played with the dueling idea of a noble yet menacing Red Man, and Hollywood picked up this created myth of American Indians which, while ostensibly sympathetic, actually perpetuated stereotypes of a depraved and primitive race. Hollywood then packaged these images, …

[Review Of] Susan Lobo And Steve Talbot, Eds. Native American Voices: A Reader, Elsa O. Valdez

Ethnic Studies Review

This valuable collection of readings edited by leading scholars in the field enriches the social science and educational literature for several reasons. First, the book provides a wealth of information for both undergraduate and graduate students. The readings are multidisciplinary, and contain scholarly articles, journalistic selections, documents, oral history and testimony, songs and poetry, maps and charts. The readings encompass a global approach with their foci on Indian peoples of the United States, as well as a few selections of indigenous groups in Canada and Latin America. The book is arranged into nine interrelated parts with discussion questions, key terms, …

[Review Of] Devon A. Mihesuah, Ed. Natives And Academics: Researching And Writing About American Indians, Susan L. Rockwell

Ethnic Studies Review

As a white scholar of American Indian autobiographies, I approached this collection of essays edited by Devon A. Mihesuah, Associate Professor of History at Northern Arizona University, with both anticipation and trepidation. Conversations about the place of white scholars in all areas of ethnic studies has crested again recently and is appearing in many academic journals. In the May 1998, PMLA (113.3), the Guest Column by Nellie Y. McKay, Professor of American and African American Literature at University of Wisconsin, Madison, states that too many qualified white scholars are not being asked to fill positions, which results in African American …

[Review Of] Mary B. Davis, Ed., Native America In The Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia, David M. Gradwohl

Ethnic Studies Review

This extensive tome, packed with up-to-date information on contemporary Native Americans, is a veritable mother lode for students, teachers, and researchers in American Indian Studies. Scholars in general ethnic studies will find the data useful for comparative work with other ethnic groups. This single-volume encyclopedia should be snapped up by all public and tribal libraries as well as schools and universities wanting to provide their clienteles with sources that are increasingly sought by educational institutions with multicultural curriculum needs and business or administrative offices responding to diversity goals.