Indian Group of Seven

The Indian Group of Seven is an ironic title given by a reporter from the Winnipeg Free Press to a collective of Indigenous artists from Canada, including Jackson Beardy (1944–1984), Eddy Cobiness (1933–1996), Alex Janvier (b. 1935), Norval Morrisseau (1932–2007), Daphne Odjig (b. 1919), Carl Ray (1942–1978), and Joseph Sanchez (b. 1948). Their name is a direct reference to the Group of Seven, a collective of Canadian artists who used the Canadian landscape as their primary subject matter in the 1920s and 1930s. The Indian Group of Seven emerged soon after Montreal’s 1967 International and Universal Exposition, and the 1969 release of the Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian policy—events that were heavily criticized for supporting colonial legacies and supressing Indigenous rights. The Group’s artwork reacted against such politics. They sought to break cultural and political stereotypes by demanding recognition as professional artists, by challenging established meanings of contemporary Indigenous art, and reconsidering social relationships to Indigenous peoples. The Indian Group of Seven helped to change the preconceived notion that Indigenous artists were preoccupied with traditional craftwork such as weaving, pottery, and carving.

The Ancestral Caddo Cemetery at the H. R. Taylor (41HS3) Site, Harrison County, Texas

The H. R. Taylor site (41HS3) is an ancestral Caddo community cemetery in the lower reaches of the Big Cypress Creek basin in East Texas. The cemetery was used by Caddo peoples affiliated with the Late Caddo period Titus phase (ca. A.D. 1430-1680), probably between ca. A.D. 1600-1680, an archaeological construct. Its affiliation with a specific named Caddo group or tribe is not known, and by the early 18th century much of the Big Cypress Creek basin was not inhabited by Caddo peoples, or peoples of any other American Indian group. The H. R. Taylor site is one of more than 146 Titus phase cemeteries, both family and community in organization and scope, identified from archaeological investigations over the last 100 years of the region’s archaeological record and Titus phase mortuary practices.

Self-esteem, readiness for self-improvement and life satisfaction in Indian and Polish female students

The study examines the question of how personal self-esteem, collective self-esteem and readiness for self-improvement are linked to satisfaction with life in women from countries differing with regard to level of collectivism. Our study participants were Polish (less collectivistic) and Indian (more collectivistic) female students. The obtained results indicate that personal self-esteem plays a very important role in satisfaction with life of women from the two countries. However, collective self-esteem is not directly related to satisfaction with life among women from the two cultures analyzed. Structural Equation Modeling showed that: a) in the Indian group readiness for self-improvement is more important for satisfaction with life than in the Polish group and it is significantly related to satisfaction with life through collectivistic self-esteem, b) the direct influence of both personal and collective self-esteem on satisfaction with life is more significant in the Polish group than in the Indian group.

Re-colonizing spaces of memorializing: The case of the Chattri Indian Memorial, UK

This article inspects the ways that spaces of war memorialization are organized and re-organized through official and unofficial meaning-making activities. It aims to contribute to the discussion of the ‘value’ of memorializing by examining a multifaceted space of remembrance and commemoration: the Chattri Indian Memorial built near Brighton, United Kingdom. The article brings postcolonial perspectives to explore how memorializing has been organized here, focusing on the activities of once-colonized people and the affective, embodied aspects of organizing practices. Built in 1921 to honour Indian soldiers who fought in World War I, the Chattri evolved from a colonial instrument to symbol and space for ethnic-Indian group activities. The study employed historical, visual and ethnographic methods to study the tangible monument and the changing nature of the memorializing activities carried out around the monument. Memorializing is conceptualized within three inter-related processes: colonizing, de-colonizing and re-colonizing to examine how forms and practices of memorialization constitute a values-laden organizing system.

A botanical group in Lahore, 1864

The sitters in a previously misunderstood nineteenth-century Indian group photograph are identified as four East India Company surgeons with wider interests in natural history: William Jameson, Thomas Caverhill Jerdon, John Lindsay Stewart and Hugh Francis Clarke Cleghorn, taken in Lahore at the Punjab Exhibition of 1864. The image was previously believed to depict the committee of the Madras Literary Society and to have been taken in Madras. No portraits of Jameson or Stewart have previously been known, and Jameson had mistakenly been identified as E. G. Balfour. Brief biographies are given of the individuals figured, the circumstances under which they coincided in Lahore explained, and their roles in forest conservation and the documentation of Indian biodiversity outlined. The photographer is confirmed as Samuel Bourne, and information is provided on the Scottish individuals to whom Cleghorn sent copies of the photograph.

Chemical composition of rainwater at Maldives Climate Observatory at Hanimaadhoo (MCOH)

Water-soluble inorganic components in rain deposited at the Maldives Climate Observatory Hanimaadhoo (MCOH) were examined to determine seasonality and possible source regions. The study, which is part of the Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC) project, covers the period June 2005 to December 2007. Air mass trajectories were used to separate the data into situations with transport of air from India and adjacent parts of the Asian continent during the months December and January (Indian group) and those with southerly flow from the Indian Ocean during the summer monsoon season June to September (Marine group). A third trajectory group was identified with transport from the northern parts of the Arabian Sea and adjacent land areas during the months March, April and October (Arabian Sea group). The concentrations of nss-SO42−, NH4+ and NO3− were more than a factor of 4 higher in the Indian group than in the Marine group. The average rainwater pH was significantly lower in the Indian group (4.7) than in the Marine group (6.0). This shows a pronounced influence of continental pollutants during December and January. The origin of the very high concentration of nss-Ca2+ found in the Marine group – a factor of 7 higher than in the Indian group – is unclear. We discuss various possibilities including long-range transport from the African or Australian continents, local dust from nearby islands and calcareous plankton debris and exopolymer gels emitted from the ocean surface. The occurrence of NO3− and NH4+ in the Marine group suggests emissions from the ocean surface. Part of the NO3− could also be associated with lightning over the ocean. Despite the fact that the concentrations of nss-SO42−, NO3−, and NH4+ were highest in the Indian group the wet deposition was at least as big in the Marine group reflecting the larger amount of rainfall during the monsoon season. The annual wet deposition of NO3−, NH4+ and nss-SO42− at MCOH is about a factor of three lower than observed at rural sites in India.