Theda Perdue - Böcker

In this edited volume, Theda Perdue, a nationally known expert on Indian history and southern women's history, offers a rich collection of biographical essays on Native American women. From Pocahontas, a Powhatan woman of the seventeenth century, to Ada Deer, the Menominee woman who headed the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1990s, the essays span four centuries. Each one recounts the experiences of women from vastly different cultural traditions--the hunting and gathering of Kumeyaay culture of Delfina Cuero, the pueblo society of San Ildefonso potter Maria Martinez, and the powerful matrilineal kinship system of Molly Brant's Mohawks. Contributors focus on the ways in which different women have fashioned lives that remain firmly rooted in their identity as Native women. Perdue's introductory essay ties together the themes running through the biographical sketches, including the cultural factors that have shaped the lives of Native women, particularly economic contributions, kinship, and belief, and the ways in which historical events, especially in United States Indian policy, have engendered change.

In this edited volume, Theda Perdue, a nationally known expert on Indian history and southern women's history, offers a rich collection of biographical essays on Native American women. From Pocahontas, a Powhatan woman of the seventeenth century, to Ada Deer, the Menominee woman who headed the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1990s, the essays span four centuries. Each one recounts the experiences of women from vastly different cultural traditions--the hunting and gathering of Kumeyaay culture of Delfina Cuero, the pueblo society of San Ildefonso potter Maria Martinez, and the powerful matrilineal kinship system of Molly Brant's Mohawks. Contributors focus on the ways in which different women have fashioned lives that remain firmly rooted in their identity as Native women. Perdue's introductory essay ties together the themes running through the biographical sketches, including the cultural factors that have shaped the lives of Native women, particularly economic contributions, kinship, and belief, and the ways in which historical events, especially in United States Indian policy, have engendered change.

When Europeans first arrived in North America, between five and eight million indigenous people were already living there. But how did they come to be here? What were their agricultural, spiritual, and hunting practices? How did their societies evolve and what challenges do they face today? Eminent historians Theda Perdue and Michael Green begin by describing how nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers followed the bison and woolly mammoth over the Bering land mass between Asia and what is now Alaska between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago, settling throughout North America. They describe hunting practices among different tribes, how some made the gradual transition to more settled, agricultural ways of life, the role of kinship and cooperation in Native societies, their varied burial rites and spiritual practices, and many other features of Native American life. Throughout the book, Perdue and Green stress the great diversity of indigenous peoples in America, who spoke more than 400 different languages before the arrival of Europeans and whose ways of life varied according to the environments they settled in and adapted to so successfully. Most importantly, the authors stress how Native Americans have struggled to maintain their sovereignty--first with European powers and then with the United States--in order to retain their lands, govern themselves, support their people, and pursue practices that have made their lives meaningful. Going beyond the stereotypes that so often distort our views of Native Americans, this Very Short Introduction offers an historically accurate, deeply engaging, and often inspiring account of the wide array of Native peoples in America.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Though they speak several different languages and organize themselves into many distinct tribes, the Native American peoples of the Southeast share a complex ancient culture and a tumultuous history. This volume examines and synthesizes their history through each of its integral phases: the complex and elaborate societies that emerged and flourished in the Pre-Columbian period; the triple curse of disease, economic dependency, and political instability brought by the European invasion; the role of Native Americans in the inter-colonial struggles for control of the region; the removal of the "Five Civilized Tribes" to Oklahoma; the challenges and adaptations of the post-removal period; and the creativity and persistence of those who remained in the Southeast.

“An interesting and effective overview. . . . It is to the author’s considerable credit that she is able to re-create the values and behavior of Cherokee women through court records, myths, and observers’ accounts. By examining women’s roles in farming and community life, Perdue argues that women were coequal contributors to Cherokee culture.”-ChoiceTheda Perdue examines the roles and responsibilities of Cherokee women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time of intense cultural change. While building on the research of earlier historians, she develops a uniquely complex view of the effects of contact on Native gender relations, arguing that Cherokee conceptions of gender persisted long after contact. Maintaining traditional gender roles actually allowed Cherokee women and men to adapt to new circumstances and adopt new industries and practices.

The five largest southeastern Indian groups - the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chicksaws, Creeks and Seminoles - were forced to emigrate west to the Indian territory (now Oklahoma) in the 1830s. This book contains the Indians' own stories - taken from WPA interviews - of the troubled years between the Civil War and Oklahoma statehood. During this period, Oklahoma Indians functioned autonomously, holding their own elections, enforcing their own laws and creating their own society from a mixture of old Indian customs and the new ways of the whites. The WPA informants describe the economic realities of the era: a few wealthy Indians, the rest scraping a living out of subsistence farming, hunting and fishing. They talk about education and religion - Native American and Christian - as well as diversions of the time: horse races, fairs, ball games, cornstalk shooting and traditional ceremonies such as the Green Corn Dance. Theda Perdue provides an introduction to each chapter which provides the background necessary to integrate the oral accounts into a more coherent historical overview.

2019 National Native American Hall of Fame Inductee This stirring memoir is the story of Ada Deer, the first woman to serve as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Deer begins, 'I was born a Menominee Indian. That is who I was born and how I have lived.' She proceeds to narrate the first eighty-three years of her life, which are characterized by her tireless campaigns to reverse the forced termination of the Menominee tribe and to ensure sovereignty and self-determination for all tribes.Deer grew up in poverty on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin, but with the encouragement of her mother and teachers, she earned degrees in social work from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and Columbia University. Armed with a first-rate education, an iron will, and a commitment to justice, she went from being a social worker in Minneapolis to leading the struggle for the restoration of the Menominees' tribal status and trust lands.Having accomplished that goal, she moved on to teach American Indian Studies at UW - Madison, to hold a fellowship at Harvard, to work for the Native American Rights Fund, to run unsuccessfully for Congress, and to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs in the Clinton administration.Now in her eighties, Deer remains as committed as ever to human rights, especially the rights of American Indians. A deeply personal story, written with humor and honesty, this book is a testimony to the ability of one individual to change the course of history through hard work, perseverance, and an unwavering commitment to social justice.

This volume collects most of the writings published by the accomplished Cherokee leader Elias Boudinot (1804?-1839). Founding editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, Boudinot is the most ambiguous and puzzling figure in Cherokee history. Although he first struggled against the removal of his people from their native Southeast, Boudinot later reversed his position and signed the Treaty of New Echota, an action that cost him his life.Together with Theda Perdue's biographical introduction and in-depth annotations, these letters, articles, pamphlets, and editorials document the stages of Boudinot's religious, philosophical, and political growth, from his early optimism that the Cherokees could completely assimilate into white society to his call for a separate nation of "civilized" Cherokees.

On the southern frontier in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, European men—including traders, soldiers, and government agents—sometimes married Native women. Children of these unions were known by whites as "half-breeds." The Indian societies into which they were born, however, had no corresponding concepts of race or "blood." Moreover, counter to European customs and laws, Native lineage was traced through the mother only. No familial status or rights stemmed from the father."Mixed Blood" Indians looks at a fascinating array of such birth- and kin-related issues as they were alternately misunderstood and astutely exploited by both Native and European cultures. Theda Perdue discusses the assimilation of non-Indians into Native societies, their descendants' participation in tribal life, and the white cultural assumptions conveyed in the designation "mixed blood." In addition to unions between European men and Native women, Perdue also considers the special cases arising from the presence of white women and African men and women in Indian society.From the colonial through the early national era, "mixed bloods" were often in the middle of struggles between white expansionism and Native cultural survival. That these "half-breeds" often resisted appeals to their "civilized" blood helped foster an enduring image of Natives as fickle allies of white politicians, missionaries, and entrepreneurs. "Mixed Blood" Indians rereads a number of early writings to show us the Native outlook on these misperceptions and to make clear that race is too simple a measure of their—or any peoples'—motives.

The Cotton States Exposition of 1895 was a world’s fair in Atlanta held to stimulate foreign and domestic trade for a region in an economic depression. Theda Perdue uses the exposition to examine the competing agendas of white supremacist organizers and the peoples of color who participated.White organizers had to demonstrate that the South had solved its race problem in order to attract business and capital. As a result, the exposition became a venue for a performance of race that formalized the segregation of African Americans, the banishment of Native Americans, and the incorporation of other people of color into the region’s racial hierarchy.White supremacy may have been the organizing principle, but exposition organizers gave unprecedented voice to minorities. African Americans used the Negro Building to display their accomplishments, to feature prominent black intellectuals, and to assemble congresses of professionals, tradesmen, and religious bodies. American Indians became more than sideshow attractions when newspapers published accounts of the difficulties they faced. And performers of ethnographic villages on the midway pursued various agendas, including subverting Chinese exclusion and protesting violations of contracts. Close examination reveals that the Cotton States Exposition was as much about challenges to white supremacy as about its triumph.

The Cotton States Exposition of 1895 was a world’s fair in Atlanta held to stimulate foreign and domestic trade for a region in an economic depression. Theda Perdue uses the exposition to examine the competing agendas of white supremacist organizers and the peoples of color who participated.White organizers had to demonstrate that the South had solved its race problem in order to attract business and capital. As a result, the exposition became a venue for a performance of race that formalized the segregation of African Americans, the banishment of Native Americans, and the incorporation of other people of color into the region’s racial hierarchy.White supremacy may have been the organizing principle, but exposition organizers gave unprecedented voice to minorities. African Americans used the Negro Building to display their accomplishments, to feature prominent black intellectuals, and to assemble congresses of professionals, tradesmen, and religious bodies. American Indians became more than sideshow attractions when newspapers published accounts of the difficulties they faced. And performers of ethnographic villages on the midway pursued various agendas, including subverting Chinese exclusion and protesting violations of contracts. Close examination reveals that the Cotton States Exposition was as much about challenges to white supremacy as about its triumph.