Dance

This chapter examines the ways in which Lawrence contributed extensive and innovative literary engagements with dance in the modernist period. Lawrence’s citations of dance are most widely associated with the liberation of the body and identity through early twentieth-century dance practices such as social dance, Greek dance, and the work of Isadora Duncan. Yet, as this chapter explores, Lawrence’s narratives also reflect the aesthetics initiated by the innovations of the Ballets Russes, European Expressionism, and, latterly, the ritual dance of the American South - of Native and Pueblo Indian forms. In his late work Lawrence especially invokes dance experimentally to formulate a new literary critique of a failing European culture.

Refusing Citizenship

This chapter examines the ways in which Pueblo Indians sought to define their own political status during the U.S. territorial period. According to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the U.S.-Mexico War, Pueblo Indians were U.S. citizens. As Pueblo Indian Agent John Calhoun (and later governor of New Mexico) reasoned, this meant the right to the franchise as well. But, problems arose over Pueblo voting rights, as some non-Indians concluded that if they voted, it would mean that the Pueblos gave up their status as distinct, sovereign Indigenous communities. For their part, the Pueblos continued to act as Indian republics, and their independent political status was seemingly confirmed by the gift of the so-called Lincoln Canes in 1863. A series of legal cases, culminating in U.S. v. Joseph (1876), ultimately defined the Pueblos as non-voting citizens. Throughout the territorial period, the Pueblos asserted that they did not desire U.S. citizenship, instead preferring to retain their mixed systems of town government, in place since the Spanish period, and their semisovereign status under the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs.

City Water, Native Water, and the Unknown Future

The most challenging adjudications await the state, since the urbanized corridor of the Rio Grande has yet to be adjudicated. Using Santa Fe and its own modest river as emblematic of this twentieth-century legacy, the chapter then discusses what remains unknown, as the cities of Albuquerque and Las Cruces await some formal sorting of their own water rights. Even more problematically, Pueblo Indian water rights along the Rio Grande have not been quantified or addressed in the courts or in settlements. These future Indian water rights will have upstream and downstream effects on cities and the rural non-Indian water users alike. It will also force the state to reconcile the new demands placed on water in the twenty-first century.

“Stay with your words”: Indigenous youth, local policy, and the work of language fortification

This article focuses on the work of cultural and language maintenance and fortification with Indigenous youth populations. Here, the idea of work represents two strands of thought: first, research that is partnered with Indigenous youth-serving institutions and that prioritizes Indigenous youth perspectives; and second, the work of cultural and linguistic engagement that is often taken for granted as part of the sociocultural fabric of Indigenous communities where youth are active participants. By highlighting a study with Pueblo Indian youth in the southwestern United States, we aim to build on the counter-narrative frameworks of other educational scholars and community-based researchers in order to offer alternative approaches towards understanding how Indigenous youth can and do participate in representing themselves as cultural and language agents of change. Arriving at this realization requires several key steps, including deconstructing dominant assumptions, holding ourselves accountable for interrogating and revisiting our own biases, and ultimately committing to long-term research and support with Indigenous youth. As such, we offer empirical evidence that contradicts universal discourse of Indigenous peoples and youth as victims at risk. Instead, we focus on the ways in which Indigenous youth demonstrate both tentative and bold fortification of key elements in their Indigenous identities and illustrate promise in contribution to multiple levels of policy development to address their communities’ most urgent needs and goals.