Michael J. Zogry
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807833605
- eISBN:
- 9781469603940
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807898208_zogry
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
Anetso, a centuries-old Cherokee ball game still played today, is a vigorous, sometimes violent activity that rewards speed, strength, and agility. At the same time, it is the focus of several linked ...
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Anetso, a centuries-old Cherokee ball game still played today, is a vigorous, sometimes violent activity that rewards speed, strength, and agility. At the same time, it is the focus of several linked ritual activities. Is it a sport? Is it a religious ritual? Could it possibly be both? Why has it lasted so long, surviving through centuries of upheaval and change? Based on work in the field and in the archives, this book argues that members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation continue to perform selected aspects of their cultural identity by engaging in anetso, itself the hub of an extended ceremonial complex, or cycle. A precursor to lacrosse, anetso appears in all manner of Cherokee cultural narratives and has figured prominently in the written accounts of non-Cherokee observers for almost three hundred years. The anetso ceremonial complex incorporates a variety of activities which, taken together, complicate standard scholarly distinctions such as game versus ritual, public display versus private performance, and tradition versus innovation. This book provides a striking opportunity for rethinking the understanding of ritual and performance as well as their relationship to cultural identity. It also offers a sharp reappraisal of scholarly discourse on the Cherokee religious system, with particular focus on the Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation.Less
Anetso, a centuries-old Cherokee ball game still played today, is a vigorous, sometimes violent activity that rewards speed, strength, and agility. At the same time, it is the focus of several linked ritual activities. Is it a sport? Is it a religious ritual? Could it possibly be both? Why has it lasted so long, surviving through centuries of upheaval and change? Based on work in the field and in the archives, this book argues that members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation continue to perform selected aspects of their cultural identity by engaging in anetso, itself the hub of an extended ceremonial complex, or cycle. A precursor to lacrosse, anetso appears in all manner of Cherokee cultural narratives and has figured prominently in the written accounts of non-Cherokee observers for almost three hundred years. The anetso ceremonial complex incorporates a variety of activities which, taken together, complicate standard scholarly distinctions such as game versus ritual, public display versus private performance, and tradition versus innovation. This book provides a striking opportunity for rethinking the understanding of ritual and performance as well as their relationship to cultural identity. It also offers a sharp reappraisal of scholarly discourse on the Cherokee religious system, with particular focus on the Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation.
Angela Tarango
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781469612928
- eISBN:
- 9781469614465
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469612928.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
This book uncovers the history and religious experiences of the first American Indian converts to Pentecostalism. Focusing on the Assemblies of God denomination, the story begins in 1918, when white ...
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This book uncovers the history and religious experiences of the first American Indian converts to Pentecostalism. Focusing on the Assemblies of God denomination, the story begins in 1918, when white missionaries fanned out from the South and Midwest to convert Native Americans in the West and other parts of the country. Drawing on new approaches to the global history of Pentecostalism, the author shows how converted indigenous leaders eventually transformed a standard Pentecostal theology of missions in ways that reflected their own religious struggles and advanced their sovereignty within the denomination. Key to the story is the Pentecostal “indigenous principle,” which encourages missionaries to train local leadership in hopes of creating an indigenous church rooted in the culture of the missionized. In the author’s analysis, the indigenous principle itself was appropriated by the first generation of Native American Pentecostals, who transformed it to critique aspects of the missionary project and to argue for greater religious autonomy. More broadly, the author scrutinizes simplistic views of religious imperialism and demonstrates how religious forms and practices are often mutually influenced in the American experience.Less
This book uncovers the history and religious experiences of the first American Indian converts to Pentecostalism. Focusing on the Assemblies of God denomination, the story begins in 1918, when white missionaries fanned out from the South and Midwest to convert Native Americans in the West and other parts of the country. Drawing on new approaches to the global history of Pentecostalism, the author shows how converted indigenous leaders eventually transformed a standard Pentecostal theology of missions in ways that reflected their own religious struggles and advanced their sovereignty within the denomination. Key to the story is the Pentecostal “indigenous principle,” which encourages missionaries to train local leadership in hopes of creating an indigenous church rooted in the culture of the missionized. In the author’s analysis, the indigenous principle itself was appropriated by the first generation of Native American Pentecostals, who transformed it to critique aspects of the missionary project and to argue for greater religious autonomy. More broadly, the author scrutinizes simplistic views of religious imperialism and demonstrates how religious forms and practices are often mutually influenced in the American experience.
Jean Dennison
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835807
- eISBN:
- 9781469601557
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807837443_dennison
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
From 2004 to 2006 the Osage Nation conducted a contentious governmental reform process in which sharply differing visions arose over the new government's goals, the Nation's own history, and what it ...
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From 2004 to 2006 the Osage Nation conducted a contentious governmental reform process in which sharply differing visions arose over the new government's goals, the Nation's own history, and what it means to be Osage. The primary debates were focused on biology, culture, natural resources, and sovereignty. This book documents the reform process in order to reveal the lasting effects of colonialism and to illuminate the possibilities for indigenous sovereignty. In doing so, it brings to light the many complexities of defining indigenous citizenship and governance in the twenty-first century. By situating the 2004–6 Osage Nation reform process within its historical and current contexts, the author illustrates how the Osage have creatively responded to continuing assaults on their nationhood. An account of a nation in the midst of its own remaking, the book presents an analysis of how legacies of European invasion and settlement in North America continue to affect indigenous people's views of selfhood and nationhood.Less
From 2004 to 2006 the Osage Nation conducted a contentious governmental reform process in which sharply differing visions arose over the new government's goals, the Nation's own history, and what it means to be Osage. The primary debates were focused on biology, culture, natural resources, and sovereignty. This book documents the reform process in order to reveal the lasting effects of colonialism and to illuminate the possibilities for indigenous sovereignty. In doing so, it brings to light the many complexities of defining indigenous citizenship and governance in the twenty-first century. By situating the 2004–6 Osage Nation reform process within its historical and current contexts, the author illustrates how the Osage have creatively responded to continuing assaults on their nationhood. An account of a nation in the midst of its own remaking, the book presents an analysis of how legacies of European invasion and settlement in North America continue to affect indigenous people's views of selfhood and nationhood.
David A. Chang
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807833650
- eISBN:
- 9781469604398
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807895764_chang
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
This book brings the histories of Creek Indians, African Americans, and whites in Oklahoma together into one story that explores the way races and nations were made and remade in conflicts over who ...
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This book brings the histories of Creek Indians, African Americans, and whites in Oklahoma together into one story that explores the way races and nations were made and remade in conflicts over who would own land, who would farm it, and who would rule it. This story disrupts expected narratives of the American past, revealing how identities—race, nation, and class—took new forms in struggles over the creation of different systems of property. Conflicts were unleashed by a series of sweeping changes: the forced “removal” of the Creeks from their homeland to Oklahoma in the 1830s, the transformation of the Creeks' enslaved black population into landed black Creek citizens after the Civil War, the imposition of statehood and private landownership at the turn of the twentieth century, and the entrenchment of a sharecropping economy and white supremacy in the following decades. In struggles over land, wealth, and power, Oklahomans actively defined and redefined what it meant to be Native American, African American, or white.Less
This book brings the histories of Creek Indians, African Americans, and whites in Oklahoma together into one story that explores the way races and nations were made and remade in conflicts over who would own land, who would farm it, and who would rule it. This story disrupts expected narratives of the American past, revealing how identities—race, nation, and class—took new forms in struggles over the creation of different systems of property. Conflicts were unleashed by a series of sweeping changes: the forced “removal” of the Creeks from their homeland to Oklahoma in the 1830s, the transformation of the Creeks' enslaved black population into landed black Creek citizens after the Civil War, the imposition of statehood and private landownership at the turn of the twentieth century, and the entrenchment of a sharecropping economy and white supremacy in the following decades. In struggles over land, wealth, and power, Oklahomans actively defined and redefined what it meant to be Native American, African American, or white.
Lisa Blee
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781469612843
- eISBN:
- 9781469614472
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469612843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
In 1855 in the South Puget Sound, war broke out between Washington settlers and Nisqually Indians. A party of militiamen traveling through Nisqually country was ambushed, and two men were shot from ...
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In 1855 in the South Puget Sound, war broke out between Washington settlers and Nisqually Indians. A party of militiamen traveling through Nisqually country was ambushed, and two men were shot from behind and fatally wounded. After the war, Chief Leschi, a Nisqually leader, was found guilty of murder by a jury of settlers and hanged in the territory's first judicial execution. But some 150 years later, in 2004, the Historical Court of Justice, a symbolic tribunal that convened in a Tacoma museum, reexamined Leschi's murder conviction, and posthumously exonerated him. This book uses this fascinating case to uncover the powerful, lasting implications of the United States' colonial past. Though the Historical Court's verdict was celebrated by Nisqually people and many non-Indian citizens of Washington, the author argues that the proceedings masked fundamental limits on justice for Indigenous people seeking self-determination. Underscoring critical questions about history and memory, the book challenges readers to consider whether liberal legal structures can accommodate competing narratives and account for the legacies of colonialism to promote social justice today.Less
In 1855 in the South Puget Sound, war broke out between Washington settlers and Nisqually Indians. A party of militiamen traveling through Nisqually country was ambushed, and two men were shot from behind and fatally wounded. After the war, Chief Leschi, a Nisqually leader, was found guilty of murder by a jury of settlers and hanged in the territory's first judicial execution. But some 150 years later, in 2004, the Historical Court of Justice, a symbolic tribunal that convened in a Tacoma museum, reexamined Leschi's murder conviction, and posthumously exonerated him. This book uses this fascinating case to uncover the powerful, lasting implications of the United States' colonial past. Though the Historical Court's verdict was celebrated by Nisqually people and many non-Indian citizens of Washington, the author argues that the proceedings masked fundamental limits on justice for Indigenous people seeking self-determination. Underscoring critical questions about history and memory, the book challenges readers to consider whether liberal legal structures can accommodate competing narratives and account for the legacies of colonialism to promote social justice today.
Robbie Ethridge
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807834350
- eISBN:
- 9781469603742
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807899335_ethridge
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
This sweeping regional history traces the metamorphosis of the Native South from first contact in 1540 to the dawn of the eighteenth century, when indigenous people no longer lived in a purely Indian ...
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This sweeping regional history traces the metamorphosis of the Native South from first contact in 1540 to the dawn of the eighteenth century, when indigenous people no longer lived in a purely Indian world but rather on the edge of an expanding European empire. Using a framework that its author calls the “Mississippian shatter zone” to explicate these tumultuous times, this book examines the European invasion, the collapse of the precontact Mississippian world, and the restructuring of discrete chiefdoms into coalescent Native societies in a colonial world. The story of one group—the Chickasaws—is closely followed through this period.Less
This sweeping regional history traces the metamorphosis of the Native South from first contact in 1540 to the dawn of the eighteenth century, when indigenous people no longer lived in a purely Indian world but rather on the edge of an expanding European empire. Using a framework that its author calls the “Mississippian shatter zone” to explicate these tumultuous times, this book examines the European invasion, the collapse of the precontact Mississippian world, and the restructuring of discrete chiefdoms into coalescent Native societies in a colonial world. The story of one group—the Chickasaws—is closely followed through this period.
Duane Blue Spruce and Tanya Thrasher (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807832646
- eISBN:
- 9781469606019
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807889787_blue_spruce
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
In the heart of Washington, D.C., a centuries-old landscape has come alive in the twenty-first century through a re-creation of the natural environment as the region's original peoples might have ...
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In the heart of Washington, D.C., a centuries-old landscape has come alive in the twenty-first century through a re-creation of the natural environment as the region's original peoples might have known it. Unlike most plantings that surround other museums on the National Mall, the landscape around the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is itself a living exhibit, carefully created to reflect indigenous ways of thinking about the land and its uses. This book offers beautiful images of the museum's natural environment in every season as well as the uniquely designed building itself. Chapters provide an examination of indigenous peoples' long and varied relationship to the land in the Americas, an account of the museum designers' efforts to reflect traditional knowledge in the design of individual landscape elements, detailed descriptions of the 150 native plant species used, and an exploration of how the landscape changes seasonally.Less
In the heart of Washington, D.C., a centuries-old landscape has come alive in the twenty-first century through a re-creation of the natural environment as the region's original peoples might have known it. Unlike most plantings that surround other museums on the National Mall, the landscape around the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is itself a living exhibit, carefully created to reflect indigenous ways of thinking about the land and its uses. This book offers beautiful images of the museum's natural environment in every season as well as the uniquely designed building itself. Chapters provide an examination of indigenous peoples' long and varied relationship to the land in the Americas, an account of the museum designers' efforts to reflect traditional knowledge in the design of individual landscape elements, detailed descriptions of the 150 native plant species used, and an exploration of how the landscape changes seasonally.
Jessica Yirush Stern
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469631486
- eISBN:
- 9781469631509
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631486.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
The Lives in Objects presents a thoroughly researched and engaging study of the deerskin trade in the colonial Southeast, which is equally attentive to British American and Southeastern Indian ...
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The Lives in Objects presents a thoroughly researched and engaging study of the deerskin trade in the colonial Southeast, which is equally attentive to British American and Southeastern Indian cultures of production, distribution, and the consumption of goods. It challenges long-standing assumptions about Native American and European economic cultures in Early America, particularly the dichotomy that other scholars have drawn between gift-giving (associated with native pre-capitalist economies) and commodity exchange (associated with colonial market economies). This interpretation has tended to cast Native Americans as unwitting victims drawn into and made dependent on a trans-Atlantic marketplace. This book complicates that picture by showing how both sides (Southeastern Indian and British American) mixed gift-giving and commodity exchange in the deerskin trade, so much so that Southeastern Indians retained much greater agency as producers and consumers than the standard scholarly interpretation accords them. The result is a much more nuanced view of the trade and its impact on the economic and material lives of Southeastern Indian and British individuals. In this pursuit, this book also complicates the deerskin trade from the British perspective, showing that royal and colonial governments were not as willing to embrace modern free market values as we might assume.Less
The Lives in Objects presents a thoroughly researched and engaging study of the deerskin trade in the colonial Southeast, which is equally attentive to British American and Southeastern Indian cultures of production, distribution, and the consumption of goods. It challenges long-standing assumptions about Native American and European economic cultures in Early America, particularly the dichotomy that other scholars have drawn between gift-giving (associated with native pre-capitalist economies) and commodity exchange (associated with colonial market economies). This interpretation has tended to cast Native Americans as unwitting victims drawn into and made dependent on a trans-Atlantic marketplace. This book complicates that picture by showing how both sides (Southeastern Indian and British American) mixed gift-giving and commodity exchange in the deerskin trade, so much so that Southeastern Indians retained much greater agency as producers and consumers than the standard scholarly interpretation accords them. The result is a much more nuanced view of the trade and its impact on the economic and material lives of Southeastern Indian and British individuals. In this pursuit, this book also complicates the deerskin trade from the British perspective, showing that royal and colonial governments were not as willing to embrace modern free market values as we might assume.
Laura E. Matthew
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835371
- eISBN:
- 9781469601793
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807882580_matthew
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
Indigenous allies helped the Spanish gain a foothold in the Americas. What did these Indian conquistadors expect from the partnership, and what were the implications of their involvement in Spain's ...
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Indigenous allies helped the Spanish gain a foothold in the Americas. What did these Indian conquistadors expect from the partnership, and what were the implications of their involvement in Spain's New World empire? This study of Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala places the Nahua, Zapotec, and Mixtec conquistadors of Guatemala and their descendants within a deeply Mesoamerican historical context. Drawing on archives, ethnography, and colonial Mesoamerican maps, it argues that the conquest cannot be fully understood without considering how these Indian conquistadors first invaded and then, of their own accord and largely by their own rules, settled in Central America. Shaped by pre-Columbian patterns of empire, alliance, warfare, and migration, the members of this diverse indigenous community became unified as the Mexicanos—descendants of Indian conquistadors in their adopted homeland. Their identity and higher status in Guatemalan society derived from their continued pride in their heritage, says the author, but also depended on Spanish colonialism's willingness to honor them. Throughout the book, the author charts the power of colonialism to reshape and restrict Mesoamerican society—even for those most favored by colonial policy and despite powerful continuities in Mesoamerican culture.Less
Indigenous allies helped the Spanish gain a foothold in the Americas. What did these Indian conquistadors expect from the partnership, and what were the implications of their involvement in Spain's New World empire? This study of Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala places the Nahua, Zapotec, and Mixtec conquistadors of Guatemala and their descendants within a deeply Mesoamerican historical context. Drawing on archives, ethnography, and colonial Mesoamerican maps, it argues that the conquest cannot be fully understood without considering how these Indian conquistadors first invaded and then, of their own accord and largely by their own rules, settled in Central America. Shaped by pre-Columbian patterns of empire, alliance, warfare, and migration, the members of this diverse indigenous community became unified as the Mexicanos—descendants of Indian conquistadors in their adopted homeland. Their identity and higher status in Guatemalan society derived from their continued pride in their heritage, says the author, but also depended on Spanish colonialism's willingness to honor them. Throughout the book, the author charts the power of colonialism to reshape and restrict Mesoamerican society—even for those most favored by colonial policy and despite powerful continuities in Mesoamerican culture.
Nicole Fabricant
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807837139
- eISBN:
- 9781469601458
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807837511_fabricant
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
The election of Evo Morales as Bolivia's president in 2005 made him his nation's first indigenous head of state, a watershed victory for social activists and Native peoples. El Movimiento Sin Tierra ...
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The election of Evo Morales as Bolivia's president in 2005 made him his nation's first indigenous head of state, a watershed victory for social activists and Native peoples. El Movimiento Sin Tierra (MST), or the Landless Peasant Movement, played a significant role in bringing Morales to power. Following in the tradition of the well-known Brazilian Landless movement, Bolivia's MST activists seized unproductive land and built farming collectives as a means of resistance to large-scale export-oriented agriculture. This book illustrates how landless peasants politicized indigeneity to shape grassroots land politics, reform the state, and secure human and cultural rights for Native peoples. It takes readers into the personal spaces of home and work, on long bus rides, and into meetings and newly built MST settlements to show how, in response to displacement, Indigenous identity is becoming ever more dynamic and adaptive. In addition to advancing this rich definition of indigeneity, the author explores the ways in which Morales has found himself at odds with Indigenous activists and, in so doing, shows that Indigenous people have a far more complex relationship to Morales than is generally understood.Less
The election of Evo Morales as Bolivia's president in 2005 made him his nation's first indigenous head of state, a watershed victory for social activists and Native peoples. El Movimiento Sin Tierra (MST), or the Landless Peasant Movement, played a significant role in bringing Morales to power. Following in the tradition of the well-known Brazilian Landless movement, Bolivia's MST activists seized unproductive land and built farming collectives as a means of resistance to large-scale export-oriented agriculture. This book illustrates how landless peasants politicized indigeneity to shape grassroots land politics, reform the state, and secure human and cultural rights for Native peoples. It takes readers into the personal spaces of home and work, on long bus rides, and into meetings and newly built MST settlements to show how, in response to displacement, Indigenous identity is becoming ever more dynamic and adaptive. In addition to advancing this rich definition of indigeneity, the author explores the ways in which Morales has found himself at odds with Indigenous activists and, in so doing, shows that Indigenous people have a far more complex relationship to Morales than is generally understood.