6 posts tagged “american indians”

There are two contradicting, but broadly held, views and understandings when it comes to the deep history of indigenous Native American Indian peoples in the Great Basin culture region of North America. The predominate one found in archaeology and across much of the social sciences is that today’s indigenous Native American Indians of the Great Basin (the Paiute, Shoshone, Washoe, Ute, Bannock, Kawaiisu, and Chemehuevi) have only resided in the area for a relatively short time; on the order of perhaps 1000 years. The other understanding of Great Basin human history held by the Native Americans and those scientists who look at a slightly different dataset, includes indigenous Native Americans as deeptime participants of the region.

Often argued under the rubric of Lamb’s 1958 Numic hypothesis, these two conflicting views on history have slowly been coming together. As initially argued by Dr. Jones in Respect for the Ancestors: American Indian Cultural Affiliation in the American West, and then Lithic Projectile Points and the Great Basin Region of North America, new archaeological analyses is lending continued support to an emerging understanding. This emerging understanding centers around the idea of cultural transmission: the mechanism by which technological skills, knowledge, and practices are passed from individual to individual and from group to group.

In an attempt to explain the spatial and temporal patterns observed in the archaeological record, such as why a particular artifact is found in one region but not in another region, or why an artifact type differs in shape or size between two sites, the idea of cultural transmission has slowly gained ground. As cultural transmission has been embraced in the Great Basin, the Numic hypothesis has lost what shaky evidence it had to start. In a recent paper entitled The Cultural Transmission of Great Basin Projectile-Point Technology II: An Agent-Based Computer Simulation authors Alex Mesoudi and Michael J. O’Brien lend support to the emerging understanding of Native American deeptime history in the region.

Read more about Native American Indian archaeological history in the Great Basin here.

James Cox takes the title of his book from Sherman Alexie, for whom "white noise," the static that remains on a television after broadcasting ends, represents "the oppressive noise of white mass-produced cultures, the loud demand to conform to the invader's cultural belief system or be destroyed" (p. 11). Cox takes "white noise" to signify a broad history of colonial domination and erasure, which Alexie and the other novelists he considers write to resist. The introduction to Cox's book, "A Cup of Water," states his purpose to demonstrate how Euro-western and Euro-American literary and popular narratives, which almost always "culminate in the absence of Indians" (p. 13), support ongoing colonial dominance and produce real-world consequences for living Indians; and to explore the strategies used by some contemporary Native fiction writers to intervene in these colonial narratives of conquest, to render them powerless and suggest that "conquest, as imagined by non-Native authors, did not take place" (p. 18). Cox argues that his study "implements Osage scholar Robert Warrior's proposal ... that, in any scholarship on work by Native authors, the 'critical interpretation of those writings can proceed primarily from Indian sources,'" (p. 4); thus he intends to avoid "academic colonialism" by privileging the voices of Native writers in his own interpretations (pp. 4-5). If reality is constructed by stories, and if, as Greg Sarris observes, "In oral discourse ... no one party has access to the whole of the exchange.... [O]ne party's story is no more the whole story than a cup of water is the river" (quoted, p. 16), Cox wishes his own "cup of water" to resist the narrative flow that justifies domination and to "nourish" new plots for Native people (pp. 16-17).

Read more about Muting White Noise: Native American and European Novel Traditions here.

North American archaeology has been going through major revisions and paradigm changes over the last two decades. No place has this been more evidence then in theories and long held beliefs concerning the peopling of the Americas: genetic evidence has pushed back the hypothetical initial peopling date; new archaeological sites such as the Gault Site in Texas have questioned the Clovis model; and ideas surrounding culture groups and technological affiliation have been revisited. New evidence from across the Plains and Rocky Mountain region has contributed to this overhauling of North American archaeological theories and our understanding of the peopling of the Americas. Work by Brian N. Andrews, Jason M. Labelle, and John D. Srebach (2008) has shed new light on the Folsom lithic technology and prehistoric Native American subsistence and migration patterns during the late Pleistocene/early Holocene transition.

Folsom is an archaeological complex of sites and isolated finds associated with prehistoric Native American hunter-gatherer groups inhabiting the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Southwest regions of North America. First defined at the Folsom type site in New Mexico and further refined at the Lindenmeier site, the complex contains a number of temporally diagnostic lithic artifacts (projectile points, channel flakes, ultrathin bifaces). Spanning 800 radiocarbon years, from approximately 10,900 to 10,100 radiocarbon years before present, documenting the longevity and regional success of the Folsom technological complex is clearly documented.

It is generally well accepted that Folsom adaptation was characterized by small groups of cyclically mobile, specialized bison hunters moving from kill to kill, often covering large areas of land in relatively short periods, with the efficiently designed Folsom toolkit seen as a key technological adaptation of this cyclical lifestyle.

Read more about prehistoric Native Americans and Folsom Technology: New Evidence from the Plains here.

The idea of replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day was not a new one. It was first proclaimed by representatives of Native nations and participants at the United Nations-sponsored International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas, which took place in 1977 in Geneva, Switzerland. The declaration of this body was applauded and echoed by Native peoples around the globe.

Indigenous peoples and human rights/peace/social justice/environmental organizations were beginning to gear up for the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage, 1492-1992, which marked the beginning of the European invasion of the Western Hemisphere and Native resistance to it. While governments were trying to make it into a celebration of colonialism, Native peoples wanted to use the occasion to reveal the historical truths about the invasion and the consequent genocide and environmental destruction, to organize against its continuation today, and to celebrate Indigenous resistance.

With representatives from 120 Indian nations from every part of the Americas, the all-Indigenous First Continental Conference on 500 Years of Indian Resistance, held in Quito, Ecuador in July 1990, saw itself as fulfilling a prophesy that the Native nations would rise again when the eagle of the north joined with the condor of the south. The conference resolved to transform Columbus Day, 1992, "into an occasion to strengthen our process of continental unity and struggle towards our liberation."
Resistance 500.

Read more about changing Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples day here.

This study examines American Indian parents’ perceptions of parent involvement in their children’s education and factors that may encourage or discourage involvement.

A better understanding of American Indian parent involvement was considered as a possible solution to narrow the achievement gap for American Indian students. Five focus groups, consisting of 47 self-selected parents, were conducted in one state in the Central Region. Factors perceived to encourage parent involvement included a caring, supportive, and communicative school staff and culturally respectful environment; access to American Indian programs, resource centers, after school activities, and clubs; and the presence of an advocate or liaison in each school. Factors perceived to discourage parent involvement included feeling unwelcome or intimidated at the school and perceptions of racism and discrimination; experiencing scheduling, transportation, childcare, and financial difficulties; and having prior negative experiences in their own or their children’s education.

Read more about American Indian perspectives on childhood education here.

Officials of the Intermountain Region have determined that, pursuant to 25 U.S.C. 3001(3)(C), the three cultural items described above are specific ceremonial objects needed by traditional Native American religious leaders for the practice of traditional Native American religions by their present-day adherents. Officials of the Intermountain Region also have determined that, pursuant to 25 U.S.C. 3001(2), there is a relationship of shared group identity that can be reasonably traced between the sacred objects and the Pueblo of Santa Ana, New Mexico.

Representatives of any other Indian tribe that believes itself to be culturally affiliated with the sacred objects should contact Dave Ruppert, NAGPRA Coordinator, NPS Intermountain Region, 12795 West Alameda Parkway, Lakewood, CO 80228, telephone (303) 969-2879, before August 22, 2008. Repatriation of the sacred objects to the Pueblo of Santa Ana, New Mexico may proceed after that date if no additional claimants come forward.

Read more about NAGPRA, American Indians, and the Return of Sacred Objects to Santa Ana Pueblo here.