Stubborn Indianness: Cultural Persistence, Cultural Change

1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-512
Author(s):  
RUSSELL DUNCAN
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Northwest Coast ◽  
Census Count ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Young America ◽  
Cultural Persistence ◽  
Contemporary United States ◽  
Lincoln University

Leland Donald, Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, US$40). Pp. 379. ISBN 0 520 20616 9.George W. Dorsey, The Pawnee Mythology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £20.95). Pp. 546. ISBN 0 8032 6603 0.Frederic W. Gleach, Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £52.50). Pp. 241. ISBN 0 8032 2166 5.Richard G. Hardorff (ed.), Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight: New Sources of Indian-Military History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £9.50). Pp. 211. ISBN 0 8032 7293 6.Michael E. Harkin, The Heiltsuks: Dialogues of Culture and History on the Northwest Coast (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £38). Pp. 195. ISBN 0 8032 2379 X.Jean M. O'Brien, Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, £35, US$49.95). Pp. 224. ISBN 0 521 56172 8.Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £15.95). Pp. 379. ISBN 0 8032 9431 X.In the contemporary United States there are 556 American Indian groups in 400 nations. Given that survival story, the tired myths of the disappearing redman or wandering savage which have distorted our understandings of Indian history are being revised. The reasons for our nearly four-century-long gullibility are manifold. The religion of winners and losers, saints and sinners, combined effectively with the scientific racism inherent sine qua non in the secular beliefs of winners and losers expressed through Linnaean and Darwinian conceptions of order and evolution. After colonizers cast their imperial gaze through lenses made of the elastic ideology of “City Upon a Hill,” “Manifest Destiny,” “Young America,” and “White Man's Burden,” most Euro-Americans rationalized a history and present in survival of the fittest terms. By 1900, the near-holocaust of an estimated ten million Indians left only 200,000 survivors invisible in an overall population of 76 million. The 1990 census count of two million Native Americans affirms resilience not extinction.

Change and Continuity, Practice and Memory: Native American Persistence in Colonial New England

2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen W. Silliman
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
New England ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Cultural Persistence ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Eastern Pequot

The archaeological study of Native Americans during colonial periods in North America has centered largely on assessing the nature of cultural change and continuity through material culture. Although a valuable approach, it has been hindered by focusing too much on the dichotomies of change and continuity, rather than on their interrelationship, by relying on uncritical cultural categories of artifacts and by not recognizing the role of practice and memory in identity and cultural persistence. Ongoing archaeological research on the Eastern Pequot reservation in Connecticut, which was created in 1683 and has been inhabited continuously since then by Eastern Pequot community members, permits a different view of the nature of change and continuity. Three reservation sites spanning the period between ca. 1740 and 1840 accentuate the scale and temporality of social memory and the relationships between practice and materiality. Although the reservation sites show change when compared to the "precontact baseline," they show remarkable continuity during the reservation period. The resulting interpretation provides not only more grounded and appropriately scaled renderings of past cultural practices but also critical engagements with analytical categories that carry significant political weight well outside of archaeological circles.

The early use of metal by native Americans on the northwest coast

JOM ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 45 (7) ◽  
pp. 60-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Wayman
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Northwest Coast ◽  
Early Use

Abortion: Woman's Right and Legal Problem

1971 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Moody
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Change Agents ◽  
Criminal Prosecution ◽  
Legal Problem ◽  
Consultation Service ◽  
Legalize Abortion

Howard Moody is pastor of Judson Memorial Church in New York City and a Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. In 1967, Moody brought together a small group of clergymen to help counsel women with “problem pregnancies.” Risking public censure and criminal prosecution, the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion referred thousands of women for safe abortions. In addition, Moody and others formed a coalition to support the passage of a bill to legalize abortion. The New York Legislature passed such a bill in April, 1970, which permits abortions by licensed physicians within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. On July 1, 1970, the New York Clergy Consultation Service, which had served as a model for other organizations in other states, was disbanded and reconstituted as Clergy and Lay Advocates for Hospital Abortion Performance. The new organization is designed to deal with local restrictions on abortions and the growth of high-priced “abortion brokers.” This article is reprinted from the March 8, 1971 issue of Christianity and Crisis, Copyright © 1971 by Christianity and Crisis, Inc. The article is used with permission and is reprinted not only as a commentary on a controversial issue but as a case-study of the problems involved when clergy and churches take on the role of social and cultural change-agents. It's definitely not easy, but apparently it can be done. Dr. Moody wishes to acknowledge the assistance of his associate, Arlene Carmen.

Fighting Hunger, Fearing Violence after the Revolutionary War

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-135
Author(s):  
Rachel B. Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Revolutionary War ◽  
Old Northwest ◽  
Indian Country ◽  
The Government ◽  
Northwest Region

This chapter assesses how, after the Revolutionary War, Native Americans increased their authority by working with the U.S. government to circumvent hunger. The federal government failed to win power because it cost so much to distribute food aid, and the government was not yet powerful enough to refuse to do so. Postwar Indian country was a place of simultaneous resilience and desolation; although burned villages and scattered tribes provide plentiful evidence of disruption, there were numerous sites where Indian power waxed, at least until the mid-1790s. Approaches to Indian affairs, which included food policy, varied from state to state and evolved in three separate regions in the 1780s and 1790s: the southern states of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia; the mid-Atlantic states of New York and Pennsylvania; and the old northwest region of the Ohio Valley. Food negotiations reveal similarities between federal and state approaches, but also demonstrate that it was the competition between the states and the federal government that by 1795 left Native Americans more willing to accommodate U.S. officials in a joint cooperative fight against hunger.

Under the Law: 2018–2019 Supreme Court highlights

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-42
Author(s):  
Julie Underwood
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War I ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Department Of Education ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
Census Count ◽  
World War ◽  
Administrative Guidance ◽  
Department Of Commerce ◽  
Lemon Test

Julie Underwood highlights three cases from the 2018-2019 U.S. Supreme Court term that have implications for education. In American Legion v. American Humanist Association (2019), the Court ruled that a cross on public land honoring World War I soldiers was not a violation of the Establishment Clause. In this ruling, the Justices criticized the Lemon test often used in cases related to religion in schools, but they did not invalidate it entirely. In Kisor v. Wilkie (2019), Justices expressed the belief that the Court should defer to administrative agencies in interpreting complex regulations and administrative guidance. This leaves room for the Department of Education and other agencies to reinterpret regulations for political or ideological reasons. In Department of Commerce v. State of New York (2019), the Court ruled that a citizenship question on the U.S. Census is acceptable, but the that Department of Commerce did not provide an acceptable reason for the decision. The outcome of this case could affect the census count, which would then affect how education funding is allocated.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document