Critical Indigenous and American Indian Studies – serie

Living at the intersection of multiple identities in the United States can be dangerous. This is especially true for Native women who live on the more than 56 million acres that comprise America’s Indian Country – the legal term for American Indian reservations and other land held in trust for Native people.Today, due to a complicated system of criminal jurisdiction, non-Native Americans can commit crimes against American Indians in much of Indian Country with virtual impunity. This has created what some call a modern day «hunting ground» in which Native women are specifically targeted by non-Native men for sexual violence.In this urgent and timely book, author Amy L. Casselman exposes the shameful truth of how the American government has systematically divested Native nations of the basic right to protect the people in their own communities. A problem over 200 years in the making, Casselman highlights race and gender in federal law to challenge the argument that violence against Native women in Indian country is simply collateral damage from a complex but necessary legal structure. Instead, she demonstrates that what’s happening in Indian country is part of a violent colonial legacy – one that has always relied on legal and sexual violence to disempower Native communities as a whole.

This multidisciplinary collection of nine previously unpublished essays presents new research in three interlocking domains: tribal history with a special emphasis on Native women in the Southeast, language revitalization efforts and the narrative knowledge inherent in indigenous oral culture, and traditional educational systems in the context of the ongoing colonization of American Indian educational practices and values. This volume highlights Southeastern Indian issues and demonstrates the unique situation of women in tribes lacking (full) federal recognition or a more inclusive and multidisciplinary discussion of Native women in more than one tribal nation. Southeastern themes are linked with topics of concern by other tribal nations to show commonalities and raised awareness about the central experiences and contributions of Native women in the encounter and ongoing struggle with Euro-American systems of oppression and cultural erasure. This book spans the full gamut from naming women’s experiences of historical trauma to their ongoing efforts at preserving and rebuilding their Native nations. The collection of essays is distinctive in its Indigenous hermeneutics in that it insists on a holistic view of time and place-based knowledge – the past still fully affects the present and gives the present depth and meaning beyond the linear flow of time. This book also features American Indian and non-American Indian scholars who are well known in American Indians studies, scholars beginning their career and scholars who, while not experts in American Indians studies, are considered experts in other disciplines and who recognize the unique attributes of Southeastern American Indian nations.

Canadians are beginning to learn about the negative effects of residential schools on Aboriginal people in Canada. More hidden in the written record, but bearing a similar powerfully destructive role, are Indian Agents, who were with very few exceptions White men who ‘ruled the reserves’ in Canada from the 1870s to the 1960s. This book is the first to present a discussion of Indian Agents in general. It provides an introductory look at the control Indian Agents exercised over Aboriginal communities throughout the period in question. The primary intent is to spark discussion in Indigenous studies courses.This book is built upon a discussion of the lives and impact of five Indian Agents: Hayter Reed, William Morris Graham, John McIver, William Halliday, and Fred Hall. However, the practices and views of 39 other Indian Agents are interwoven throughout the text.Although there was a readily detectable sameness in the way that Indian Agent power was imposed on Aboriginal communities based on the institutional racism of the Indian Agent System, one of the points to be made is that not all Indian Agents were the same. Some were more oppressive than others. Also frequently pointed out is the fact that Aboriginal peoples were not merely helpless victims to Indian Agent control, but resisted that control, sometimes successfully.The book concludes with a chapter comparing the Indian Agent System in Canada, with similar systems in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Sounds of Navajo Poetry analyzes five poems by Navajo poet Rex Lee Jim in order to think through questions of linguistic relativity and translation. In fundamentally rethinking linguistic relativity, this book argues for a humanities of speaking that attends to poetics as a key site for coming to terms with the ways languages facilitate imaginative acts. This book will be of particular interest to researchers in anthropology, linguistics, Native American studies, sound studies, and translation studies. The Sounds of Navajo Poetry will be particularly appropriate for courses on verbal art, language and culture, contemporary Native American poetry, translation, and sound studies.

At its onset, the American Indian Women of Proud Nations Organization set out to create a space that would uplift Native American women, children, and families because of their central roles in the continuation of Native communities. The contributors to the second edition continue to document and reflect on the organization’s initiative and the efforts of Southeastern Native women and their allies to center women, children and families in protecting and strengthening kinship, land, and language as enduring aspects of Native American cultures. The second edition offers updated research on language revitalization, adolescents and their parental caregivers, Indigenous issues in higher education, and new work on matrilineality, the Missing and Murdered People crisis, and the continuation of healing traditions in a contemporary context.

At its onset, the American Indian Women of Proud Nations Organization set out to create a space that would uplift Native American women, children, and families because of their central roles in the continuation of Native communities. The contributors to the second edition continue to document and reflect on the organization’s initiative and the efforts of Southeastern Native women and their allies to center women, children and families in protecting and strengthening kinship, land, and language as enduring aspects of Native American cultures. The second edition offers updated research on language revitalization, adolescents and their parental caregivers, Indigenous issues in higher education, and new work on matrilineality, the Missing and Murdered People crisis, and the continuation of healing traditions in a contemporary context.

Indigenous women from the Americas are on the frontlines of activism in battles ranging from environmental protection, cultural and language revitalization and preservation, sovereignty campaigns, sexual violence, and human rights. This book introduces voices of Native activists blazing trails of resistance in new fields of engagement. Interviews with contemporary Native women from the northern and southern hemispheres of the Americas highlight commonalities amongst them and diverse paths of resistance work. Artists, lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists, athletes, educators, economists, and legislators seek societal transformation and reframe modes of resistance from their areas of expertise and Indigenous identity. For students in ethnic studies, gender studies, Latin American and American studies, sociology and anthropology, the conversations provide insights of Native women dynamically involved in shifting the socio-cultural imaginary and the futures of their Nations.

Indigenous women from the Americas are on the frontlines of activism in battles ranging from environmental protection, cultural and language revitalization and preservation, sovereignty campaigns, sexual violence, and human rights. This book introduces voices of Native activists blazing trails of resistance in new fields of engagement. Interviews with contemporary Native women from the northern and southern hemispheres of the Americas highlight commonalities amongst them and diverse paths of resistance work. Artists, lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists, athletes, educators, economists, and legislators seek societal transformation and reframe modes of resistance from their areas of expertise and Indigenous identity. For students in ethnic studies, gender studies, Latin American and American studies, sociology and anthropology, the conversations provide insights of Native women dynamically involved in shifting the socio-cultural imaginary and the futures of their Nations.

Living at the intersection of multiple identities in the United States can be dangerous. This is especially true for Native women who live on the more than 56 million acres that comprise America’s Indian Country – the legal term for American Indian reservations and other land held in trust for Native people.Today, due to a complicated system of criminal jurisdiction, non-Native Americans can commit crimes against American Indians in much of Indian Country with virtual impunity. This has created what some call a modern day «hunting ground» in which Native women are specifically targeted by non-Native men for sexual violence.In this urgent and timely book, author Amy L. Casselman exposes the shameful truth of how the American government has systematically divested Native nations of the basic right to protect the people in their own communities. A problem over 200 years in the making, Casselman highlights race and gender in federal law to challenge the argument that violence against Native women in Indian country is simply collateral damage from a complex but necessary legal structure. Instead, she demonstrates that what’s happening in Indian country is part of a violent colonial legacy – one that has always relied on legal and sexual violence to disempower Native communities as a whole.

This book proposes a methodology for formulating a sovereign field of Academic Native American Philosophy. In this groundbreaking metaphilosophical work, the author identifies several recurrent themes in Indigenous North American cultures and argues that such themes can form the foundation of a unique field of philosophy. Creatively drawing on a diverse collection of Native voices from a wide variety of disciplines such as philosophy, religion, literature and oratory, this innovative book promises to be a resource for philosophers and other scholars seeking to engage in discourses centering Native conceptual analyses."Dr. Vest has written a perceptive understandable study about the challenge to accept Native American philosophy and she explains thoroughly what it is. Written from the heart, she shares her insightful understandings of Native life and the complexities of tribal worldviews. If you want to know about Indians, this is a must read." –Donald L. Fixico, Muscogee, Seminole, Shawnee, and Sac and Fox, and author of The American Indian Mind in a Linear World "Jennifer Vest has produced the most comprehensive, compelling, and elegant treatise of Native American Philosophy that I have seen to date. Her treatise elevates the stature of Native American to its rightful place among world Philosophies. Her writing is full of the life and spirit of Indigenous thought. As such, it is a must read for all those interested in Philosophy, Native American, Ecological and Contemplative Studies."–Gregory Cajete, Ph.D. Emeritus Professor, Native Studies and American Indian Education University of New Mexico