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Published: 2013

Total Pages: 468

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This dissertation examines several decades of tribal revitalization efforts prior to the advent of casino gaming, as well as the gradual expansion of tribal authority on the Oneida Reservation. Through the examination of several key developments and community debates, it traces the extraordinary renascence of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin following the devastating federal policies of allotment and assimilation during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the 1920s represented a historic low point for the Oneidas--characterized by insufficient access to healthcare, education, and employment--by the 1990s, the Oneidas not only had achieved cultural and economic security, they had also become one of the largest employers in the Green Bay area. Despite the existence of analogous movements for tribal rehabilitation throughout North America--and around the globe--the social uplift of modern American Indian communities remains under-studied. Popular misconceptions often attribute the success of Native communities like Oneida to casino gaming operations since the 1980s, but this dissertation argues that the Oneida Nation's dramatic reversal of fortune originated in 1920s tribal activism both within and across tribes. This dissertation highlights the numerous strategies that one tribe has pursued to facilitate indigenous community empowerment. Rather than simply tracing the pendulum of federal Indian policy as it swings back and forth between forced assimilation and sovereign self-determination, this dissertation devotes significant attention to the internal tribal discourse of "progress" and the actions of the Oneida Nation's leadership. The Oneida Resurgence moves beyond dichotomies such as progressives vs. traditionalists and bridges the historiographical divide between reservation and urban communities by focusing upon mobility. This study demonstrates that indigenous nation rebuilding has not been a straight, mutually agreed-upon path, but rather a strategic process of accommodation, resistance, renewal, and change. Moreover, the contemporary emergence of an anti-sovereignty movement among the Oneidas' non-Indian neighbors on the reservation reveals that indigenous resurgence and resentful opposition go hand in hand.