This dissertation used a mixed method to develop an analytical model from a random selection of one of eight secondary history textbooks for instances of Indians to determine if the textual content: 1) constructs negative or inaccurate knowledge through word choice or narratives; 2) reinforces stereotype portraits; 3) omits similar minority milestones in United States history and politics; and 4) contained the enactments of political milestones in the development of US history and politics with regard to personhood and sovereignty of the American Indian. The methods used to evaluate secondary history textbooks are content manifest and critical discourse analysis and a modification of Pratt's ECO analysis which measures judgment values of descriptive terms. Data mining includes word choice, events, contributions, and governmental relations as these refer to the American Indian. Unexpected outcomes from this research resulted in a spider graph of four relational power axes to visually display diametrically opposed ideological discursive formations. Textbooks introduce students to authoritative content within the public school environment to impart national historical experiences that will shape their national identity, ideology and culture. Negative or inaccurate instances of the United States relationships with 566 American Indian Nations can affect social and political issues of Indian People today. This work will contribute to the field of American Indian Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, Cultural Studies, Critical Discourse, Critical Pedagogy, Indigenous Theory and Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Social Justice, Language Studies, Identity, Ethics, American Indian and Public Education.

The ability to decisively benefit from ample sources of freshwater represents a pivotal challenge for American Indian nations and their self-determination in the western United States. Climate change, population growth, and capitalist pressures continue to escalate demand for water in an already dry land. This project set out to listen and add practical perspective to the importance of water as reflected in various forms of stories in the context of American Indian reserved water rights. It explores dynamic confluences and divergences of worldviews that influence American Indian nations' relationships with water in the present sociopolitical context. The integral relationship between literatures, laws, and tribal sovereignty constructs this study's theoretical framework as it broadens scholarship on this connection to include the implications of water rights. This approach leads to a critical, or perhaps "literary critical," background for examining two major water rights struggles in the western United States; the first being court decisions on the Wind River Indian Reservation, home of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes, and secondly, the Klamath-Trinity Basin, where four federally recognized tribes recently partook in water rights settlement negotiations. Litigation and negotiations over vital water are presently limited to the minefield of ambiguous Western narratives on the values and uses of Indian water rights. While each conflict has its unique circumstances and personalities, EuroAmerican stories of control and superiority continue to justify the exploitation of water and subjugation of Indigenous human rights. Alternative forums might make room for restorying and more sustainably managing water.

abstract: A disconnect exists between the perception of Indigenous women as non-leaders who lack legitimate power, and their persistent actions and beliefs that show an inherent ability to lead families, communities and cultures. Relevant literature on Indigenous women leadership has focused on displacement of women’s power and authority as a consequence of patriarchy and contextualizes the issue within deficit narratives of victimology. These accounts fail to celebrate the survivance of Indigenous women as inherent leaders charged with cultural continuance. Nonetheless, Indigenous women have persisted as leaders within advocacy, indicating a continuance of their inherent tendencies to lead their nations. “Matriarchs in the Making: Investigating the Transmission of Indigenous Resistance Through Indigenous Women’s Leadership in Activism” explores how Indigenous women demonstrate power and leadership via activism to transmit attitudes, actions, and beliefs about Indigenous resistance to Indigenous youth in the United States. A case study of Suzan Shown Harjo, a preeminent advocate for Indian rights will illustrate how Indigenous women engage in leadership within the realms of activism and advocacy. Key tenets of Indigenous feminist theory are used to deconstruct gender binaries that are present in modern tribal leadership and in social movements like the Red Power movement. Storytelling and testimony help to frame how Indigenous women activists like Harjo define and understand their roles as leaders, and how their beliefs about leadership have changed over time and movements. The study concludes with ways that Indigenous women use ancestral knowledge to envision healthy and sustainable futures for their nations. A process of “envisioning” provides guidance for future resistance via activism as guided by Indigenous women leaders. These visions will ultimately give scholars insight in how to best align their research within Indigenous feminist theory, Indigenous futurity, and women’s leadership and activism outside of academia. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis American Indian Studies 2020

Contemporary events frequently call into question the status of state-recognized Native nations. For example, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) failed to pass a resolution dissolving state-recognized membership; and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reported on the reality of federal funding being awarded to non-federally recognized Native nations. Although state-recognized Native nations are handicapped in their strategies and the availability of resources to assert their right to self-determine, some have persevered despite the inability to establish a direct relationship with the national government. Reconsidering federalism as it pertains to Native nations reveals opportunities for non-federally recognized Native nations to access resources and assert self-governing authority in alternative arenas outside the exclusive tribal-national government-to-government relationship. My research analyzes how two state-recognized Native nations, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and the Waccamaw Indian People of South Carolina, have operated as political actors; have maintained their communities; have organized politically and socially; and have asserted their right to self-determine by engaging state—and at certain times federal—politics to address needs within their communities. I used a qualitative case study approach to examine the strategies these two state-recognized Native nations have developed to engage state relationships. I argue that state-recognized Native nations are developing significant political relationships with their home states and other entities, such as federal, state, and local agencies, and nonprofits, to address issues in their communities.

Built in 1819 by the U.S. government, Fort Snelling sits at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. This place is called a “bdote” by the Dakota people. Oral traditions describe bdote as the site of Dakota creation. Treaties in the nineteenth century allowed the U.S. government to dispossess the Dakota of this land. Fort Snelling is connected to many important points in U.S. history. It operated as a military post until the mid-twentieth century, and was a training or processing site for U.S. servicepersons who fought in the Civil War, U.S. Indian removal campaigns, and World War Two, among others. Dred Scott lived as a slave at Fort Snelling. Following the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, about 1,600 Dakota people were forcibly concentrated below Fort Snelling, where nearly 300 died. Shortly after, the U.S. government banished the Dakota from Minnesota. Today, Fort Snelling exists as “Historic Fort Snelling.” Run by the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), the site offers a living history program which interprets Fort Snelling “as it was” in the 1820s—before much of these events of import occurred. This portrayal is geared toward schoolchildren and white Minnesotans, and focuses on the premise of peaceful U.S. settlement in the American West. This study describes Fort Snelling’s history, and address peoples’—both Dakota and other Minnesotans’—objections to the circumscribed interpretation of history at Historic Fort Snelling. By better revealing the memory alive at this site, most specifically the popularly ignored Dakota memories of Fort Snelling and bdote, this study hopes to convey what scholar Avery F. Gordon would term the “hauntings” present but unacknowledged at Historic Fort Snelling. This study concludes that in order to express the density of memory at Fort Snelling, MHS and Historic Fort Snelling must acknowledge that the Dakota people and their stories are crucial to its history. Further, these institutions must recognize that oppressive structures like U.S. colonialism allowed for Fort Snelling’s creation and operation. These structures and the hauntings they produce are still alive on this land, and onsite historical interpretation at Historic Fort Snelling must transform to reflect these living memories. / text

Indigenous cartography is based on a relational epistemology that works within a system where "place" and "ways of knowing" are intimately tied to Native communities' notions of kinship, oral tradition, and traditional ecological knowledge acquired over the millennia. It brings to life a place where mapping and geography cease to be simply Cartesian coordinates on a Euclidean plane and instead become storied landscapes. Indigenous cartography can be described as "radical" because it represents a departure from traditional Western ways of mapping and affirms an Indigenous political, economic and cultural sovereignty. As an intensely political act, Indigenous cartography can be an important tool used by Indigenous people to assert sovereignty in a bottom-up approach to land claims, in the management of cultural resources, and even to claim human remains for repatriation and reburial. If Indigenous groups wish to successfully utilize geospatial technologies as legal strategies, it will first require the development of the necessary infrastructure and training of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialists from within. In much the same way that colonial practices of the past worked to achieve hegemony through the making of political and cultural boundaries, Indigenous cartography can work to dismantle these same colonial boundaries. A theory and methodology of Indigenous cartographic praxis is in use among some First Nations in British Columbia. However no "best practices" yet exist for the Indigenous use-and-mapping discipline. Consequently in the United States, Indigenous mapping is still considered an emerging approach. Therefore, can American Indian political and cultural sovereignty be supported by the implementation of Indigenous geospatial technologies? This dissertation will examine the British Columbian model and distill principles that can be successfully implemented by U. S. Native American communities who wish to develop capacity for this emerging geospatial technology based on the success of the First Nations model.

American Indians are distinct in their current geographic isolation and history of exclusionary policies enacted against them. Citizenship and territorial policies from the 1700s through the early 1900s have manifested in the distinctive status of many American Indian communities as sovereign nations, a classification that no other ethnic group in the United States can claim. However, as a result of political and geographic isolation, disparities in heath and economic development have been an ongoing problem within these communities. Among the most distinctive health disparities are in infant mortality and obesity-related complications. This project will focus on South Dakota, a state that was late in its application of assimilationist policies, yet today is home to some of the least healthy reservation communities in the United States. An investigation into the making of reservation healthcare delivery systems and patterns of prenatal care utilization will hopefully reveal patterns of health and economic characteristics that predispose infant mortality. / Master of Science

This item contains the agenda, minutes, and attachments for the Faculty Senate meeting on this date. There may be additional materials from the meeting available at the Faculty Center.

This item contains the agenda, minutes, and attachments for the Faculty Senate meeting on this date. There may be additional materials from the meeting available at the Faculty Center.

No description available.