Yakama Rising argues that Indigenous communities themselves have the answers to the persistent social problems they face. This book contributes to discourses of Indigenous social change by articulating a Yakama decolonizing praxis that advances the premise that grassroots activism and cultural revitalization are powerful examples of decolonization.
Sahaptin, or Ichishk�in S�nwit (literally, "this language"), is a Plateau Penutian language spoken in south-central Washington and northern Oregon. This dictionary documents the dialect of Sahaptin that is spoken by the Yakama people. Ichishk�in S�nwit Yakama / Yakima Sahaptin Dictionary is the first modern published dictionary of any Sahaptin dialect. The dictionary is divided into three sections: a Sahaptin-English section; an English-Sahaptin section; and a section listing roots used in the formation of Sahaptin words. The Sahaptin-English section contains approximately 3,500 headwords, over 4,500 example sentences, more than 100 images, and over 9,200 sound files available online. Copious cross-references alert readers to related words elsewhere in the Sahaptin-English section. The English-Sahaptin and roots sections serve as indices to the Sahaptin-English section. In the English-Sahaptin section, users can look up the Sahaptin equivalents of English words. In the root section, users can see words from different parts of the dictionary that share the same component of meaning. The dictionary also contains essays by noted Plateau linguist Bruce Rigsby (professor emeritus, University of Queensland) on the histories and current usage of the terms "Sahaptin" and "Yakima / Yakama."
On Indian Ground: Northwest is the second of ten regionally focused texts that explores American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian education in depth. The text is designed to be used by educators of Native youth and emphasizes best practices found throughout the region. Previous texts on American Indian education make wide-ranging general assumptions that all American Indians are alike. This series promotes specific interventions and relies on Native ways of knowing to highlight place-based educational practices. On Indian Ground: Northwest looks at the history of Indian education across the Pacific Northwest region. Authors also analyze education policy and Tribal education departments to highlight early childhood education, gifted and talented educational practice, parental involvement, language revitalization, counseling, and research. These chapters expose cross-cutting themes of sustainability, historical bias, economic development, health and wellness and cultural competence.
Shadow Tribe offers the first in-depth history of the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River Indians -- the defiant River People whose ancestors refused to settle on the reservations established for them in central Oregon and Washington. Largely overlooked in traditional accounts of tribal dispossession and confinement, their story illuminates the persistence of off-reservation Native communities and the fluidity of their identities over time. Cast in the imperfect light of federal policy and dimly perceived by non-Indian eyes, the flickering presence of the Columbia River Indians has followed the treaty tribes down the difficult path marked out by the forces of American colonization. Based on more than a decade of archival research and conversations with Native people, Andrew Fisher’s groundbreaking book traces the waxing and waning of Columbia River Indian identity from the mid-nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries. Fisher explains how, despite policies designed to destroy them, the shared experience of being off the reservation and at odds with recognized tribes forged far-flung river communities into a loose confederation called the Columbia River Tribe. Environmental changes and political pressures eroded their autonomy during the second half of the twentieth century, yet many River People continued to honor a common heritage of ancestral connection to the Columbia, resistance to the reservation system, devotion to cultural traditions, and detachment from the institutions of federal control and tribal governance. At times, their independent and uncompromising attitude has challenged the sovereignty of the recognized tribes, earning Columbia River Indians a reputation as radicals and troublemakers even among their own people. Shadow Tribe is part of a new wave of historical scholarship that shows Native American identities to be socially constructed, layered, and contested rather than fixed, singular, and unchanging. From his vantage point on the Columbia, Fisher has written a pioneering study that uses regional history to broaden our understanding of how Indians thwarted efforts to confine and define their existence within narrow reservation boundaries.
The mighty Columbia River cuts a deep gash through the Miocene basalts of the Columbia Plateau, coursing as well through the lives of the Indians who live along its banks. Known to these people as Nch’i-Wana (the Big River), it forms the spine of their land, the core of their habitat. At the turn of the century, the Sahaptin speakers of the mid-Columbia lived in an area between Celilo Falls and Priest Rapids in eastern Oregon and Washington. They were hunters and gatherers who survived by virtue of a detailed, encyclopedic knowledge of their environment. Eugene Hunn’s authoritative study focuses on Sahaptin ethnobiology and the role of the natural environment in the lives and beliefs of their descendants who live on or near the Yakima, Umatilla, and Warm Springs reservations.
For many inside and outside the legal academy, the right place to look for law is in constitutions, statutes, and judicial opinions. This book looks for law in the “wrong places”—sites and spaces in which no formal law appears. These may be geographic regions beyond the reach of law, everyday practices ungoverned or ungovernable by law, or works of art that have escaped law’s constraints. Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places brings together essays by leading scholars of anthropology, cultural studies, history, law, literature, political science, race and ethnic studies, religion, and rhetoric, to look at law from the standpoint of the humanities. Beyond showing law to be determined by or determinative of distinct cultural phenomena, the contributors show how law is itself interwoven with language, text, image, and culture. Many essays in this volume look for law precisely in the kinds of “wrong places” where there appears to be no law. They find in these places not only reflections and remains of law, but also rules and practices that seem indistinguishable from law and raise challenging questions about the locations of law and about law’s meaning and function. Other essays do the opposite: rather than looking for law in places where law does not obviously appear, they look in statute books and courtrooms from perspectives that are usually presumed to have nothing to say about law. Looking at law sideways, or upside down, or inside out defamiliarizes law. These essays show what legal understanding can gain when law is denied its ostensibly proper domain. Contributors: Kathryn Abrams, Daniel Boyarin, Wendy Brown, Marianne Constable, Samera Esmeir, Daniel Fisher, Sara Ludin, Saba Mahmood, Rebecca McLennan, Ramona Naddaff, Beth Piatote, Sarah Song, Christopher Tomlins, Leti Volpp, Bryan Wagner
The Rights of Indians and Tribes explains Federal Indian Law in a conversational manner, yet is highly authoritative, containing over 2000 footnotes with citations to relevant court decisions, statutes, and agency regulations. Since its initial publication in 1983 it has sold over 150,000 copies. It is user-friendly and particularly helpful for tribal advocates, students, government officials, lawyers, and members of the general public. The book uses a question-and-answer format and covers every important subject impacting Indians and tribes today and discusses which governments-tribal, state, and federal-have authority on Indian reservations. This fully-updated fifth edition provides a Foreword by John Echohawk, Director of the Native American Rights Fund, and covers the most significant legal issues facing Indians and Indian tribes. This includes the regulation of non-Indians on reservations, definitions of important legal terms, Indian treaties, the Indian Civil Rights Act, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, and the Indian Child Welfare Act.
An incorrigible trickster, a clever thief, a rogue, sometimes a magnanimous hero, often a vengeful loser, but always a survivor, Coyote is the most complex character in the Nez Perce cycle of traditional myths. Nez Perce Coyote Tales, a collection of fifty-two stories translated from the native language, represents the most extensive treatment of the character of Coyote for any Native American group. Within these pages are stories of Coyote and various monsters, such as Flint Man, Killer Butterfly, and Cannibal: tales of Coyote and other animals, such as Bull, Fox, and Bat: and many other stories, including how Coyote brought the buffalo, warred with Winter, killed the grizzly bears, married his daughter, and visited White Mountain. In an introduction and concluding chapter, Deward E. Walker, Jr., and Daniel N. Matthews analyze Coyote's social relations and interaction with other character in Nez Perce mythology. They reveal how the myths, besides being entertaining stories, also serve to impart traditional cultural values, proper social relations, and other practical information.
