Domestic Fronts in the Era of 1812

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Peterson
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Native People ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Plantation Economy ◽  
Choctaw Nation ◽  
Indian Agent ◽  
Policies And Programs ◽  
The U.S

In 1811, while working as U.S. Indian Agent to the Choctaw nation, a white man named Silas Dinsmoor took guardianship of a ten- or eleven-year-old Choctaw boy named James McDonald. By examining the federal career and household arrangements of this government official and their convergence with the lives of James and his mother Molly McDonald, this essay highlights the central role that race, slavery, and kinship played in both imposing and resisting U.S. imperial rule. It begins by revisiting federal Indian policy and discourses concerning Indian “civilization” to consider the racialized and gendered kinship structures that supported U.S. territorial expansion. It then looks at how Dinsmoor specifically drew upon these same familial arrangements to push for U.S. settlement in the Choctaw nation on both a grand and intimate scale. Dinsmoor was initially invested in federal Indian policies and programs aimed at assimilating Choctaw people and their lands into the U.S. plantation economy by encouraging them to adopt U.S. kinship structures. However, in light of Choctaw responses to his controversial presence in their homelands, the Indian Agent became disillusioned with his work. Presented with an opportunity to “settle” Choctaw lands by establishing a plantation household of his own, Dinsmoor recalibrated his ambitions. Instead of trying to impose U.S. familial values on Choctaw people writ large, he began to acquire Choctaw lands for his own family’s gain, shoring up his claims to Choctaw lands and his sense of spatial mastery through the containment of black and Indian bodies within the space of his own “private” patriarchal household. The essay briefly concludes with the unexpected consequences of Dinsmoor’s actions. When Dinsmoor incorporated a Choctaw youth into his plantation home, he inadvertently supported Molly McDonald’s efforts to use both her son and racial slavery to bolster her own influence on lands coveted by the United States. In the end, Silas Dinsmoor and Molly McDonald’s actions reveal the yawning gap between imperial agendas and colonial realities as Native people found new ways to maintain control over their homelands.

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 TEXAS 2050

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Caine ◽  
◽  
Trenton Tunks ◽  
Carlos Serrano ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Infrastructures ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
United States Population ◽  
Regional Plan ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Critical Link ◽  
Increasing Efficiencies

By the year 2050 the United States population will increase by half, with 70% living in a megaregion (Regional Plan Association, 2006). These numbers emphasize the critical link between large-scale territorial expansion and the prospects for successful urbanism. Currently, 11 mega-regions exist in the U.S., each bound together by a unique mixture of demographics, infrastructure, culture, and environment. As each megaregion grows, it must identify and leverage critical infrastructures that are capable of binding geographies and increasing efficiencies. This project speculates about one such strategy for the emerging megaregion known as the Texas Triangle.

3 Descent and Genealogy: The Changing Landscape of Tribal Membership Governance in the United States

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gover Kirsty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Blood Quantum ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Indian Blood

In the United States, the modern period of tribal constitutionalism began in the 1930s. This chapter illustrates the ways in which tribes have altered their membership governance to maintain and repair continuity during shifts in federal Indian policy and tribal demography. Tribes are increasingly likely to use lineal descent and blood quantum rules after 1970, in place of apparently ethnically-neutral rules, such as parental enrolment or residence. Tribes also increasingly prefer tribe-specific measures of blood quantum, in contrast to the pan-tribal concept of Indian blood quantum used in federal law and policy. Together these changes suggest that tribes are becoming more ‘genealogical’ in their approach to membership governance, favouring descent rules over racial measures.

Advocating for minority Veterans in the United States: Principles for equitable public policy

2021 ◽  
pp. e20210024
Author(s):  
Kai River Blevins ◽  
Andy L. Blevins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Veterans Affairs ◽  
Department Of Veterans Affairs ◽  
Intersectionality Theory ◽  
Minority Veterans ◽  
Policies And Programs ◽  
The U.S

LAY SUMMARY Minority Veterans in the United States are often excluded, whether intentionally or not, from public policy initiatives, leading to approaches that attempt to account for, or include, minority Veterans after the policy process has begun rather than at the foundational stages. This leads to policies and programs that do not adequately serve or that may harm minority Veteran communities. Drawing on their work with the U.S. Senate and House Veterans’ Affairs Committees and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the authors outline four principles for equitable Veteran public policy to better support minority Veterans and their communities. These principles are grounded in intersectionality theory, a framework that starts from the recognition that everyone has multiple identities and that these identities relate to the inequalities one experiences personally and systemically. The authors hope these principles contribute to more equitable public policy analyses and practices to better serve minority Veterans and lessen instances of inequality or injustice.

scholarly journals “Old Indian Ways” of Predicting the Weather: Senator Robert S. Kerr and the Winter Predictions of 1950–51 and 1951–52

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 200-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy A. Peppler
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
The United States ◽  
Field Investigation ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Choctaw Nation ◽  
Weather And Climate ◽  
High Regard ◽  
The U.S

Abstract In September 1950, U.S. Senator Robert S. Kerr (D-Oklahoma) wrote to Indian leaders across the United States in order to “make some determination with regard to whether or not we are going to have an early winter and whether or not we may expect a hard winter.” Even though he had access to U.S. Weather Bureau predictions and other scientific data, Kerr and his administrative assistant, Ben Dwight, a member of the Choctaw Nation and its onetime Principal Chief, wrote that they “would like to know what some of the Indians in the various sections of the nation think about our coming winter probabilities.” Kerr and Dwight indicated they had a “high regard for the old Indian ways of determining such things—because they are practical and have always been able to make some very accurate predictions.” From 33 letters sent to tribes in 1950 (including 9 to tribes in Oklahoma) 3 responses were known to have been received; a follow-up letter-writing campaign in October 1951 was more fruitful, producing 8 known responses. This paper examines the tribal responses and explores the life and possible motivations of Senator Kerr, an influential man on the U.S. political stage during 1949–63, in seeking this information. This research is part of a broader field investigation that seeks to understand how Native Americans in Oklahoma conceptualize weather and climate, including traditional ways, and how their knowledge is helping to inform new efforts to farm sustainably and create food sovereignty.

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.

scholarly journals Man on the Spot: John Daly, Indian Agent in Parry Sound, 1922-1939

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Brownlie
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Federal Policy ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
Native People ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Native Population ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Indian Agent

Abstract In this article, the local application of Indian policy is examined though an analysis of the career of an Ontario Indian agent, John M. Daly, who served in the Parry Sound Agency from 1922 to 1939. While policy was decided in Ottawa, which closely monitored field officials, the agents were responsible for its practial implementation and for dealing with the contradictions and ambiguities which could arise in concrete situations. The Indian Department's reliance on information provided by the "man on the spot" meant that his recommendations carried a great deal of weight in decision-making. An in-depth analysis of the agent's day-to-day activities thus provides insights into the actual realities faced by Native people in their interaction with government. Daly's methods conformed well to the style of administration encouraged by the Department. A confirmed paternalist, he offered some protection to vulnerable individuals while opposing those who strove to assert self-determinaiton. He was always very concerned to maintain the Department's authority, on which his own was dependent — in particular, this involved keeping aboriginal people and band councils "in their place". By the 1920s the failure of the federal policy of separation, civilisation and assimilation was readily apparent — aboriginal people remained a distinct, unassimilated population, still largely segregated on the reserves which were intended to be absorbed into the surrounding communities. The formerly stagnant or shrinking Native population was beginning to increase, while reserves remained fixed in size and their resources were already substantially depleted. This, combined with the marginalization of aboriginal people within the mainstream labour market, meant poverty and hardship for many Natives. Since federal policy was never adjusted to cope with the new realities, the agents found themselves approaching the problem of Native poverty on an ad hoc basis. Daly's negotiation of these difficult circumstances is analysed in the following paper.

Native Acts, Immigrant Acts: Citizenship, Naturalization, and the Performance of Civic Identity during the Progressive Era

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Cristina Stanciu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Native People ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Federal Indian Law ◽  
New Immigrants ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indian Law

Abstract This article reveals the complicity of immigration restriction laws and federal Indian policy with organized Americanization in legislating an imagined, desirable “new American” at the beginning of the twentieth century, when resurgent nationalism threatened to restrict undesirable immigrants as it also sought to assimilate Indigenous people into a mass of Americanism. While the immigrant has figured in the U.S. national imaginary as someone who desires America, the American Indian was not desired to enter into political membership—although Native land was desired, and subsequently taken by settlers through strategies of dispossession written into federal Indian law. This essay argues that the Indian—read as an imagined category with little connection to the lives of Native people—occupies an anomalous position in the legal history of naturalization, finalized with the passing of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924, at the same time that racist immigration restriction quotas also limited the entrance of new immigrants into the United States through the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act. For Native people, Americanization and the imposition of citizenship were extensions of colonialism, adding one civic status over another—domestic dependent, ward, or U.S. citizen. For new immigrants hailing from southern and eastern Europe, forced by economic and cultural constraints to relocate to the United States, in contrast to their Anglo-Saxon or Nordic settler predecessors, Americanization meant a renunciation of political allegiance to other sovereigns, the acquisition of English, and civic education for citizenship. This essay challenges the myth of America as a “nation of immigrants,” and the settler colonial nation-state's ongoing infatuation with its colonial project as it continues to erase Indigenous presence and sovereignty.

An American Language

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Language Recognition ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

An American Language is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States. The nation has always been multilingual and the Spanish language in particular has remained as an important political issue into the present. After the U.S.-Mexican War, the Spanish language became a language of politics as Spanish speakers in the U.S. Southwest used it to build territorial and state governments. In the twentieth century, Spanish became a political language where speakers and those opposed to its use clashed over what Spanish's presence in the United States meant. This book recovers this story by using evidence that includes Spanish language newspapers, letters, state and territorial session laws, and federal archives to profile the struggle and resilience of Spanish speakers who advocated for their language rights as U.S. citizens. Comparing Spanish as a language of politics and as a political language across the Southwest and noncontiguous territories provides an opportunity to measure shifts in allegiance to the nation and exposes differing forms of nationalism. Language concessions and continued use of Spanish is a measure of power. Official language recognition by federal or state officials validates Spanish speakers' claims to US citizenship. The long history of policies relating to language in the United States provides a way to measure how U.S. visions of itself have shifted due to continuous migration from Latin America. Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens are crucial arbiters of Spanish language politics and their successes have broader implications on national policy and our understanding of Americans.

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