The Last Drops

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard G. Wilshire ◽  
Richard W. Hazlett ◽  
Jane E. Nielson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Western United States ◽  
Environmental Groups ◽  
National Environmental Policy Act ◽  
Boom And Bust ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Groundwater Basins

The western United States has low overall rainfall and snowfall levels, few rivers, and many deep groundwater basins. Small Native American populations once lived within the restraints of aridity by seeking harmony with nature. But owning land in such an arid region means little or nothing without a supply of fresh water. Instead of limiting population growth in the face of scarce and unpredictable rainfall, however, the west’s aridity challenged the newcomers to redirect water supplies and make the rich desert soils bloom. The region’s localized precipitation, generally doled out on boom-and-bust schedules, has made water “the most essential and fought over resource in the western United States.” Raising a lone voice of warning in 1893, western explorer John Wesley Powell foresaw that irrigating western lands would pile up “a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.”2 That Powell was right about conflicts goes without saying, for the west’s bitter heritage of water wars speaks for itself.3 Invading Americans used legal doctrines of first appropriation and “beneficial use” to take water from Indians’ lands and then turned to taking it from each other, oblivious to the effects on wildlife and natural habitats. Today’s depleted river flows and overpumped groundwater basins indicate that Powell probably was right about water supply limits, too. Expanding populations and increasing water contamination have strained supplies of fresh, clean water, even as per capita water demands decrease. By the 1970s, degraded natural settings, rising water pollution, and disappearing native fauna had lowered the quality of western life and built a constituency for environmental protection. But the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act and 1973 Endangered Species Act simply pitted environmental groups and courts against irrigators, cities, and states. In an ironic reversal, recently enriched Native Americans are poised to exercise their primary legal claims to many western rivers.

Tricksters in African, African American, and Caribbean Folktales and Cultures

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
New World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Pan African ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Rich

The trickster is one of the most complex and widespread archetypes of Pan-African literatures and cultures, such as those from Africa, the United States, and the Caribbean. It is a folk character who invokes a multiplicity of meanings, including transcendence of boundaries between good and bad, morality and immorality, truth and lie, and many other entities. Dwelling on third, sacred, innocuous, and marginalized spaces, the trickster is a universal figure whose location in crossroads or other unusual spaces epitomizes the forced or voluntary alienation of individuals and communities from around the world. Therefore, the trickster is more than the childlike character who enjoys duping other pranksters and being “naughty.” In Pan-African traditions, the trickster is an animal or human character whose situation and movements symbolize the harsh conditions of millions of people of African descent due to brutal historical forces such as slavery, colonialism, and other oppressions. In the Americas, Europe, and other locations where they were brought, enslaved Africans carried knowledge of the trickster persona from their folktales and cultures, and later blended this tradition with lore and customs of Europeans and Native Americans in the New World. Thus, although it was one of the most brutal human experiences, the transatlantic slave trade led to the formation of hybridity, or cultural mixing, embodied in the rich spoken and written Pan-African narratives in which trickster figures deploy various strategies to resist oppression, assert their humanity, and gain freedom. The works mentioned in this study reflect the historical, social, political, and cultural backgrounds out of which trickster icons of selected Pan-African folktales came. Such works reveal the hybridism and survival strategies that enslaved Africans developed in the United States and the Caribbean by mixing their African traditions with Native American, European, and other customs. Understanding such cultural diversity will enable scholars and students of Pan-African folklore to have the open-mindedness that is necessary to study the vast traditions that influenced such customs. To guide readers, this bibliography gives a comprehensive list of major collections of African, African American, and Caribbean folktales, tale-types, motifs, and scholarly studies of such narratives published since the early 20th century. The bibliography shows that enslaved Africans did not come to the New World as blank slates. Instead, these populations had folklore, knowledge, memories, and practices that helped them to resist oppression and affirm their humanity.

The Indian Renaissance, 1960–2000

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Warrior
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Social Health ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Many

From the stunning upset victory of Lakota runner Billy Mills at the 1964 Olympics to the emergence of Native American filmmaking and the rise of tribal casino economies, the last four decades of the twentieth century witnessed unprecedented changes to the lives of Native individuals and communities. The many positive developments, however, exist alongside chronic and persistent social, health, and economic problems that continue to leave Native Americans behind others in the United States. Indeed, the cruel irony of increased opportunity has been the parallel erosion of Native cultural and political life in the face of the onslaught of modern life.

Intolerance toward Native American Religions

2020 ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
John Corrigan ◽  
Lynn S. Neal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Native American Religions

Settler colonialism was imbued with intolerance towards Indigenous peoples. In colonial North America brutal military force was applied to the subjection and conversion of Native Americans to Christianity. In the United States, that offense continued, joined with condemnations of Indian religious practice as savagery, or as no religion at all. The violence was legitimated by appeals to Christian scripture in which genocide was commanded by God. Forced conversion to Christianity and the outlawing of Native religious practices were central aspects of white intolerance.

On Slavery and Race

2019 ◽  
pp. 314-329
Author(s):  
Mark Somos
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Nature

This chapter reviews and extends the discussion of slavery and race that runs through previous chapters, starting with Paxton’s Case. Patriots and their critics alike pointed out the tension between colonial rights claims grounded in the state of nature, and colonial slavery. Portrayals of Native American innocence and virtue in the state of nature coexisted with accounts of their savagery, successfully repelled by the early settlers whose descendants, it was claimed, consequently held rights to property and self-government independently from Britain, which failed to finance or protect them. Optimistic, self-critical, racist, and abolitionist revolutionaries, all fearful of American degeneracy and corruption, used state of nature depictions of both abhorrent and justifiable slavery, and noble and savage Native Americans, to advocate for their vision for the new United States. This chapter reviews the whole spectrum of such uses of the state of nature, including the landmark Somersett’s Case and Mohegan Case.

Kenrick and the Paulists: A Conflict of Structures and Personalities

1969 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105
Author(s):  
John P. Marschall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Religious Congregation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Catholic Church

In spite of the nativism that agitated the United States during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church experienced a noticeable drift of native American converts from other denominations. Between 1841 and 1857 the increased number of converts included a significant sprinkling of Protestant ministers. The history of this movement, which had its paradigm in the Oxford Movement, will be treated more in detail elsewhere. The purpose of this essay is simply to recount the attempt by several converts to establish a religious congregation of men dedicated to the Catholic apostolate among native Americans.

Native American Ethnicity: a View from the British Museum1

2000 ◽  
Vol 73 (182) ◽  
pp. 221-238
Author(s):  
J. C. H. King
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Native Identity ◽  
Native North America ◽  
American Ethnicity

Abstract Identity in Native North America is defined by legal, racial, linguistic and ethnic traits. This article looks at the nomenclature of both Indian, Eskimo and Native, and then places them in a historical context, in Canada and the United States. It is argued that ideas about Native Americans derive from medieval concepts, and that these ideas both constrain Native identity and ensure the survival of American Indians despite accelerating loss of language.

Comments: Native Americans and Indian Policy in the Progressive Era

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherry Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Native People ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Hemispheric Dominance ◽  
Native American History ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
National Narratives

For years, scholars of Native American history have urged U. S. historians to integrate Indians into national narratives, explaining that Indians' experiences are central to the collective story rather than peripheral to it. They have achieved some successes in penetrating and reworking traditional European-American dominated accounts. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the field of colonial history. In fact, for several decades now colonialists have placed Native Americans at the center, seeing them as integral to imperial processes and as forces that simply can no longer be ignored. To omit them would be to leave out not only crucial participants but important themes. Native people occupied and owned the property European nations coveted. They consequently suffered great losses as imperialists bent on control of land, resources, cultures, and even souls applied their demographic and technological advantages. But conquest did not occur overnight. It took several centuries for Spain, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Great Britain, and eventually the United States to achieve continental and hemispheric dominance. Nor was it ever totally achieved. That 564 officially recognized tribes exist in the early 2000s in the United States demonstrates that complete conquest was never realized.

scholarly journals African and Native American foodways and resilience: From 1619 to COVID-19

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Lindsey Lunsford ◽  
Melvin Arthur ◽  
Christine Porter
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Food System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
The People ◽  
United States Food ◽  
The Face ◽  
Auto Ethnography

The COVID-19 pandemic is flooding and splitting “efficiency” fault lines in today’s industrialized food system. It also exploits centuries of historical traumas, White supremacy, and systemic racism to kill non-White people at triple the rates of Whites. In 1619, an English ship landed on the shores of the Powhatan confederacy, or, as the English called it, Point Comfort, Virginia. The ship delivered stolen people onto stolen land. This was a first step in founding today’s U.S. food system. Until that time, the people of North America and West Africa had lived off the land for millennia, foraging, hunting, and cultivating food. But 400 years ago, the twin European colonial influences of invasion and enslavement entwined the lives and, to some extent, the foodways of Native Americans and West Africans in what is now the U.S. Yet, these communities are still resilient. This paper offers re-stories about how African Ameri­can and Native American communities have adapted and maintained foodways to survive, thrive and renew, from 1619 to COVID-19. Methods include historical and literature reviews, interviews, and brief auto-ethnography. Even in the face of a pandemic, Native Ameri­can and African American communities still lever­age their foodways to survive and thrive. Some of these food system strategies also illustrate shifts that could be made in the United States food system to help everyone thrive.

Native Americans, Law, and Religion in America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Guéno
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Christian Missions ◽  
American Values ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

Religion was a point of cultural conflict, political motivation, and legal justification throughout the European and American colonization of North America. Beginning in the 14th century, Catholic monarchs invoked Christian doctrine and papal law to claim Native American “heathenry” or “infidelity” as legal grounds that legitimized or mandated their policies of military invasion and territorial occupation. More progressive Christian thinkers argued for the recognition of Native Americans as human beings entitled to certain natural-law protections that morally obligated Spain to conquer and convert them for their own benefit. Spain and France worked with the church throughout the 16th and 17th centuries to establish missions throughout seized Native American territories, while English colonists often segregated Native Americans into “praying towns” for their moral benefit or the sanctity of the colonies. After the United States declared independence, American politicians quickly identified dissolution of Native American cultures as a necessary step in undermining tribal saliency and in ensuring the political dominion of state and federal governments. By the 19th century, policymakers were convinced that encouraging Indians to put aside their “savage ways” would help tribal populations achieve cultural and spiritual salvation through Christianity. In 1869, President Grant initiated a “Peace Policy” that granted Christian missions contracts and federal funding to civilize and Christianize the Native American peoples of assigned reservations. The federal government established boarding schools for the children of tribal communities to teach English, Christianity, and occupational skills in order to “Kill the Indian in him and Save the Man.” During the 19th and 20th centuries, federal legislation stripped Native Americans of lands, property, and rights, while federal agencies forbade the practice of indigenous Native American religions. Subsequent courts legitimated the historic claim of European nations to Native American lands pursuant to the “Doctrine of Discovery,” thus ruling these policies either legal or unreviewable. While judicial decisions throughout the 20th century also recognized tribal rights to land, water, and self-government as well as the legal obligation of the federal government to protect tribal resources, these rulings have been inconsistently realized. Throughout the history of the United States, law has articulated, in the language of privilege, right, and moral prescription, American values and visions of ideal relations. As American culture has changed, federal policy has swung back and forth among initiatives to relocate, terminate, assimilate, and appropriate Native American cultures. Religion and law have advanced agendas of conquest and colonization and become means by which Native Americans peoples have resisted those agendas.

A reappraisal of the systematics, biogeography, and evolution of fossil horses

Paleobiology ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. O. Woodburne ◽  
Bruce J. MacFadden
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Evolutionary Rates ◽  
Western United States ◽  
Vertebrate Paleontology ◽  
Evolutionary Trends ◽  
Evolutionary Pattern ◽  
Major Mode ◽  
The Rich

The founders of North American vertebrate paleontology, F. V. Hayden, Joseph Leidy, E. D. Cope, O. C. Marsh, and their colleagues, collected and described the first suites of fossil mammals obtained from the rich Tertiary successions of the western United States. Among them were remains of fossil horses, and subsequent study of these resulted in an interpretation that supported the concept of Darwinian gradualism as the major mode of evolution. The fossil record of horses also contributed importantly to the demise of orthogenesis as an evolutionary pattern, and to the evaluation of evolutionary rates and long-term evolutionary trends in a major phyletic group of organisms.

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