Master of Science / Department of Geology / Matthew Totten / Due to their high resolution and established success rates, 3D seismic surveys have become one of the most important tools in many hydrocarbon exploration programs. Basic interpretation of seismic reflectors alone, however, may result in inaccurate predictions of subsurface geology. Historically, seismic attributes have played a particularly important role in the characterization of the lithological and petrophysical properties of hydrocarbon reservoirs in Kansas channel fill lithofacies. Integration of an analysis based on post-stack seismic attributes may drastically reduce the chances of drilling in unsuitable locations. Previous theses have focused on establishing a suitable 3D seismic attribute analysis workflow for use in the determination of hydrocarbon production potential in areas of Ness County, Kansas, USA (Abbas, 2009; Phillip, 2011). By applying a similar workflow in the analysis of additional 3D seismic and well log data obtained from a nearby area in Ness County, and comparing those results to existing borehole and production data, this study seeks to test the hypothesis that seismic attribute analysis is a crucial component in the delineation of heterogeneous reservoir stratigraphy in Kansas lithologies. Time-structure maps, in addition to time slices of several 3D seismic attributes including amplitude attenuation, acoustic impedance, and event continuity all seem to indicate that five previously drilled dry wells within the study area were outside the boundary of a meandering, Cherokee sandstone body of potential reservoir quality. Additionally, comparisons of the results of this research to previous studies conducted in Ness County have provided an opportunity to assess, and potentially contribute to, paleodepositional interpretations made through the utilization of a similar workflow (Raef et al., in press). The results of this study seem to support a broadly NE-SW trending meandering channel system, which is in agreement with the interpretations of Raef et al., and the findings of Ramaker (2009).

Master of Science / Geology / Matthew Kirk / The Cherokee basin in southeastern Kansas is a declining coalbed methane (CBM) field where little is known about how the CBM formed, the extent to which it continues to form, and what factors influence its formation. An understanding of methanogenic processes and geochemistry could lead to potential enhancement of methane formation in the basin. The objectives of this project are to (1) determine the pathway of methane formation and (2) determine whether geochemistry has influenced gas formation. In order to reach the objectives, we analyzed formation water geochemistry, production history, and gas composition and isotopes. Post Rock Energy Corporation gave us access to 16 wells for sampling purposes. We collected gas samples in Isotubes® for compositional and isotopic analyses at a commercial laboratory. We analyzed major ion chemistry from formation water using standard methods. Co-produced water samples we collected are Na-Cl type with total dissolved solids content ranging from 35,367 to 91,565 mg/L. TDS tended to be highest in samples collected from wells with greater total depth. The pH and temperature of sampled water averaged 7.0 and 19°C with an alkalinity ranging from 3.33 to 8.59. Gas dryness and δ¹³C CH[subscript 4] range from 196 to 4531 and -69.95 to -56.5, respectively, which indicate that methane is being produced biologically. Comparing the δ¹³C CH[subscript 4] to the δD CH[subscript 4], which ranges from -228.2 to -217.2, suggest that the primary pathway of methanogenesis is H[subscript 2]/CO[subscript 2] reduction. We calculated Δ (the difference between δ values) in order to correlate isotope data to produced water chemistry. Samples ΔD and Δ¹³C values range from -189.1 to -168.7 and 61.52 to 69.99. Calculated ΔD[subscript CH4-H2O] and Δ¹³C[subscript CO2-CH4] values approach the range for the acetate/methyl pathways as Clˉ concentration increases, potentially indicating a slight shift in methanogenic pathway in deeper, more saline portions of the basin. The culturing results revealed that living methanogens are still able to utilize H[subscript 2], acetate, and methanol present in co-produced formation water from all tested wells.

The acquisition of the Indian land by the Cherokee Commission between 1890 to 1892 was a series of events that changed the future of many indian nations and parts of american history. In the midst of these great changes, Kiowa interpreter for the Cherokee commission: Joshua H Given, ended up in a controversial position. He was accused of having deliberately cheated and mislead the Indians to get them to sign the agreements to allot their land to the goverment. This led to several attempts by the Indian tribes to annul the agreements with the commission and the condemnation of Joshua Given by many Kiowas. This essay is an attempt to clarify parts of Joshua H Givens life, actions and death through a source-critical analysis of the sources used in the research of Joshua Given. The views of two historians, C. Blue Clark and William T. Hagan, is used to contrast and compare the actions and life of Given to get a fuller view of the complicity of this individual. Hagans views is more focused on the image of a trying mediator, while Clark focuses on the images of a deceiving interpreter, By the work and theories of Nancy L. Hagedorn and Margaret Connell Szasz on the cultural broker as an cultural intermediate, Givens complexe relation to the clashing cultures and tradition of his own Kiowa nation and his newly learned western and Christian culture can be undersood as a failiure to gain the extremely important trust required for such mediation between the parties.

Many Native American students face challenges when entering and attending institutions of higher learning. For Native Americans, seeking postsecondary education frequently means overcoming hurdles, such as inadequate college preparatory courses work, economic hardships, leaving Native American communities behind and acclimating to the expectancies and values of a dominant culture. These barriers often result in Native American college students leaving college early or failing to graduate. One solution to this problem has been the creation of Tribal colleges where Native American students are able to practice their cultural traditions and preserve tribal values, while at the same time developing skills to become successful college students. The Tribal colleges’ curricula and delivery methods foster more cooperative learning activities rather than academic competition, present the study of natural phenomena through direct observations, and permit cultural research regarding Native American history and language. A survey was distributed to all enrolled members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian (EBCI) college students to compare the experiences of those attending Tribal and non-tribal colleges. The results of the survey provided data for a nonexperimental quantitative study that addressed 18 research questions in an effort to determine whether there is a significant difference between the educational experiences of EBCI college students who attend non-tribal institutions and those who attend Tribal colleges. In particular, there was a focus on three domains: student viewpoints on separation and alienation from their tribal community; tribal community connections; and individual perceptions of success. A comparison of the experiences by gender between students attending Tribal versus non-tribal colleges was made. The researcher used the Native American Collective Orientation and Pursuits in Education Scale (NACOPE) survey results as determinants of the college students’ experiences. The findings of this study indicated there were no significant differences between the experiences of EBCI students who attended either Tribal or nontribal colleges. In addition, there were no significant differences when gender and type of college were considered. However, there were significant differences in those attending Tribal and nontribal colleges regarding some dimensions. Students in both groups had significantly higher survey scores than the median test value on the NACOPE in three areas. These higher scores were observed in their overall experiences being reported as positive; feelings of community connectedness to their home tribe; and less feelings of separation and alienation on their college campuses.

A survey was distributed to all enrolled members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian (EBCI) college students to compare the experiences of those attending Tribal and non-tribal colleges. The results of the survey provided data for a nonexperimental quantitative study that addressed 18 research questions in an effort to determine whether there is a significant difference between the educational experiences of EBCI college students who attend non-tribal institutions and those who attend Tribal colleges. In particular, there was a focus on three domains: student viewpoints on separation and alienation from their tribal community; tribal community connections; and individual perceptions of success. A comparison of the experiences by gender between students attending Tribal versus non-tribal colleges was made. The researcher used the Native American Collective Orientation and Pursuits in Education Scale (NACOPE) survey results as determinants of the college students’ experiences. The findings of this study indicated there were no significant differences between the experiences of EBCI students who attended either Tribal or nontribal colleges. In addition, there were no significant differences when gender and type of college were considered. However, there were significant differences in those attending Tribal and nontribal colleges regarding some dimensions. Students in both groups had significantly higher survey scores than the median test value on the NACOPE in three areas. These higher scores were observed in their overall experiences being reported as positive; feelings of community connectedness to their home tribe; and less feelings of separation and alienation on their college campuses.

A full-length dramatic play about a sharecropper protest in 1939, and the Cherokee Trail of Tears in 1838, both in southeastern Missouri, aka the Bootheel.

My research builds upon interdisciplinary trends in Native scholarship emphasizing tribal-specificity; attention to understudied periods, writers, and texts; and a political commitment to engage contemporary challenges facing Indigenous communities. My dissertation examines the persistence of nationhood in Cherokee writing between the dissolution of the Cherokee government preceding Oklahoma statehood in 1907 and political reorganization in the early 1970s. Situating writing by John Milton Oskison, Rachel Caroline Eaton, Rollie Lynn Riggs and Ruth Muskrat Bronson explicitly within the Cherokee national contexts of its emergence, I attend to the complicated ways they each remembered, imagined, narrated and enacted Cherokee nationhood in the absence of a functioning state. Often read as a transitional “dark age” in Cherokee history, this period stands instead as a rich archive of Cherokee national memory capable of informing contemporary debates in the Cherokee Nation and Native Studies today. / text

This dissertation is the first historical-cultural exploration of the ways tribal customs made their way into mainstream America. Throughout his career, Cherokee entertainer and political pundit Will Rogers (1879-1935) drew on Cherokee traditions to ameliorate Americans' anxieties over the increase of mass media, the rise of urbanism, and the threatened loss of individuality that came with these changes. This study complicates overly-simplistic assumptions that popular culture uniformly misrepresented and victimized Native peoples during the Progressive Era and Interwar Years. By analyzing the early twentieth century through the work of one of its most influential American Indian participants, this project broadens notions of both American popular political cultures and American Indian identities. Although Rogers and other publicly known Natives like him did not always fit into the public's perception of "the Indian," they did fit into their tribe's artistic and cultural traditions. In this way, Rogers's overlooked work--his live performances on vaudeville and radio, his syndicated journalistic commentary, and his astounding film career--challenges scholarly understandings of the representation and misrepresentation of Native Americans. This study does not merely illuminate the intimate connections between Will Rogers and the Cherokee Nation. It further elucidates the ways American and specific American Indian tribal histories interact with one another. Scholars so often focus on the colonization and usurpation of Indian nations that we overlook the many times indigenous individuals and nations impact the United States in both positive and negative ways. This dissertation, in short, shows that scholars must reconsider essentialized notions of Indianness, turning instead to specific tribal histories and the ways these traditions intermingle with others to affect the whole. / text

What has become known to the world as the Baby Veronica case (2009-2013) involves several parties including the biological father, Dusten Brown, who is a Cherokee citizen, the Non-Native adoptive parents, the Capobiancos, the Cherokee Nation, and most importantly the baby who is now a child getting ready to start school, Veronica. It is a complex child custody case, but one that is well supported in Federal Indian Law and Policy with the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 and Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfields (1989). In the beginning of the Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl et al case (or famously known simply as the Baby Veronica case), the South Carolina Family Court and Supreme Court used the legalese of the ICWA to uphold the biological father's parental right to stop the adoption of his child. However, in an interesting turn of events the case was then taken up by the United States (U.S.) Supreme Court where it was ruled that the biological father was not an Indian parent as defined by ICWA (before the child was placed with the prospective adoptive couple there was no preexisting custody of the newborn child by the father) and stating that state law applied and not ICWA in this case and since the father was not married to the birth mother and had not paid child support he was not deemed a parent by South Carolina’s definition of the word. The most recent decision came from the South Carolina court stating that Baby Veronica, after two years of living with her father, must be returned to the prospective adoptive parents. Most everyone out there felt sadness for the prospective adoptive couple who had loved and provided for this child for two years, but all adoptive/foster parents know there is always a chance for the natural parents to object to the placement (it is called legal risk in child welfare). Each state sets their own laws on how long the natural parents have to change their mind, but in this case the biological father was not even aware that the biological mother was planning on giving the child up for adoption. Once he discovered the adoption, four months after the child was born and had been living with the Capobiancos since birth, he filed a petition to stop it and regain custody. This action would lead to a four year long custody battle. While it is important to look at all the facts and the history of the ICWA (and now the future of the ICWA) this dissertation focuses mostly on the public perception of the case. This case has received a fair amount of media coverage throughout the United States including a one-hour episode on Dr. Phil which aired on CBS. It is not often that something happening in Indian County makes it to mainstream media/attention, but when it does there is usually a great deal of misunderstanding on the issue. This is also true for most of the coverage and public responses from the media. This time around it was also true of the U.S. Supreme Court who focused too much attention on Dusten Brown’s blood quantum and not his cultural upbringing. Further the majority of the Supreme Court Justices held that the problems that existed pre-ICWA are not really a problem anymore which is reverberated through the public's perception. It is the intention of this dissertation to follow and analyze the media and the public of this particular case and the ICWA in general through the theories of framing and Red Power. In the social sciences framing is the social construction of a social phenomenon (the Baby Veronica case) by mass media sources (newspapers and television shows), political or social movements, political leaders (Chief John Baker of the Cherokee Nation), or other actors and organizations (National Indian Child Welfare Association). The individual's perception of the facts and meaning attributed to words or phrases will be influenced by some or all of these entities. A frame creates rhetoric in a way that can either encourage or discourage certain interpretations. Stereotypes are one example of framing and are seen in the Baby Veronica case especially as people try to define what it means to be Cherokee. Red Power can be seen as a frame, but is also an American Indian theory that links ethnic pride and political activism to a resurgence of Indian identity. There was a lot of ethnic pride and political activism that took place in favor of Dusten Brown retaining custody of his daughter which no doubt heightened the Cherokee Indian identity, but unfortunately in this case this resurgence would not be enough to keep Veronica, now at the age of four, living with her biological father. However, this dissertation will conclude with some possible recommendations for the Indian Child Welfare Act and the future of American Indian child custody cases.

<p>In my dissertation, I interrogate the ways blood influences identity construction and how it shifts into a paradigmatic story, known as a blood narrative, that further determines belonging. In five chapters, I argue that the use of a blood narrative undermines sovereignty as well as the creative evolution of nations. I move from an examination of a blood narrative throughout American literature (chapter 1), through a study of legislation and science (chapters 2 and 3). In these latter two chapters, I turn to the Cherokee Nation's expulsion of Freedmen and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' new membership requirement of DNA testing, which demonstrate influences of a blood narrative upon policy and legislation, and how biotechnology maintains this narrative through DNA and genomics. Finally, I explore novels from Gerald Vizenor (White Earth Anishinaabe) and Thomas King (Cherokee) that offer alternatives to a blood narrative (chapters 4 and 5). I use the term alternarrative here instead of counternarrative to focus on original alternatives, particularly from the alter position of the Native, not on reactionary or countering stories. The alternatives to this blood narrative emerge in both the modern and traditional stories of Native American peoples, providing recourse to understanding identity in ways other than blood. This new sense of belonging is especially important in a world where so many identities are determined by national boundaries, and limited by blood. These alternative narratives provide a new way of moving forward by embracing a survivance for the future, not just reacting to the past.</p> / Dissertation