Tales of the Old Indian Territory and Essays on the Indian Condition

Tales of the Old Indian Territory and Essays on the Indian Condition

Author: John Milton Oskison

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2012-06-01

Total Pages: 677

ISBN-13: 0803237928

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At the beginning of the twentieth century, Indian Territory, which would eventually become the state of Oklahoma, was a multicultural space in which various Native tribes, European Americans, and African Americans were equally engaged in struggles to carve out meaningful lives in a harsh landscape. John Milton Oskison, born in the territory to a Cherokee mother and an immigrant English father, was brought up engaging in his Cherokee heritage, including its oral traditions, and appreciating the utilitarian value of an American education. Oskison left Indian Territory to attend college and went on to have a long career in New York City journalism, working for the New York Evening Post and Collier?s Magazine. He also wrote short stories and essays for newspapers and magazines, most of which were about contemporary life in Indian Territory and depicted a complex multicultural landscape of cowboys, farmers, outlaws, and families dealing with the consequences of multiple interacting cultures. Though Oskison was a well-known and prolific Cherokee writer, journalist, and activist, few of his works are known today. This first comprehensive collection of Oskison?s unpublished autobiography, short stories, autobiographical essays, and essays about life in Indian Territory at the turn of the twentieth century fills a significant void in the literature and thought of a critical time and place in the history of the United States.


The Search for an American Indian Identity

The Search for an American Indian Identity

Author: Hazel Hertzberg

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 1981-10-01

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780815622451

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American Indian national movements, asserting a common Indian interest and identity as distinct from tribal interests and identities, have been a significant part of the American experience throughout most of this century, but one virtually unknown even to historians. Here for the first time Pan-Indian movements are examined comprehensively and comparatively. The opening chapter provides the historical background for the development of modern Pan-Indianism. The first major Pan-Indian reform organization, the Society of American Indians (SAI), was founded in 1911. Led by middle-class, educated Indians. The SAI adapted many of the reform ideas of the Progressive Era to Indian purposes. The SAI rejected the old dream of restoring tribal cultures and worked instead for an Indian future identified with the broader American society, to be realized through education and legislation. During the twenties, the SAI declined and the direction of Pan-Indian efforts shifted. Pan-Indian fraternal movements arose that were more in keeping with the spirit of the times than was reformism. Based in towns and cities, the fraternal orders and social clubs provided a means for urban Indians to retain or regain an Indian identity. In the meantime, an Indian religious movement, the peyote cult, spread far beyond its Oklahoma heartland, gaining Indian adherents in many parts of the country. Abandoning the messianic hopes of earlier Pan-Indian religions, the peyote cult developed as a religion of accommodation, a blending of elements from many tribes and from Christianity as well. In 1918 Oklahoma peyotists incorporated the first Native American Church as a defense against a campaign to outlaw the use of peyote by Indians. During the succeeding decade churches were organized in other states. The Indian New Deal, which radically changed governmental policy, provided a new context for Pan-Indianism. The author examines briefly developments since 1934. Her concluding chapter places the various Pan-Indian movements in historical perspective. The research for this study included extensive use of a wide variety of primary sources—journals published by 1he Indian groups, collections of documents and letters, governmental records, and interviews with Indians, anthropologists, and government officials.


True West

True West

Author: William R. Handley

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2007-05-01

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780803259768

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In no other region of the United States has the notion of authenticity played such an important yet elusive role as it has in the West. Though pervasive in literature,øpopular culture, and history, assumptions about western authenticity have not received adequate critical attention. Given the ongoing economic and social transformations in this vast region, the persistent nostalgia and desire for the ?real? authentic West suggest regional and national identities at odds with themselves. True West explores the concept of authenticity as it is used to invent, test, advertise, and read the West. The fifteen essays collected here apply contemporary critical and cultural theory to western literary history, Native American literature and identities, the visual West, and the imagining of place. Ranging geographically from the Canadian Prairies to Buena Park?s Entertainment Corridor in Southern California, and chronologically from early tourist narratives to contemporary environmental writing, True West challenges many assumptions we make about western writing and opens the door to an important new chapter in western literary history and cultural criticism.


Fictions of Western American Domesticity

Fictions of Western American Domesticity

Author: Amanda J. Zink

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2018-06-01

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 0826359191

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This work provides a compelling explanation of something that has bedeviled a number of feminist scholars: Why did popular authors like Edna Ferber continue to write conventional fiction while living lives that were far from conventional? Amanda J. Zink argues that white writers like Ferber and Willa Cather avoided the subject of their own domestic labor by writing about the performance of domestic labor by “others,” showing that American print culture, both in novels and through advertisements, moved away from portraying women as angels in the house and instead sought to persuade other women to be angels in their houses. Zink further explores lesser-known works such as Mexican American cookbooks and essays in Indian boarding school magazines to show how women writers “dialoging domesticity” exemplify the cross-cultural encounters between “colonial domesticity” and “sovereign domesticity.” By situating these interpretations of literature within their historical contexts, Zink shows how these writers championed and challenged the ideology of domesticity.


The Oneida Indians in the Age of Allotment, 1860-1920

The Oneida Indians in the Age of Allotment, 1860-1920

Author: Laurence M. Hauptman

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 9780806137520

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The Oneida Indians, already weakened by their participation in the Civil War, faced the possibility of losing their reservation—their community’s greatest crisis since its resettlement in Wisconsin after the War of 1812. The Oneida Indians in the Age of Allotment, 1860–1920 is the first comprehensive study of how the Oneida Indians of Wisconsin were affected by the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887, the Burke Act of 1906, and the Federal Competency Commission, created in 1917. Editors Laurence M. Hauptman and L. Gordon McLester III draw on the expertise of historians, anthropologists, and archivists, as well as tribal attorneys, educators, and elders to clarify the little-understood transformation of the Oneida reservation during this era. Sixteen WPA narratives included in this volume tell of Oneida struggles during the Civil War and in boarding schools; of reservation leaders; and of land loss and other hardships under allotment. This book represents a unique collaborative effort between one Native American community and academics to present a detailed picture of the Oneida Indian past.


We Are Not a Vanishing People

We Are Not a Vanishing People

Author: Thomas Constantine Maroukis

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2021-06-01

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0816543011

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In 1911, a group of Native American intellectuals and activists joined together to establish the Society of American Indians (SAI), an organization by Indians for Indians. It was the first such nationwide organization dedicated to reform. They used a strategy of protest and activism that carried into the rest of the twentieth century. Some of the most prominent members included Charles A. Eastman (Dakota), Arthur Parker (Seneca), Carlos Montezuma (Yavapai), Zitkala-Ša (Yankton Sioux), and Sherman Coolidge (Peoria). They fought for U.S. citizenship and quality education. They believed these tools would allow Indigenous people to function in the modern world without surrendering one’s identity. They believed this could be accomplished by removing government controls over Indian life. Historian Thomas Constantine Maroukis discusses the goals, strategies, successes, and failures of the Indigenous intellectuals who came together to form the SAI. They engaged in lobbying, producing publications, informing the media, hundreds of speaking engagements, and annual conferences to argue for reform. Unfortunately, the forces of this era were against reforming federal policies: The group faced racism, a steady stream of negative stereotyping as a so-called vanishing race, and an indifferent federal bureaucracy. They were also beset by internal struggles, which weakened the organization. This work sheds new light on the origins of modern protest in the twentieth century, and it shows how the intellectuals and activists associated with the SAI were able to bring Indian issues before the American public, challenging stereotypes and the “vanishing people” trope. Maroukis argues that that the SAI was not an assimilationist organization; they were political activists trying to free Indians from government wardship while maintaining their cultural heritage.


The Rediscovery of America

The Rediscovery of America

Author: Ned Blackhawk

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2023-04-25

Total Pages: 611

ISBN-13: 0300244053

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A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America. Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non‑Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis he shows that * European colonization in the 1600s was never a predetermined success; * Native nations helped shape England's crisis of empire; * the first shots of the American Revolution were prompted by Indian affairs in the interior; * California Indians targeted by federally funded militias were among the first casualties of the Civil War; * the Union victory forever recalibrated Native communities across the West; * twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and policy. Blackhawk's retelling of U.S. history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.


To Be Indian

To Be Indian

Author: Joy Porter

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2023-08-04

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 080619376X

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Born on the Seneca Indian Reservation in New York State, Arthur Caswell Parker (1881-1955) was a prominent intellectual leader both within and outside tribal circles. Of mixed Iroquois, Seneca, and Anglican descent, Parker was also a controversial figure-recognized as an advocate for Native Americans but criticized for his assimilationist stance. In this exhaustively researched biography-the first book-length examination of Parker’s life and career-Joy Porter explores complex issues of Indian identity that are as relevant today as in Parker’s time. From childhood on, Parker learned from his well-connected family how to straddle both Indian and white worlds. His great-uncle, Ely S. Parker, was Commissioner of Indian Affairs under Ulysses S. Grant--the first Native American to hold the position. Influenced by family role models and a strong formal education, Parker, who became director of the Rochester Museum, was best known for his work as a "museologist" (a word he coined). Porter shows that although Parker achieved success within the dominant Euro-American culture, he was never entirely at ease with his role as assimilated Indian and voiced frustration at having "to play Indian to be Indian." In expressing this frustration, Parker articulated a challenging predicament for twentieth-century Indians: the need to negotiate imposed stereotypes, to find ways to transcend those stereotypes, and to assert an identity rooted in the present rather than in the past.