4. From artifact to intellectual

2018 ◽  
pp. 51-67
Author(s):  
Sean Teuton
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Indian Removal ◽  
Verbal Art ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Indian Wars ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Indigenous Lands

‘From artifact to intellectual’ describes the nineteenth-century Indian Wars and the numerous Native American autobiographies that provide a glimpse into indigenous patterns of living, ways of knowing, and verbal art. These autobiographies also deliver a powerful counter-narrative of US entitlement to indigenous lands during Indian removal. In an era of reform, from around 1890 to 1934, Native and non-Native activists sought legislation to “uplift” the Indian, though reformers’ goals often conflicted. Natives and whites actively collaborated through the Society of American Indians (SAI) to influence federal Indian policy. The SAI helped save Native American writers for the twentieth century, scattering the cultural seeds for later Native literary flourishing.

Between Civilization and Savagery: How Reconstruction Era Federal Indian Policy Led to the Indian Wars

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-188
Author(s):  
Boyd Cothran
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Reservations ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Indian Wars ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
Moral Necessity

Abstract This article considers the event of a single year, 1873, to explain how President Ulysses S. Grant’s federal Indian policy led to the Indian wars of the late nineteenth century. Some historians have argued that Grant’s so-called Peace Policy failed due to systemic mismanagement and corruption; others have suggested it was due to administrative incompetence or ambivalence, while still others have accused the administration of cynicism in its approach to Indigenous affairs. This article argues that the Peace Policy reflected the unresolved tensions inherent in the era’s zeitgeist and that it failed to usher in a lasting peace because it did not account for the enmeshed reality of life in the American West where the boundaries and borders between Indian reservations and settler communities were entangled to say the least. The article begins with a detailed consideration of the Grant administration’s Indian policy as articulated by Francis Amasa Walker in the winter of 1872–73. Largely overlooked by historians of post–Civil War Indian policy, Walker was an influential thinker in his day whose policy recommendations emphasized the moral necessity of proprietary individualism and racial segregation on isolated reservations. The article then turns to the unfolding drama of the Modoc War (1872–73) to explore why the federal government abandoned the project of peacefully incorporating Indigenous people into the body politic, leading to a harsher and more militant approach to Indian affairs. By focusing on the nexus of ideas and events as they played out at this critical historical juncture, this article argues that the Modoc War was the precipitating event that marked the end of Grant’s so-called Peace Policy and the resumption of the Indian wars in the decades following the Civil War.

Bent, or Lifted Out by Its Roots: Daves’ Broken Arrow and Drum Beat as Narratives of Conditional Sympathy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Józef Jaskulski
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Federal Indian Policy

Józef Jaskulski examines Broken Arrow and Drum Beat, considering the perspective that the latter perpetuates the very Native American stereotypes that the former attempted to amend. He links these two narratives through a contrastive analysis of their respective Native American protagonists: firstly, the noble, articulate Cochise and the obstinate, inarticulate Modoc, Captain Jack; secondly, the female characters of Sonseeahray and Toby. Though it is easy to discard Drum Beat as an essentialist step back in Hollywood’s century-long struggle with the so-called ‘Indian problem’, Jaskulski suggests that Drum Beat serves as a latent supplement to Broken Arrow, which can be read as an important document of Hollywood’s conflicted sentiments toward Native Americans in the late-Truman/early-Eisenhower eras. In particular, reflecting a critique of the major about-face in Federal Indian Policy during the 1940s.

Consumption as Assimilation: New York Times Reporting on Native American Art and Commodities, 1950–1970

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 972-996
Author(s):  
REETTA HUMALAJOKI
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Native American ◽  
New York Times ◽  
American Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Native American Art ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Art Collectors

The appropriation of Indigenous cultures has sparked multiple controversies in the United States over the past decade. This phenomenon is not new, however. This article examines New York Times reporting on Native American art and commodities to demonstrate how trends in consuming “Indian” products contributed to the assimilationist federal Indian policy of termination, between 1950 and 1970. In this period the consumption of items perceived as “Indian” shifted from an elite art collectors’ activity to a widespread fashion trend. Nevertheless, Times reporting shows that throughout this era shopping for “Indian” items subsumed Indigenous cultures into the imagined unity of a national American identity.

A Necessary Evil: Framing an American Indian Legal Identity

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 115-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dwanna Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Indian Identity ◽  
Native Identity ◽  
The Us ◽  
Legal Identity ◽  
Necessary Evil ◽  
Indian Blood

This study examines the emergence and application of what I conceptualize as an American Indian Legal Identity (AILI). AILI is an individual identity created by structural forces. Most importantly, a person can have an AILI without having either racial identity or ethnic identity. It stands on its own as proof of Indianness even though it was created in the discourse of federal Indian policy. The tribal reification of this federally defined authenticity birthed a racialized collective Indian identity. Furthermore, it has resulted in the internalized racialization of Native identity. AILI relies upon the verification of a degree of Indian blood as documented in the form of a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) card issued by the US Department of the Interior and through membership within a federally recognized tribe. By focusing on historical social construction of AILI and its current implications within Native populations about who qualifies to be Indian, I analyze semi-structured, in-depth interviews of thirty Native American participants, all of whom ethnically identify as indigenous but only half of whom possess a legal identity. I find participants frame and rationalize AILI's existence by justifying that it is needed to preserve tribal sovereignty.

scholarly journals Protecting Oak Flat: Narratives Of Survivance As Observed Through Digital Activism

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholet Deschine Parkhurst
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Change ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Future Orientation ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Digital Activism ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Activist Group ◽  
Social Media Tools

American Indians are increasingly using social media/social network platforms as a tool to influence policy through social change. The activist group Apache Stronghold represents a case of American Indians utilising social media tools to protect Oak Flat and influence federal Indian policy. Oak Flat is sacred Apache land located in Superior, Arizona. United States legislators transferred Oak Flat to the mining company Resolution Copper as part of the omnibus National Defense Authorization Act of 2015. Qualitative analysis of social media content and advocacy tactics – specifically through use of timeline and digital ethnography – of Apache Stronghold from 2015-2016 reveal the interrelated nature of on-the-ground efforts, online efforts, solidarity efforts, and legislative support efforts. In sum, these efforts express narratives of survivance, healing, and a future orientation, as a unique dimension of social change.

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