The Incorporation of the Native American Past: Cultural Extermination, Archaeological Protection, and the Antiquities Act of 1906

2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
The Government

In the late nineteenth century, while advocates garnered support for a law protecting America's archaeological resources, the U.S. government was seeking to dispossess Native Americans of traditional lands and eradicate native languages and cultural practices. That the government should safeguard Indian heritage in one way while simultaneously enacting policies of cultural obliteration deserves close scrutiny and provides insight into the ways in which archaeology is drawn into complex sociopolitical developments. Focusing on the American Southwest, this article argues that the Antiquities Act was fundamentally linked to the process of incorporating Native Americans into the web of national politics and markets. Whereas government programs such as boarding schools and missions sought to integrate living indigenous communities, the Antiquities Act served to place the Native American past under the explicit control of the American government and its agents of science. This story of archaeology is vital, because it helps explain the contemporary environment in which debates continue about the ownership and management of heritage.

“I Hope to Hell Nothing Goes Back to The Way It Was Before”: COVID-19, Marginalization, and Native Nations

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Raymond Foxworth ◽  
Laura E. Evans ◽  
Gabriel R. Sanchez ◽  
Cheryl Ellenwood ◽  
Carmela M. Roybal
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Original Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Native Communities ◽  
Tribal Health ◽  
Tribal Lands ◽  
Health Regulations

We draw on new and original data to examine both partisan and systemic inequities that have fueled the spread of COVID-19 in Native America. We show how continued political marginalization of Native Americans has compounded longstanding inequalities and endangered the lives of Native peoples. Native nations have experienced disproportionate effects from prior health epidemics and pandemics, and in 2020, Native communities have seen greater rates of infection, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19. We find that Native nations have more COVID-19 cases if they are located in states with a higher ratio of Trump supporters and reside in states with Republican governors. Where there is longstanding marginalization, measured by lack of clean water on tribal lands and health information in Native languages, we find more COVID-19 cases. Federal law enables non-members to flout tribal health regulations while on tribal lands, and correspondingly, we find that COVID-19 cases rise when non-members travel onto tribal lands. Our findings engage the literatures on Native American politics, health policy within U.S. federalism, and structural health inequalities, and should be of interest to both scholars and practitioners interested in understanding COVID-19 outcomes across Tribes in the United States.

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.

Religion and Native American Assimilation, Resistance, and Survival

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tammy Heise
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
White American ◽  
Cross Cultural Communication ◽  
Reservation System ◽  
The 19Th Century

Since the early 19th century, the expansion of American empire has constrained Native American autonomy and cultural expression. Native American history simply cannot be told apart from accounts of violent dispossession of land, languages, and lifeways. The pressures exerted on Native Americans by U.S. colonialism were intense and far-reaching: U.S. officials sought no less than the complete eradication of Native cultures through the assimilation policies they devised in the 19th century and beyond. Their efforts, however, never went uncontested. Despite significant asymmetries in political power and material resources, Native Americans developed a range of strategies to ensure the survival of their communities in the complicated colonial context created by American expansion. Their activism meant that U.S. colonialism operated as a dynamic process that facilitated various forms of cultural innovation. With survival as their goal, Native American responses to U.S. colonialism can be mapped on a continuum of resistance in which accommodation and militancy exist as related impulses. Native Americans selectively deployed various expressions of resistance according to the particular political circumstances they faced. This strategy allowed them to facilitate an array of cultural changes intended to preserve their own cultural integrity by mitigating the most damaging effects of white rule. Because religion provided the language and logic of U.S. colonial expansion and Native American resistance, it functioned as a powerful medium for cross-cultural communication and exchange in the American colonial context. Religion facilitated engagement with white (mostly Protestant) Christian missionaries and allowed Native Americans to embrace some aspects of white American culture while rejecting others (even within the context of Native conversion to Christianity). It also allowed for flexible responses to U.S. consolidation policies intended to constrain Native autonomy still further by extending the reservation system, missionary oversight of indigenous communities, and land use in the late 19th century. Tribes that fought consolidation through the armed rebellions of the 1870s could find reasons to accept reservation life once continued military action became untenable. Once settled on reservations, these same tribes could deploy new strategies of resistance to make reservation life more tolerable. In this environment of religious innovation and resistance, new religious movements like the Ghost Dance and peyote religion arose to challenge the legitimacy of U.S. colonialism more directly through their revolutionary combinations of Native and Christian forms.

scholarly journals The Journey to and After Alcatraz: The Legacy of the Occupation of Alcatraz for Native American Protest Movements

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen Ly
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Government ◽  
Government Action ◽  
National Debate ◽  
The Government

The Occupation of Alcatraz was a movement in 1969, which sparked National Debate in the United States. The Occupation lasted from 20, November 1969 till June 1971 when 15 last occupiers were peacefully escorted off the island. The protest did not end with a change in government policy but inspired other protests and an activist group to be created for Native American rights. Reflecting on why the occupation at Alcatraz was ineffective, Vine Deloria, Jr. argued in 1994, “we want change, but we do not know what change.” Deloria was a well-known activist during the 1960s and was invited to the island of Alcatraz during its occupation. The Occupation of Alcatraz was seen as an unsuccessful protest because it did not spur government action to address Native American grievances. The occupation occurred at a time when tensions between minority groups and the government were rising due to the civil rights movement. Native Americans were forcibly removed from reserves due to relocation and assimilation programs, and land was being taken away for resources as well. The Occupation was a response to what seemed to be the continuous cycle of abuse from the American government. Termination and assimilation policies divided and separated families and tribes, which created disconnections among Native Americans, making it hard to unify against the American government. Though the Occupation did not end with government action or policy change, it started a collaboration of Native American protests, which revived Native American identities for many people. Native Americans’ reactions to federal suppression at the Occupation of Alcatraz led to a legacy of protests that changed Native American life.

Free State Slavery: Bound Indian Labor and Slave Trafficking in California's Sacramento Valley, 1850–1864

2012 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael F. Magliari
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
White Women ◽  
Work Force ◽  
Gold Rush ◽  
Alternative Source ◽  
Domestic Servants ◽  
Sacramento Valley ◽  
The Government ◽  
Rural Work

Although it outlawed chattel slavery, antebellum California permitted the virtual enslavement of Native Americans under the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. Drawing data from a rare and valuable cache of Indian indenture records at the Colusa County courthouse and interpreting them through the lens of Henry Bailey's candid pioneer memoir, this article offers a detailed case study of bound Native American labor and Indian slave trafficking in Northern California's Sacramento Valley. While never comprising a majority of the state's rural work force, bound Indian laborers proved essential to California's rise as a major agricultural producer. Compensating for the dearth of white women and children in male-dominated Gold Rush society and providing a vital alternative source of labor in an expensive free wage market, captive Indian farm hands and domestic servants enabled pioneer farm operations and communities to flourish throughout the formative 1850s and 1860s.

scholarly journals Dirty Practices for Clean Energy: Indigenous Communities Gain no Benefits and Suffer Decades of Harms from the Salvajina Dam in Cauca, Colombia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sital Kalantry
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Clean Energy ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Indigenous Community ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
The People ◽  
One Stop ◽  
Infrastructure Project ◽  
The Government

The Indigenous Community of Cerro Tijeras is part of the Nasa indigenous people located in Southwest Colombia. After years of resisting colonialism, the destruction of their land, and the erasure of their cultural practices, the Salvajina Dam has further jeopardized their way of life. The government ordered the Salvajina Dam to be built in the 1980s to control the Cauca River’s flow and improve agriculture. However, for the Cerro Tijeras indigenous community, whose land is in the surrounding area of the Salvajina Dam, its effects were detrimental. For decades, Cerro Tijeras has had to deal with the consequences of a major infrastructure project about which they were not consulted and provides virtually no positive effects for their community. The Salvajina Dam created a severe mobility issue for the ethnic groups surrounding it. The people of Cerro Tijeras, who once were able to use boats to cross the river year-round, are now at the mercy of the Salvajina Dam’s changing water levels. EPSA, the current majority owner of the Salvajina Dam, has provided only one stop for its boat (planchón) to reach the Cerro Tijeras indigenous community and its schedule is extremely limited. The restricted schedule of the planchones along with the removal of roads and bridges to cross the reservoir has made mobility in the region extremely difficult.

SPONSORSHIP, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIAL CAPITAL RESOURCES IN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (03) ◽  
pp. 363-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
JANE SWINNEY
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Total Sample ◽  
Position Statement ◽  
Shared Vision ◽  
Community Resources ◽  
Indigenous Entrepreneurs

This exploratory study conducted in heavily indigenous communities was undertaken to investigate entrepreneurial perceptions of community (sense of place, image, and positioning) and social capital (reciprocity, shared vision, and density of networks) resources present in rural communities, and the sponsorship involvement of the entrepreneurs in community activities. The uniqueness of the study was its focus on indigenous communities with a higher than state average Native-American population. Previous work highlighting the collective nature and attitudes of Native Americans was not supported for the entrepreneurs in this study. Indigenous entrepreneurs were those who identified their ethnicity as Native American and majority entrepreneurs were those who identified their ethnicity as white. For indigenous entrepreneurs, there were no significant correlations among social capital resources or community resources and sponsorship. For majority entrepreneurs, all three social capital resources correlated significantly with sponsorship, and none of the community resources correlated significantly with sponsorship. The correlation between image and sponsorship was statistically significant for the total sample (n = 149). Mean scores to each of the social capital and community resources were calculated. Positioning was the resource with the lowest mean score. The positioning statement differentiates one downtown from a competing downtown and is indicative of how the downtown wants to be perceived. The findings point to the need for economic development officials to strengthen community positioning through an improved understanding and acceptance of the community's position statement by business owners in the community.

Introduction

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Canny ◽  
Philip Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
North And South America ◽  
North And South

Beginning in the fifteenth century, people, plants, pathogens, products, and cultural practices — just to mention some key agents — began to move regularly back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean. As the connections and exchanges deepened and intensified, much was transformed. New peoples, economies, societies, polities, and cultures arose, particularly in the lands and islands touched by that ocean, while others were destroyed. This book describes, explains, and, occasionally, challenges conventional wisdom concerning these path-breaking developments from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth century. It looks at European conquests of Native American populations (in North and South America), how some Native Americans contributed to the Atlantic trading world that flourished from the later seventeenth century onwards, the slave trade and importation of slaves from Africa, human settlement in America, and the re-segmentation of the Atlantic world of the eighteenth century into multiple polities.

Indian Removal

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Calcaterra
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indian Removal ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
The North

“Indian Removal” refers to the forced migration of Indigenous communities from their homelands in what is currently the United States. It is often connected to a particular era (the 1820s and 1830s), federal policy (the Indian Removal Act), or event (the singular Trail of Tears). Yet dispossession from ancestral lands has been persistent and pervasive and is an ongoing, lived reality for many Indigenous people. From the first moments of their arrival in what they would call the Americas, Europeans expelled Native Americans and confiscated their lands for themselves. Natives lost not only land but also familial bonds, historical information, sites of religious significance, and ecological knowledge. Beginning with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, in which the United States acquired a vast territory west of the Mississippi, federal efforts to compel Indians to exchange land holdings in the east for lands west of the Mississippi intensified. This practice developed into a political program of ethnic cleansing during the 1820s and 1830s, particularly under the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 targeted the large southeastern nations (Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles), but since those nations were forced into western territories its effects spread immediately across the Mississippi to tribes such as the Osages. Removal of western tribes onto reservations continued into the 20th century. Many lesser-known communities in the north, such as the Delawares, experienced multiple removals over centuries. The Delaware Tribe currently resides within the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, a forced positioning that has made it difficult for the Delawares to gain federal recognition. Today, the erasure of Indigenous presences and histories from the United States’ national consciousness contributes to public sentiment supporting ongoing forms of removal. Racist sports mascots, stereotypes in film and television, and societal ignorance of specific Native histories and cultures perpetuate the political and cultural marginalization of Indigenous people. It is thus important to recognize the “removal period” as one of immense suffering for the more well-known tribal nations, while also acknowledging removal’s deeper history and ongoing effects. Equally important, Indigenous communities and individuals have always protested and countered the many forms of removal with their own writings, media, cultural practices, and legal and political actions. As it documents scholarship and creative work on Indian Removal, this bibliography also attends to what Anishinaabe author Gerald Vizenor has termed “Native survivance . . . an active sense of presence over absence, deracination, oblivion.” It highlights the voices and presences of Indigenous authors, scholars, and activists who work to reclaim the past and reimagine the future.

Kennewick Man's Funeral: the Burying of Scientific Evidence

2001 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Washington State ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Projectile Point ◽  
Southeast Asians ◽  
Celebrity Status ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government

Kennewick Man, an early Holocene (9,000 years old) skeleton found in Washington State in 1996, has been a lightening rod for political discussion. Due to his alleged Caucasoid features, Kennewick Man controversially called into question who first peopled the Americas. A projectile point lodged in his hip also catapulted him to celebrity status. Spared the quick (within ninety days after an inquiry) repatriation typically required under the 1990 federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Kennewick Man was fully examined by a team of scientists chosen by the government who were forbidden to discuss their findings. Although the team concluded that Kennewick Man has cranial features associated with both Caucasoids and modern Native Americans, he is considered mainly to resemble modern Japanese Ainu, Polynesians, and Southeast Asians, as are other early Amerindian finds. Despite the resolution of early controversies, Kennewick Man continues as a symbol of the ideology of repatriation. In this article, I review the evidence for my belief that, taken to an extreme, the demand to bury aboriginal skeletons, not only in America but also around the world, poses a potentially serious impediment to scientific enquiry.

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