This study examines the tradition of beaded capes among the Lower Colorado River Yuman groups, with the goal of understanding the meaning and cultural significance that the capes held in the past and continue to hold for those that wear and create them today. Questions posed by this study ask how and to whom do beaded capes hold meaning; and why were the beaded capes overlooked by collectors if they are culturally significant? As a marker of River Yuman identity and artistic expertise, the lack of historic beaded capes that are held within museum collections is surprising, with only twenty-two museums across the United States and Europe housing a composite total of fifty-eight River Yuman beaded capes. This study attempts to answer the proposed questions by conducting interviews with River Yuman beadworkers and community members, regarding their perspectives on the meanings and symbolism presented by beaded capes, and the cultural significance of these items. In contrast, this study examines the views of Euro-American collectors that were collecting beaded capes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when others were not. An understanding of outsider perspectives and motivation for collecting beaded capes is achieved through analysis of collector's field notes, journals, and museum accession files. Combining ethnography, archival research, and museum collections-based research, this study seeks to present a more detailed understanding of the River Yuman beaded cape as a marker of gender and ethnic identity. This research addresses the existing voids in knowledge about the cultural significance that the beaded capes hold for Quechan (Yuma) and Pipa Aha Macav (Mojave) people, and introduces that information to outsiders, creating a record of the views of River Yuman community members on the contemporary meanings that the beaded capes hold.

The Azee' Bee Nahághá Of Diné Nation (ABNDN) Inc. is a critical element to the formation and maintenance of, protection, preservation, promotion, and fostering of Navajo peyote ceremonial history, culture and identity. The Navajo people have developed and established the ABNDN in a manner that can only be described as "persistence". The purpose in which the ABNDN has been established, the day to day functions of its leadership and the internal operational management planning and strategies structures are not entirely understood by many. This Master's thesis analyzes the ABNDN's past and current initial concerns. This thesis analyzes different theoretical sources on the topic of strategic planning and management, seeking to find new ways of approaching the ABNDN's concerns in finding solutions to be more efficient to ensure their stability for future generations.

With both its inherent alienation and freedom, the experience of liminality, or the occupation of transitional spaces, is in many ways universally human. However, by nature of their bicultural liminality and the oppressive and pervasive demand for what Paula Gunn Allen terms "Indianness" American Indian authors must also confront and negotiate questions of authenticity. In so doing, many have taken the opportunity to subvert those demands, to juxtapose their actual multifaceted identities against them, to make meaning from the contrast, and to create from that re/integrated space. This thesis elucidates these points as an introduction to the body of poems that follow. The poems, often instruments of my own liminality, explore the broad themes of place, family, and identity.

One of the most compelling contemporary Native artists whose work challenges assumptions about Native art is Bob Haozous, who has been creating socially conscious art since 1971. He is known for his monumental steel structures; simplified visual language, controversial subject matter, and ironic humor that engages and sometimes enrages the viewer. Haozous faults contemporary American Indian art as a commodity for the dominant consumer culture, stating, "Indian artists are just glorified interior decorators." This statement reflects the market norm that Native art must embody meaningless stereotypes of Indian culture and must function in the art and culture system in order to be commercially viable.Haozous's work challenges these assumptions about Native art and, for the most part, operates outside of this system. Most of Haozous's work offers the viewer a cultural critique, one that some might consider ideologically dangerous: dangerous because it questions the status quo, dangerous because it exposes the dominant culture from the point of view of the margin, and dangerous because it is in a permanent state of ambiguity, perpetually liminal. Often his work demonstrates borders, borderlands, or liminal places, both ideological borders and physical borders. The emotional affects of Haozous's art on the viewer range from discomfort to anger, from indifference to infuriated. Given the fact that much of his work is public art, it is broadly seen and many viewers can not ignore the dialogue that takes place in his art.I examine how Bob Haozous's art depicts and critiques issues such as cultural assimilation, Indian identity, genocide, loss of language, and destruction of the earth, using humor and irony or trickster discourse, as a part of his visual language. What I propose in this dissertation is that Haozous's concept of "indigenous cultural dialogue," as expressed in his art, using visual and written language with trickster traces, provides a critical language with which to discuss Native art, cross culturally. Furthermore, that the recognizable element that can be use in the critical discussion or examination, is tricksternot trickster in corporeal form, but in subtle or obvious uses of humor or irony or in trickster's reversal of ideas.

College preparatory programs like Pitzer College/WesternU's Native Youth to College Program provide a unique experience for Native high school youth - weaving tether academics and culture for student success. However, there exists a gap in the literature on curriculum development of Native-serving programs as Mack et al, (2012), Tierney and Hagedorn (2002) and others have noticed. Using Brayboy's TribalCrit (2005) as the guiding theory, qualitative interviews of program staff and analysis of internal program documents are conducted. Nine core curricular elements-academics, culture, media studies, college preparation, health careers, intergenerational mentorship, STEM, life skills & telling your story - are found to have developed within the program, providing a blueprint which Native educators and others can use in developing curriculum for their own college preparatory programs.

American Indian graffiti muralism is a terminology that embodies the contemporary public art form of mural production by American Indian artists using public art installations to express ontologies of sovereignty, self-determination, and identity in different public spaces and on different objects. To date, there is no scholarship that has focused solely on American Indian graffiti muralism and ethnic markers within the medium of graffiti muralism. The dissertation, "American Indian Graffiti Muralism: Demystifying the Graffiti Medium and the Visual Harmonics of American Indian Signatures on the Modern Landscape," centers on the functionality of American Indian graffiti murals as markers of sovereignty, self-determination and identity in off-reservation municipal urban settings. Using a mixed methods framework of both qualitative and quantitative analysis this dissertation will provide new scholarship within the field of American Indian/Native American Studies and discourses on Native art and Native public art. Due to the fact that these public artworks contain multiple functions and meanings a mixed methods interdisciplinary analysis using the American Indian theoretical model of Survivance coupled with a social science theory of Geosemiotics, interviews with American Indian graffiti muralists, and quantitative empirical data collected through community-based Q survey creates a multi-narrative on the functionality of American Indian graffiti muralism. The aim of this research is to explore the functionality of different American Indian graffiti mural installations using Gerald Vizenor's Indigenous theory of survivance and the social science theory of geosemiotics. The theory of survivance aids analysis on how American Indian graffiti muralists infuse iconography and visual semiotic elements in their public art installations that (re)claim public spaces and infuse ontologies of sovereignty, self-determination, and identity in cityscapes. This is the first usage of survivance theory with Native public art and provides an ethnically appropriate means to investigate American Indian graffiti muralism. Geosemiotics theory provides analysis on how different American Indian graffiti murals interact with the physical landscape they reside within to create ideals of place and place perceptions in the populace. Geosemiotic analysis of American Indian graffiti murals illuminates how the art adds to a pluralistic public dialectic of place. By creating a dualistic theoretical lens this research addresses the suggestion that new discourses on Native art and Native public art require more analysis involving theoretical models and Indigenous ways of knowing through use of survivance theory, while also showing how a secondary social science theory can bolster a qualitative narrative on the functionality of Native public art. Artistic analysis is inherently subjective and the multi-theoretical application in this dissertation addresses how subjectivity and socio-political elements of American Indian graffiti muralism require a fully rounded framework to explore the function of these installations in our cities. The narratives of American Indian graffiti muralists regarding their mural installations offer intimate knowledge on the function of this art form and in this research provides first-person accounts of how artists approach public art differently than their studio art productions. It was also important to offer the perspectives from the artists themselves to illuminate how this graffiti muralism came to be the chosen form of artistic expression. The conversations with Yatika Fields and Jaque Fragua offer a secondary perspective to those of the researcher and public citizens. To further capture all of the perceptions surrounding American Indian graffiti muralism a public survey using Q methodology was completed to provide a platform for community-based input. Q methodology was used as a means to collect empirical data on the subjective attitudes towards American Indian graffiti murals. The output of Q surveying provided the first empirical data on American Indian graffiti muralism and concluded the multi-narrative of this project in the statements generated and tested by multiple public citizens. Furthermore, this multi-narrative foundation furthers future discourses in American Indian/Native American studies, the social sciences, and Native art historical research by offering elements that each can utilize as points of discussion and dissection.

The Tohono O'odham Nation of southern Arizona and northern Sonora Mexico has two distinct and distinctive cultural, social, political and federal histories. The American government politically acknowledges one group while the other is entrenched in Mexican social policy that regards Indigenous peoples as equals to the Mestizo population known as campesinos or peasants. The Sonoran Tohono O'odham community of Al Pi'ichkin or Pitiquito, Sonora, Mexico, has managed to persist and survive into the twenty first century despite the presence of an international boundary and the assimilative efforts of Mexican socio-federal Indian policy.This is an exploration of the issue of cultural continuity within the community of Pitiquito, Sonora Mexico via the following eight themes which emerged from my field work: the oral tradition; kinship; tradition and modernity in 2007; the Feast of St. Francis at Magdalena de Kino; nationalism; importance of photography; identity; and cultural persistence. The final ceramic mural along with the accompanying essay will constitute my Ph.D. dissertation project.

Land is a critical element in the formation of, maintenance and continuance of Native identity to tribes in North America. Since time immemorial, Native people have occupied these landscapes in a manner than can perhaps be best described as "persistent." Native views of the land can differ significantly from those of a Western, or Anglo-American tradition. And when managers of these lands come from a Western tradition, dissimilar views on how these lands should be used can become very problematic for Native people. This research examines how five tribes (Pueblo of Acoma, the Hopi Tribe, Pueblo of Laguna, Navajo Nation and Pueblo of Zuni) view their identity and future cultural continuity as their ancestral homelands are inundated by competing uranium mining interests that threaten to destroy the Mount Taylor landscape of northern New Mexico.

One method by which student success or failure is measured is whether or not students graduate or dropout. The current educational policy, No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, aims to close the achievement gap among different ethnic groups. Despite these goals, American Indian students have the highest dropout rate and lowest graduation rate in the country. For well over a century, federal educational policy has failed to meet the educational needs of American Indian students. This research project shows the need for perspectives to change in terms of "dropping out" and "graduating" in order to address and improve the success rates for Native American students in K-12 public schools. This thesis focuses on urban Native American student schooling experiences, calling for a need to avoid labeling students and for schools to place a greater emphasis on building positive interpersonal relationships with students and families.

This dissertation interrogates obscured Indigenous identities by way of an original dramatic script that employs story-telling as an inherent cultural device that sustains a sense of peoplehood. In an art-based inquiry, I use Gerald Vizenor's notion of "postindian" to respond to the ways in which postindian identities establish "survivance"; that is, how the presence, resistance and endurance of Indigenous lives challenge simulations. Native histories in the shadow of dominance can be reimagined through cultural acts of resilience that overcome internalized oppressions or what Augusto Boal referred to as the "cop in the head". Reproductions of the image of oppressor are too often constructed in the image of self that prevents authentic being. The script demonstrates the criticality of authoring a counter-narrative that celebrates Indigenous history remembered and survived. Through Indigenous values of relationality and responsibility, it offers an unfinished third act of the play. The final act confers agency upon a future community audience to engage in an interactive style of participation known as Theater of the Oppressed to explore various resolutions.