Native American Studies Commons^™

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 …

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 …

Niipáitapiiyssin: How Blackfeet Ways Of Knowing Impact Identity And Well-Being, Mikalen Running Fisher

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis explores the vital role of history, traditional knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge, artifacts, and language in shaping the identity and well-being of Indigenous communities. It emphasizes how these components are vital for the survival and growth of Indigenous cultures. Using the Blackfoot Confederacy as a case study, the research highlights the significance of these elements in maintaining cultural continuity and resilience. The analysis is grounded in literature authored from an Indigenous perspective, ensuring an authentic representation of the values and insights inherent in these communities. This work aims to bridge existing gaps in the literature by demonstrating the profound …

“How Do We Carry All These Stories On Our Backs?” An Investigation Of Violence In Native American Literature As Seen In The Works Of James Welch, Joy Harjo, & Louise Erdrich, Madison R. Hinrichs

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Ancient Migrations In West Mexico: Mtdna Analyses, Patricio Gutiérrez Ruano

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite the mounting evidence that suggests The Aztatlán tradition in West Mexico was a major cosmopolitan region during the Postclassic period (AD 900-1521) with connections to the rest of what is now Mexico, archaeologists have characterized items in West Mexico as culturally distinct from the rest of Mesoamerica. Recently, endogenous, and exogenous material culture has been interpreted as movement and exchange of goods and ideas between subregions and surrounding areas, all of which mention physical contact and trade were involved between Aztatlán and elsewhere. This has included interacting with areas as far as the U.S. Southwest, as well as in …

Demonstratives In Nsélišcn ‘Montana Salish’, Aspen A. Decker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis presents a detailed analysis of the Nsélišcn ‘Montana Salish’ demonstrative system. I propose that there are three features encoded in the demonstratives that I examined in this thesis: (i) proximity of the speaker in relation to the referent, (ii) common ground between the speaker and addressee, and (iii) visibility of the referent. I further propose that the Nsélišcn demonstrative system distinguishes three degrees of proximity: proximal, medial, and distal. Nsélišcn is a member of the Southern Interior branch of the Salishan language family. The data analyzed in this thesis was collected from native Nsélišcn speakers.