Daniel M. Cobb - Böcker

The heyday of American Indian activism is generally seen as bracketed by the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 and the Longest Walk in 1978; yet Native Americans had long struggled against federal policies that threatened to undermine tribal sovereignty and self-determination. This is the first book-length study of American Indian political activism during its seminal years, focusing on the movement's largely neglected early efforts before Alcatraz or Wounded Knee captured national attention.Ranging from the end of World War II to the late 1960s, Daniel Cobb uncovers the groundwork laid by earlier activists. He draws on dozens of interviews with key players to relate untold stories of both seemingly well-known events such as the American Indian Chicago Conference and little-known ones such as Native participation in the Poor People's Campaign of 1968. Along the way, he introduces readers to a host of previously neglected but critically important activists: Mel Thom, Tillie Walker, Forrest Gerard, Dr. Jim Wilson, Martha Grass, and many others.Cobb takes readers inside the early movement - from D'Arcy McNickle's founding of American Indian Development, Inc. and Vine Deloria Jr.'s tenure as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians to Clyde Warrior's leadership in the National Indian Youth Council - and describes how early activists forged connections between their struggle and anticolonialist movements in the developing world. He also describes how the War on Poverty's Community Action Programs transformed Indian Country by training bureaucrats and tribal leaders alike in new political skills and providing activists with the leverage they needed to advance the movement toward self-determination.This book shows how Native people who never embraced militancy - and others who did - made vital contributions as activists well before the American Indian Movement burst onto the scene. By highlighting the role of early intellectuals and activists like Sol Tax, Nancy Lurie, Robert K. Thomas, Helen Peterson, and Robert V. Dumont, Cobb situates AIM's efforts within a much broader context and reveals how Native people translated the politics of Cold War civil rights into the language of tribal sovereignty.

The heyday of American Indian activism is generally seen as bracketed by the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 and the Longest Walk in 1978; yet Native Americans had long struggled against federal policies that threatened to undermine tribal sovereignty and self-determination. This is the first book-length study of American Indian political activism during its seminal years, focusing on the movement's largely neglected early efforts before Alcatraz or Wounded Knee captured national attention.Ranging from the end of World War II to the late 1960s, Daniel Cobb uncovers the groundwork laid by earlier activists. He draws on dozens of interviews with key players to relate untold stories of both seemingly well-known events such as the American Indian Chicago Conference and little-known ones such as Native participation in the Poor People's Campaign of 1968. Along the way, he introduces readers to a host of previously neglected but critically important activists: Mel Thom, Tillie Walker, Forrest Gerard, Dr. Jim Wilson, Martha Grass, and many others.Cobb takes readers inside the early movement - from D'Arcy McNickle's founding of American Indian Development, Inc. and Vine Deloria Jr.'s tenure as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians to Clyde Warrior's leadership in the National Indian Youth Council - and describes how early activists forged connections between their struggle and anticolonialist movements in the developing world. He also describes how the War on Poverty's Community Action Programs transformed Indian Country by training bureaucrats and tribal leaders alike in new political skills and providing activists with the leverage they needed to advance the movement toward self-determination.This book shows how Native people who never embraced militancy - and others who did - made vital contributions as activists well before the American Indian Movement burst onto the scene. By highlighting the role of early intellectuals and activists like Sol Tax, Nancy Lurie, Robert K. Thomas, Helen Peterson, and Robert V. Dumont, Cobb situates AIM's efforts within a much broader context and reveals how Native people translated the politics of Cold War civil rights into the language of tribal sovereignty.

Explores how the process of memorialization keeps the past alive in the present and shapes the way we imagine our possible futures."The past is never dead. It's not even past." - William FaulknerThe three thought-provoking essays in Memory Matters explore how the process of memorialization keeps the past alive in the present and shape the way we imagine our possible futures. The product of a one-day symposium hosted by the Humanities Center at Miami University of Ohio, it focuses on issues of commemoration in the contexts of U.S. history, Native America, and museums. In "From Lexington and Concord to Oklahoma City: The Perils and Promise of Public History," Edward T. Linenthal offers a fresh perspective on creating national memorials. In "The Remembered/Forgotten on Native Ground," Daniel M. Cobb draws upon Benedict Anderson's notion of the "remembered/forgotten" to explore the work of memory at the sites of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the Miami Removal. And in "Museums Matter," Helen Sheumaker explores how museums function as repositories and creators of cultural memory. The volume also includes a transcript based on the question-and-answer session following the original presentations. Stemming from a two-year scholarly project, "Memory and Culture: Engaged Scholarship, Multidisciplinary Connections, and the Public Humanities," Memory Matters provides scholars and those interested in such fields as museum studies, memorial studies, and cultural history with provocative discussions of the ways in which representation, power, and memory intersect.

In this wide-ranging and carefully curated anthology, Daniel M. Cobb presents the words of Indigenous people who have shaped Native American rights movements from the late nineteenth century through the present day. Presenting essays, letters, interviews, speeches, government documents, and other testimony, Cobb shows how tribal leaders, intellectuals, and activists deployed a variety of protest methods over more than a century to demand Indigenous sovereignty. As these documents show, Native peoples have adopted a wide range of strategies in this struggle, invoking ""American"" and global democratic ideas about citizenship, freedom, justice, consent of the governed, representation, and personal and civil liberties while investing them with indigenized meanings.The more than fifty documents gathered here are organized chronologically and thematically for ease in classroom and research use. They address the aspirations of Indigenous nations and individuals within Canada, Hawaii, and Alaska as well as the continental United States, placing their activism in both national and international contexts. The collection's topical breadth, analytical framework, and emphasis on unpublished materials offer students and scholars new sources with which to engage and explore American Indian thought and political action.