Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Examining How Task Forces Utilize Intelligence Methods During Anti-Human Trafficking Operations: Mitigating The Threat Of Human Trafficking Among Native American Women And Girls, Jessica Shockness

Theses and Dissertations

Native American women and girls, including First Nations people, have been disproportionately targeted due to centuries of marginalization, severe maltreatment, and gender inequality. To mitigate these violent acts, law enforcement and intelligence agencies should use various intelligence methods to identify and locate traffickers, victims, and high-risk locations. The intelligence methods that are analyzed in this study include open-source, geospatial and human intelligence. The lack of utilizing these methods can hinder the ability to mitigate human trafficking effectively. According to a study conducted through Northwestern University, Farrell et al. (2019) provided evidence showing that the Uniform Crime Reporting program continuously displays …

Modeling Wild Rice Bed Health: A Dual Metric Approach For Bed Strength And Invasive Impact, Seth Sisneros-Martinez

Journal of Earth and Life Science

Wild rice (mannoomin; Zizania palustris) is an aquatic grain that grows in slow-moving rivers and shallow bays throughout northern Minnesota. In Headquarters Bay on Leech Lake, wild rice has served as a cultural staple for Indigenous communities for centuries. However, its population has declined in recent years due to multiple environmental issues. One potential contributor is Eurasian watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum; EWM), an invasive species that forms dense mats capable of outcompeting native aquatic vegetation, including wild rice. EWM was first recorded on the southern shoreline of Leech Lake in 2005 and has since become widespread. This study …

Assessing Understory Along The Elk River (Hikshari') In Headwaters Forest Reserve, Humboldt County, California, Julie R. Meyers, Aliyah M. Ingram, Caleb N. Larkin, Joshua L. Carpenter

Environmental Science & Management Senior Capstones

Northern California’s extensive logging history and lack of forest management has altered old-growth coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests, leaving dense, homogenous second and third-growth forest stands. This has led to the use of modern restoration techniques such as variable density thinning (VDT) which aims to rehabilitate old-growth forest conditions by improving stand heterogeneity and light availability for understory species. Our study was done in Headwaters Forest Reserve (HFR) along the Elk River (Hikshari’) Trail in Humboldt County, California. Initially, the project was supervised by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Arcata Field Office. However, the 2025 U.S. government …

Blood Quantum And The Auto-Colonization Of The Michigan Anishinaabek, Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Book Chapters

Anishinaabe storyteller Basil Johnston described the chronological path of life in four stages, what he called the four hills of life. The first stage, linked to the East, is infancy and early childhood, a time of preparation and listening. The second stage, linked to the South, is youth, a time of doing things. The third stage, linked to the West, is adulthood, a time of vision. The fourth stage, linked to the North, is Old Age, a time of the fulfillment of the vision and a time of sacred learning and teaching.

The twelve Michigan Anishinaabek tribal nations are in …

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 …

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 …

"To Live And Thrive In Massachusetts": Native American Perspectives On Wealth, J. Cedric Woods, Allison B. Taylor, Phillip Granberry

Institute for New England Native American Studies Publications

The racial wealth gap has gained significant attention recently, in both national and regional discussions, owing to the accumulating data that shine ever brighter light on the large disparities between White, Latino, and Black households. Native American families are almost always left out of these discussions, however, in part because the same type of comprehensive wealth data does not exist for them due to sample size limitations. This is why Boston Indicators commissioned the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS) at UMass Boston to produce this unique report, released as part of our Racial Wealth Equity Resource Center …

Indigenous Technology Futurisms: Reclaiming Mackinac Island In Virtual Reality, Madeline A. Gupta

Library Map Prize

In Indigenous Technology Futurisms: Reclaiming Mackinac Island in Virtual Reality, Madeline A. Gupta introduces a place-based digital storytelling project that uses interactive mapping as the foundation for cultural reconnection and community wellness. Centered on Mackinac Island—ancestral land of the Anishinaabe people—the project features a custom-designed map by an Anishinaabe artist, allowing users to navigate a VR website by selecting specific locations across northern Michigan. Each map point opens into a spatial video experience paired with traditional audio content, including oral histories, poetry, and songs.

The project reframes digital cartography through an Indigenous lens, challenging Western colonial mapping practices that …

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 …

Huchum: The Legacy Of Fire Suppression, Indigenous Land Management, And Media Representation, Carolyn Coyne

Pomona Senior Theses

In my thesis, I examine how various forms of news media from the 1900s to present day in Ohlone territory have framed a particular hegemonic ideology around fire that matches early colonial journal entries – an ideology that is fueled by fear, sensationalism, and exclusion and directly commits violence against the Ohlone people. I investigate this time period because this is when modern news corporations, like The New York Times, rose into prominence. Specifically, I question how media representations of fire inform regulations over controlled burns; what are the similarities in discourse between media framing and policy? What tactics are …

[Review Of The Book Inscribing Sovereignties: Writing Community In Native North America, By P. H. Round]., Drew Lopenzina

English Faculty Publications

[Introduction] Phillip H. Round's new book follows in a line of intellectual enquiries over the last 20 years, including Hilary Wyss’ Writing Indians (2003), Lisa Brooks’ The Common Pot (2008), my own Red Ink (2012), and Round's previous monograph, Removable Type (2010), that delve into the nature of the written word and how it worked within the context of settler colonialism to transform Indigenous lives on the North American continent. As established by these previous works of scholarship, western literacy was not the miraculous portal into civilization that settler colonial agents often purported it to be. Because Native peoples already …

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 …

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 …

Occupied Lands, Occupied Histories: Activist-Historians And The Red Power Movement, Elena Rose Paz Thompson

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay.............................4

II. Primary Document Collection......25

III. Textbook Critique........................37

IV. New Textbook Writing.................42

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 …

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 …

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 …

Nanaboozhoo And Derrick Bell Go For A Walk, Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Articles

When the Anishinaabeg were new to Anishinaabewaki, they knew little about how to fend for themselves. The animals and plants took pity on them and taught the Anishinaabeg. One winter, as the food stores of the Anishinaabeg were running out, an ininaatig (maple tree) saw an Anishinaabe innini (man) weakly scavenge for food. The ininaatig decided to offer part of itself to the Anishinaabeg. The ininaatig told the innini to cut off a branch. Ininaatigwabo, delicious, thick maple syrup, oozed from the stump. There was enough to feed the innini for many days. And there were many, many ininaatigoog …

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.