Native American Studies Commons^™

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 …

Mouralherwaqh Coastal Wetland Road Crossing Da'luk, Pakunihanich Nicoli Martin

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The integration of Indigenous and Western science plays an essential role in Tribally led collaborations for land management. This process of woven sciences is rooted in reciprocal relations and partnerships guided by Tribal Nations. Our cohort was invited by Wiyot Tribal Representatives to investigate a culvert located within the wetlands of Mouralherwaqh— a parcel of land reacquired by the Wiyot Tribe in 2022. This document seeks to share our experience and analysis as part of the Wiyot Tribe’s broader journey in navigating ecocultural restoration projects within Mouralherwaqh. The four community interests we investigated for the wetland crossing included a resized …

Resilience And Resistance: Culture, Conversion, And Survival Among The Stockbridge Mohicans, Mariah N. Ramdeen

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis investigates the history of conversion among the Mohican band in Stockbridge, Massachusetts from the 1730s to the 1740s. Focusing on the praying town under the ministry of Reverend John Sergeant at Stockbridge in 1736, I seek to reconstruct the resistance and survivance at the heart of the Stockbridge Mohicans’ experience. My research will explore why the Mohicans chose to establish the Stockbridge praying town and why they chose to convert to Christianity, the religion of the Puritan colonizers. I will also explore how they used their conversion to promote their own community goals. While praying towns were designed …

(Special Section, Hymns Beyond The Congregation Ii): Spiritual Concert-Fundraisers, Singing Conventions, And Cherokee Language Learning Academies: Vernacular Southern Hymnbooks In Noncongregational Settings, Jesse P. Karlsberg, Kaylina M. Crawley, Sara S. Hopkins

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Noncongregational settings were integral to hymnody in the postbellum settler colonial context of the southern United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The incorporation of hymn singing into a wide range of noncongregational settings served Black, white, and Native populations in navigating unsettled racial dynamics during this period across the US South and its diasporas. This essay features three case studies examining hymn collections intended or repurposed for a range of noncongregational uses: spiritual collections connected with the performing ensembles of black institutions, a shape-note songbook that attempted to bridge singing convention and congregational contexts, and a …

Care And The Funny Business Of Unsettling Land Acknowledgements, Salma Monani, David S. Walsh, Janelle Wertzberger

All Musselman Library Staff Works

This article points to the “funny business” that invariably accompanies the practice of land acknowledgments. By highlighting the idea of “funny business,” we illuminate its double entrendre – its humor as well as the smoke and mirrors of what The Care Collective ([2020]. The care manifesto: The politics of interdependence. Verso.) describes as “carewashing,” communication strategies designed to proffer a sense of concern, while all the while continuing exploitative practices that deny and obstruct these very concerns. We meld humor with seriousness to interrogate land acknowledgments, expose the perplexing dilemmas of Indigenous and colonial contexts, and push past to …

Music Of The Divine: Interweaving Threads Connecting Contemporary Chant-Based Piano Repertoire, Jeremy D. Duck

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

The purpose of this document is to prove chant remains an important source of inspiration among living composers, and, despite the number of piano works already incorporating chant, composers today are still finding unique ways to include chant in their music. To achieve this objective, representative works have been selected for research and analysis for four of the major chant traditions. Connor Chee’s The Navajo Piano, Victoria Bond’s Illuminations on Byzantine Chant, and Hayes Biggs’ E.M. am Flügel: Poem-Étude for Piano Solo, though the chants from which they are inspired are diverse in concept and style, they …

Unraveling The Tapestry Of Indigenous Maize In North America: A Case Study Of Pawnee Ancestral Maize, Kahheetah Barnoskie

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Studies on Indigenous ancestral landrace maize in North America has significant historical and scientific importance. Indigenous peoples, such as the Pawnee people, have been cultivating maize for thousands of years, resulting in diverse varieties adapted to their local environments. This study aims to deepen the knowledge of Indigenous maize by examining specific varieties from the Pawnee, including a comparative analysis of the genetic makeup through DNA sequencing. This study used Genotyping by Target Sequencing (GBTS) method to examine the genetic variation and characteristics among the multiple varieties the Pawnee people once grew historically, providing valuable information about the evolutionary history …

"I Call It Hunting": Centuries Of Violence Against Native American Women, Antonia Felix

Educational Leadership Department Publications

Native American and Pacific Islander women are missing and murdered at an alarming and relentless rate. The history of violence against this population starts with European contact in the fifteenth century and continues to this day with Native women suffering the highest rate of sexual assault per capita in the nation. This panel presentation held in observance of the International Day of Eliminating Violence Against Women concludes with a recognition of Native American resilience and actions all Americans can take to help reduce these crimes.

Hey, Viktor!, Ken Derry

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film view of Hey, Viktor! (2023) directed by Cody Lightning.

Programa De La Conferencia Segundo Congreso Internacional De Iconografía Precolombina

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

Barcelona, 2023.

Victòria Solanilla, organizador

17 al 20 de octubre de 2023.

En el Museu de Cultures del Món de Barcelona. Calle Montcada, nº12-14, 08003, Barcelona.

Y en el Institut d’Estudis Catalans. Calle del Carme, nº 47, 08001, Barcelona.

Organizado por el GRUP d'ESTUDIS PRECOLOMBINS· con el apoyo del MUSEU ETNOLÒGIC I DE CULTURES DEL MÓN· INSTITUT D'ESTUDIS CATALANS· SOCIETAT CATALANA D'ESTUDIS HISTÒRICS

In Quest Of A Mythopoetic Native American Subjectivity: Joy Harjo’S Poetry, Aya Elbably

Dentistry

In their resistance to the Anglo-American colonialism and white supremacy, Native American writers use storytelling and mythical motifs to reclaim their Indigenous cultural memory. Through these mythical narratives, they seek to emphasize their tribal cultures, political sovereignty and nationalism. In their challenge of the traditional negative stereotypes, Native women writers have correspondingly engaged in a process of decolonization and self-definition to reclaim their subjectivity. Hence, this paper examines some of Joy Harjo’s poems that are published in In Mad Love and War (1990) and She Had Some Horses (1983) volumes. Drawing on Native feminism and Gerald Vizenor’s concept of ‘survivance’ …

Social Studies Standards And Teacher Preparation In Minnesota: An Examination In Relationship To Native American History, Kellian Clink

Library Services Publications

Five teacher preparation programs were examined to understand how teacher candidates are prepared to educate their students about Native American history in Minnesota.

Justice, Pandemics, And Museums In Cyberspace: Archaeology Museums’ Decolonization Projects During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Samuel Besse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper explores three Archeology Museums (Historic St. Mary’s City, James Madison’s Montpelier, and the American Museum of Natural History), their attempts at addressing the colonial narratives that museums are built on, and how the Covid-19 pandemic and protests over George Floyd’s death affected these projects. I place a special effort on the online presence of these museums, as this is the main way visitors interacted with the museums during the pandemic. After discussing the origins of museum’s decolonization efforts and their efforts to make an online presence, I talk about the Covid-19 pandemic and the events around George Floyd’s …

"The Best Interests Of The Child:" Parental Claims In Nebraska Child Custody Cases, 1877–1924, Esme Krohn

Digital Legal Research Lab

Research poster titled "The Best Interests of the Child:" Parental Claims in Nebraska Child Custody Cases, 1877–1924; presented via the Digital Legal Research Lab NSF REU Site, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, August 2023.

Advisor: Katrina Jagodinsky

Resistance Narratives: Storytelling Of Transnational Insurgencies In 1960-70s Us And Mexico, Tania Libertad Balderas

English Language and Literature ETDs

Resistance Narratives: Storytelling of Transnational Insurgencies in 1960-70s US and Mexico emphasizes how the narratives from the Mexican Insurgency, the American Indian Movement (AIM), and the leftist faction of the Chicana/o Movement in the 1960s and 1970s articulate intersecting notions of resistance, liberation, and transnational solidarity. The comparative analysis of the testimonial novel Las mujeres del alba (2019) by Chihuahuan novelist Carlos Montemayor, the autobiographies Lakota Woman (1991) and Ohitika Woman (1993) by Sičháŋǧu Lakȟóta writer and AIM militant Mary Brave Bird (formerly Crow Dog), and the memoirs and plays by the San Diego-based group Teatro de las Chicanas, collected …

Habeas At Home And Heart: Progressive Era Cases Of Spousal Confinement To Nebraska's Psychiatric Households, Isabelle Childs

Digital Legal Research Lab

No abstract provided.

The Allegory Of United States Settlers V. Native Americans In Wes Craven's The Hills Haves Eyes (1977), Blue Van Alst

University Honors Theses

The year 1977 saw the release of Wes Craven’s second major production, The Hills Have Eyes. A film that sits within a filmic library of Craven that works to use the horror genre to reflect on and critique the American society that he lived in. The Hills Have Eyes employs the stereotypes that the films of John Ford helped to solidify in U.S. society. He does this in order to explore the tense historical relationships between Indigenous and United States settlers during the time of westward expansion. Using the white middle class Carter family to serve as settlers, and …

/////// Babaamiwizh – Blood Memory And How We Carry Ancestral Histories /////// On Memory, Immersive Theatre, Improvisation, & Absurdity, Olivia Shortt

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

babaamiwizh – blood memory and how we carry intergenerational histories: a collection of fragmented stories and thoughts on making Indigenous art. These writings attempt to find the balance of an artist's humanity, the artistic process and working with colonial institutions. I am stitching together my perspective on Indigeneity, museums and the process of repatriation, collaboration with trusted community members, as well as the land and its medicines.

Citing Seeds, Citing People: Bibliography And Indigenous Memory, Relations, And Living Knowledge-Keepers, Megan Peiser Choctaw Nation Of Oklahoma

Criticism

By turning the page or reading further, you are accepting a responsibility to this story, its storyteller, its ancestors, and its future ancestors. You are accepting a relationship of reciprocity where you treat this knowledge as sacred for how it nourished you, share it only as it has been instructed to share, and to ensure it remains unviolated for future generations.

This story is told by myself, Megan Peiser, Chahta Ohoyo. I share knowledge entrusted to me by Anishinaabe women I call friends and sisters, by seed-keepers of many peoples Indigenous to Turtle Island, and knowledge come to me from …

Listening To Bamewawagezhikaquay’S Teachers: Jane Johnston Schoolcraft’S Citational Cosmopolitics, Shelby Johnson

Criticism

This article argues that Bamewawagezhikaquay, or Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, offers vital citations of Anishinaabe cosmologies, including lineages of human and nonhuman teachers and perspectives on animate archives that should inflect new approaches to textual studies. Bamewawagezhikaquay’s writings express a citational cosmopolitics, a practice where Bamewawagezhikaquay invokes, and occasionally translates into English, human and more-than-human agents in the cocreation of Anishinaabe knowledge. In her descriptions of Anishinaabe plants and geographies, she models a citational praxis that intersects with resurgent frameworks on orienting to Anishinaabe writings, including birchbark maps and cliff paintings, not as inert objects but as dynamic nodal points in …

Trees And Texts: Indigenous History, Material Media, And The Logan Elm, Mark Alan Mattes

Criticism

Settler accounts of the Cayuga Native American Soyeghtowa (Logan), such as Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, interpret his famous mourning speech, “Logan’s Lament,” as the words of a melancholic, noble savage and vanishing Indian. This essay decolonizes settler accounts of Logan’s words and deeds such as Jefferson’s book by considering Indigenous relationships to a once-living memorial on Shawnee land in central Ohio, the Logan Elm, which nineteenth-century settlers apocryphally identified as the site of Logan’s speech. Drawing on scholarly work on Indigenous writing and historical media by Native American and settler intellectuals, as well as local …

“Tribal Rights Are Important Rights”: The Origins, Travails, And Impact Of The Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribe V. The State Of New Jersey, Brianna Marie Dagostino

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to study the lawsuit case of the of Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation V. John J. Hoffman and to showcase how modern-day racism ultimately led to their federal lawsuit in 2015. Racism and racist biases over Indian gaming has affected not just the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape tribe, but tribes all over the country and has severely hindered tribes in the state and federal acknowledgment process. There are also other tribes that have had lawsuits over racial biases of Indian gaming, which will be discussed within the thesis. By using oral histories from tribal members and allies …

[2023 Winner] The Reclamation Of Two-Spirit Identity, Kelly Christensen, Paige Monier

Ethnic Studies Research Paper Award

Our project looked into the history of two-spirit people, briefly talking about what happened to them during colonization, with a deeper look into how the two-spirit identity as been reclaimed and used as a way for queer indigenous people to connect with both their culture, and their personal identity.

[2023 Honorable Mention] Coerced Removal Of Indigenous Children: The Past And Present Native Child Welfare In The United States, Mad Bolander, Emily Greaves, Amada Villa Nueva Lobato

Ethnic Studies Research Paper Award

Our podcast attempts to convey indigenous healing efforts since the time of BIA schools in the United States. With the ICWA ruled unconstitutional, we ask what have the lived experiences been of native children who were forcibly removed from their families and tribes? And what does this mean for children who might now be taken away from their families again without the protection of the ICWA?

Celebrating Native Chemists And Encouraging More Native Talent In Stem, Lisa Villa

Staff publications

This editorial was written to accompany cover art submitted to the American Chemical Society's 2023 ACS Diversity & Inclusion Cover Art Series, and selected as the July cover for Environmental Science & Technology Letters. The artwork design features several prominent chemists who are also strong advocates for increasing the number of Native American/First Nation scientists. They recognize how cultural beliefs may often be in conflict with scientific conversations, but have been working to attract and encourage Native American talent in the STEM fields.

The published cover art is included as a supplemental file.

Dulce Sueños De Tierra, Sweet Dreams Of Earth, Jordany Genao

Theses and Dissertations

Jordany's paper congregates their archival research into an art practice that examines the decolonial impulse to excavate the self and produce autonomy. Using ceramics to reference and re-animate Taino ritual objects found in museums, resulting in alternative museology, their work seeks to honor Caribbean ancestors by subverting colonial history.

I’Ll Be Goldenrod And You’Ll Be Aster: The Case For Revolutionizing Western Methods Of Teaching Using Indigenous Ontologies, Joanna Logerfo

Master's Theses

An interesting facet of living as a human in the 21st century is contending with the end of the world. It’s been imagined in a thousand ways over the past twenty years. Will it be zombies? Aliens? An AI revolution? Or will it perhaps be something more mundane, more “down-to-Earth”? The floods, the droughts, the famines, and all the rest of the cataclysmic global events that occur every year have taken center stage in the world-ending debate, parading under a name as threatening and expansive as the Boogeyman: climate change. A recent article from NPR covered the United Nations’ 2022 …

The Woodcliff Experiment: Zooarchaeological Applications Using A Legacy And Cultural Resource Management (Crm) Faunal Collection, Matthew Zmijewski

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Legacy archaeological collections are often underutilized despite their valuable research utility. Archeologists might pass over these collections for research due to the age of recovery, along with the manner in which they were sampled and excavated. This thesis argues that significant archaeological research questions can be answered using these collections. To demonstrate their research potential, the author analyzes past subsistence behaviors and seasonality of occupations using the faunal remains from the Woodcliff site (25SD31). Woodcliff is a A.D. 1650-1750 Protohistoric Pawnee village located in eastern Nebraska. The faunal collection derived from excavations at the site constitute both a legacy and …

La Simbología Del Tlacuache En Las Colecciones De Tlatilco Y La Posible Antigüedad Del Mito, Patricia Ochoa Castillo

Tejiendo imágenes. Homenaje a Victòria Solanilla Demestre

El tlacuache es un animal importante en la mitología mesoamericana y se le menciona principalmente al hablar de periodos tardíos. Sin embargo, en el Preclásico, periodo más antiguo de la época prehispánica, y en particular en las colecciones de Tlatilco, el tlacuache está ampliamente representado en la cerámica, por lo que pudo haber tenido un papel relevante dentro del sistema de creencias de estas comunidades tempranas. Es así que surge la pregunta sobre la profundidad temporal de los mitos y religiones que se conocen para las épocas tardías en Mesoamérica, y particularmente si el mito del tlacuache, uno de los …

Tejedoras Y Madres: Las Mujeres En El Códice Madrid, Manuel Alberto Morales Damián

Tejiendo imágenes. Homenaje a Victòria Solanilla Demestre

Se reflexiona sobre el papel social de la mujer durante el postclásico en la península de Yucatán; se utiliza como testimonio el Códice Madrid a partir de la información que ofrecen las figuras femeninas que aparecen representadas en 27 almanaques y en el cosmograma de las páginas 75-76. El porcentaje de figuras femeninas (10,15%), así como las funciones que desempeñan en las distintas escenas, indican que la mujer tiene un papel secundario, incluso pueden ser sustituidas por varones. Se muestran evidencias de un patriarcado de baja intensidad.

This paper analyses the social role of women at Postclassic Yucatan; the Madrid …