scholarly journals Settler Salvation and Indigenous Survival: George Copway’s Reconciliatory Vision, 1849–1851

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-153
Author(s):  
John R.E. Bird
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
The United States ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Literary Celebrity ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
North Americans ◽  
American Society ◽  
Theological Critique ◽  
Definition Of

From 1849 to 1851, Canada’s first international literary celebrity, the Mississauga writer Kahgegagahbowh, or George Copway, travelled the United States, Great Britain and Europe promoting his vision for the future of Indigenous peoples in the United States. Building on a theological critique of settler colonialism, he called for the creation of a new Indigenous territory west of the Mississippi led by a legislature made up of English-speaking Indigenous Christians. Copway believed that through the establishment of this territory he called Kahgega, European settlers would be able to atone for the sins committed against Indigenous North Americans, thus escaping the impending wrath of God. More importantly, believing that Indigenous peoples faced imminent extinction, he saw Kahgega as a permanent means of preserving his people and safeguarding their shrinking lands and political agency. Though Kahgega failed to impress the public, Copway’s vision offers a fascinating window into an early attempt at reconciling the Indigenous and non-Indigenous halves of North American society. Using the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s definition of ‘reconciliation’, this article shows that past, often failed, Indigenous political visions reveal the complexities and tensions inherent in dialogue surrounding reconciliation.

“The Folk of the Nation”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Gough ◽  
Peggy Seeger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnic Composition ◽  
Theodore Roosevelt ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Federal Music Project ◽  
Academic Recognition ◽  
American Society ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter provides a definition of folk music. Precise definition of the term folk music has long confounded scholars and been the source of endless debate and controversy; general agreements, either popular or academic are rare, and misunderstandings abound. Folk music in the United States reflects the complex history and diverse ethnic composition of American society. Indeed, academic recognition of these native musical forms preceded the development of the Federal Music Project (FMP); in 1882, Theodore Baker published a scholarly study of American folk music, and in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt wrote a preface for John Lomax's groundbreaking Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads publication. Meanwhile, some scholars argue that if a song has a known author, it cannot be classified as folksong “because the original meaning of folk music was something ancient and anonymous.”

American Ethnic Geography

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence E. Estaville ◽  
Susan W. Hardwick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Population Geography ◽  
Complex Concept ◽  
American Society ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
American Ethnicity ◽  
Ethnic Geography

Because the American Ethnic Geography Specialty Group was established in 1992 and was, therefore, not a part of the original Geography in America anthology in 1989, we think it is beneficial to present briefly the development and context of American ethnic geography into which we can place more current work. In 2000 the American Ethnic Geography Specialty Group changed its name to the Ethnic Geography Specialty Group; but because almost the whole of this report deals with the decade of the 1990s, we use the specialty group’s original name throughout. American ethnic geography encompasses the geographic dimensions and experiences of ethnic groups in the United States and Canada. Its roots are in cultural-historical and population geography. As such, American ethnic geography reflects the epistemologies and methodologies of human geography. Like geographers in general, most American ethnic geographers are empirical and inductive in their research. Because ethnicity is a complex concept, scholars who research ethnicity have been troubled over the years by definitional conundrums. Although in his 1974 study Isajiw determined that most ethnic researchers never explicitly define the meaning of ethnicity, he examined twenty-seven characteristics of ethnicity to construct a definition of North American ethnicity as “an involuntary group of people who share the same culture or . . . descendants of such people who identify themselves and/or are identified by others as belonging to the same involuntary group” (ibid. 122). To Isajiw, then, a person is either born into an ethnic group and is therefore socialized as Anglo, Chinese, French, Polish, etc., or can decide at some point in her/his life which ethnic identity fits best, or other people can perceive a person’s ethnicity. As underscored in the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (1980), these latter internal/external modes of ethnic identification have become increasingly more significant in North America. Paradoxically, in today’s multiethnic American society, many ethnic groups are celebrating their heritages with renewed vigor, while, simultaneously, many people are less bound by past ethnic loyalties and have either used innovative terms of self-identification to describe their multiethnicity or simply refused to be categorized ethnically.

scholarly journals Circumpolar Indigeneity in Canada, Russia, and the United States (Alaska): Do Differences Result in Representational Challenges for the Arctic Council?

ARCTIC ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evgeniia Sidorova
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Arctic Council ◽  
Far North ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Indigenous Organizations ◽  
Definition Of

This article investigates differences in circumpolar indigeneities in three major Arctic nations: Russia, Canada, and the United States (Alaska). Russia has different ways of recognizing indigeneity in law, and that definition of indigeneity excludes larger Indigenous groups of the Far North (Sakha, Komi), rather than seeing them as ethnic (titular) minorities. This study reveals that: 1) not all Indigenous peoples are represented in the Arctic Council; 2) there are historical explanations for this underrepresentation; 3) the Arctic Council should include more Indigenous groups as Permanent Participants. The equal representation of Indigenous organizations as Permanent Participants in the Arctic Council is important because all Indigenous groups in the Arctic should be heard.

The Long War on Drugs

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne L. Foster
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Ethnic Chinese ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
American Society ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Modern War

The beginning of modern war on drugs in the United States is commonly credited to President Richard Nixon, who evoked fears of crime, degenerate youth, and foreign drugs to garner support for his massive, by early 1970s standards, effort to combat drugs in the United States. Scholars now agree, however, that the essential characteristics of the “war on drugs” stretched back to the early 20th century. The first federal law to prohibit a narcotic in the United States passed in 1909 and banned the import of “smoking opium.” Although opium itself remained legal, opium prepared for smoking—a form believed to be consumed predominantly by ethnic Chinese and imported into the United States—was not. All future anti-narcotics policies drew on these foundational notions: narcotics were of foreign origin and invaded the United States. Thus, interdiction efforts at U.S. borders, and increasingly in producer countries, were an appropriate response. Narcotics consumers were presented as equally threatening, viewed as foreigners or at the margins of American society, and U.S. lawmakers therefore criminalized both drug use and drug trafficking. With drugs as well as drug users defined as foreign threats, militarization of the efforts to prohibit drugs followed. In U.S. drug policy, there is no distinction between foreign and domestic policy. They are intertwined at all levels, including the definition of the problem, the origin of many drugs, and the sites of enforcement.

Winnie, Opera, and South African Artistic Nationhood

Black Opera ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 167-192
Author(s):  
Naomi André
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South African ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global South ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Global Studies ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Football Club ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Homi Bhabha

This chapter places Winnie: The Opera (Bongani Ndodana-Breen, Warren Wilensky, and Mfundi Vundla, 2011) in a larger comparative framework that includes the Western opera tradition, opera in the United States, and the representation of blackness in opera more generally. With a reading of postcolonial and post-apartheid theorists (for example, Homi Bhabha and the “unhomely,” Karin Barber and entextualization, and Sarah Nuttal’s entanglement), this chapter also draws upon the Global South (and global studies) along with transnationalism. This chapter examines events from the opera in Winnie Mandela’s life (torture, the Mandela United Football Club, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission) as they are characterized musically and in the drama.

"Taking Away the Occasion for Violence": The Quaker Peace Testimony and Law Enforcement in the Justice and Policy Studies Department at Guilford College

JCSCORE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-133
Author(s):  
Jane K. Fernandes ◽  
Hollyce "Sherry" Giles ◽  
Barbara J. Lawrence ◽  
James E. Hinson ◽  
Wesley Morris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
Police Department ◽  
The United States ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Community Relations ◽  
Policy Studies ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Police Community Relations ◽  
Southern City

The mid-sized southern city of Greensboro, North Carolina has not been spared from the crisis in policing gripping the United States. The city has a history of racial conflict and violence involving the police, most notably the 1979 Massacre where five anti-Klan protestors were killed by Neo-Nazi and Klan members. It is also the site of renowned movements for social justice; in 1961, four North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University freshmen sparked the Sit-In movement, and in 2005, the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States, which addressed the Massacre, took place in Greensboro. Through partnerships with activists, police, and other community members, the Justice and Policy Studies Department (JPS) at Guilford College works to strengthen police-community relations in Greensboro. The Quaker peace testimony, which calls for “taking away the occasion for violence,” inspires and guides these efforts. This article explores the ways that JPS and its community partners prepare students to take away the occasion for violence in policing and the criminal justice system. Guilford’s president, two JPS professors, a Deputy Chief of the Greensboro Police Department and a community organizer with the Beloved Community Center share their insights regarding this critical topic.

The Literatures of America—A Comparative Discipline

1991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lauter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Normative Model ◽  
Writers Of Color ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
American Society ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
And Behavior

An image has long haunted the study of American culture. It limits our thought, shapes our values. We speak of the “mainstream,” and we imply by that term the existence of other work, minor rills and branches. In prose, the writing of men like Franklin, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, James, Eliot, Hemingway, Faulkner, Bellow—to name some of the central figures—constituted the “mainstream.” Others—writers of color, most women writers, “regional” or “ethnic” male and female authors—might, we said, be assimilated into the mainstream, though probably they would continue to constitute tributaries, interesting and often sparkling, but finally of less importance. They would, we tacitly assumed, be judged by the standards and aesthetic categories we had developed for the canonical writers. At best, we acknowledged that including in the canon writers like Wharton, Cather, Chopin, and Ellison might change somewhat our definition of the mainstream, but the intellectual model imposed by that mainstream image, this Great River theory of American letters, has persisted even among mildly revisionist critics. Such critics have continued to focus on a severely limited canon of “major” writers based on historical and aesthetic categories from this slightly augmented mainstream. The problem we face is that the model itself is fundamentally misleading. The United States is a heterogeneous society whose cultures, while they overlap in significant respects, also differ in critical ways. A normative model presents those variations from the mainstream as abnormal, deviant, lesser, perhaps ultimately unimportant. That kind of standard is no more helpful in the study of culture than is a model, in the study of gender differences, in which the male is considered the norm, or than are paradigms, in the study of minority or ethnic social organization and behavior based on Anglo-American society. What we need, rather, is to pose a comparativist model for the study of American literature. It is true that few branches of academe in the United States have been so self-consciously indifferent to comparative study as has been the field we call “American literature.”

scholarly journals Envisioning Indigenous Community Courts to Realize Justice in Canada for First Nations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelique EagleWoman
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indigenous Community ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Indigenous Law ◽  
United Nations Declaration ◽  
Community Courts

Recognition continues to grow both within Canada, as well as the wider worldwide community, of the unique issues facing Indigenous people within Canada’s justice system. We see this in the recent wholesale adoption by the Canadian Government of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action. This article examines the potential development of a system of Indigenous community courts as a way to end colonial suppression of Indigenous self-governance. The article suggests as a model for these courts the tribal courts in the United States, as a means by which Indigenous peoples can re-instate Indigenous law and legal principles.

Remaking North American Sovereignty

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
North Americans ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
The North ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of

This book explores the tumultuous history of North American state-making in the middle decades of the nineteenth century from a continental perspective. Today’s political map took its basic shape in the continental crisis of the 1860s, marked by Canadian Confederation (1867), the end of the U.S. Civil War (1865), the restoration of the Mexican Republic (1867), and numerous wars and treaty regimes conducted between these states and indigenous peoples through the 1870s. This crisis transformed the continent from a patchwork of foreign empires, republics, indigenous polities, and contested no-mans-lands into the nation states of Mexico and the United States and the Dominion of Canada, an expanding, largely self-governing polity within the British Empire. Key to this process was the question of sovereignty, or the power to rule. Battles over sovereignty ran through the struggles waged not only by the nation states that came to dominate the North America, but also those that failed, like the Confederate States of America, and others—like the European empires and indigenous peoples—that came into conflict with the three main states. In light of the global turn in 19th-century historiography, this book examines these political crises as an inter-related struggle to redefine the relationship of North Americans to new governments. This volume brings together distinguished experts on the history of Canada, indigenous Americans, Mexico, and the United States to re-evaluate an era of political transformation that has had profound consequences for the future of the continent.

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