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 purpose of this study was to describe and explain the portrayal of American Indians in U.S. textbooks selected for review in Hillsborough County, Florida's 2012 textbook adoption. The study identified which of the textbooks under consideration contained the greatest amount of information dedicated to American Indians. The study then analyzed how that information was portrayed. The exploratory questions that guided this study were, how are American Indians portrayed in five selected U.S. history textbooks? It also addresses the question, under what conditions can Tribal Critical Race Theory help illuminate how American Indians are portrayed in textbooks? The methodology used is a critical case study (Rubin and Rubin, 2005; Janesick, 2004). The Five Great Values, as developed by Sanchez (2007), were used in the organization, coding, and analysis of the data. The theoretical framework that guides this study is Tribal Critical Race Theory (Brayboy, 2005), created in order to address issues from an indigenous perspective. This study found that while overt racism has declined, colonialism and assimilation were still used as models when American Indians were depicted in the five selected textbooks. It also discovered the portrayal of American Indian women to be particularly influenced by the models of colonialism and assimilation. Colonization and assimilation can been seen in the depiction of American Indians as a part of nature, the homogenization of American Indian religion, the portrayal of elders as unnecessary, the exclusion of American Indian role models, and the use of Western socioeconomic models rather than indigenous ones.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1972.

Through a study of North American Indian folklore and mythology, the non-Indian can at last begin to know the Indian with whom he has shared a continent and to find out something of his religion, traditions, history, humor, and tribal peculiarities. The approach to this study through motifs, already familiar to the students from other literature, offers a practical approach and one that can be adapted to classroom use, perhaps either in the study of myth, the study of literary types, the study of literature per se, or perhaps in the study of cultural differences.

It is commonly assumed that when confronted with an imminent hazard that people will react rationally, and prepare for, or at least attempt to avoid, danger from pending disasters. However, this conventional wisdom is not as evident as it appears. People prepare for, react to, or take social action to avoid hazards when they perceive the risk of danger to be threatening enough to warrant action, providing one has the will, insight and resources to do so. However, not all people perceive risks similarly. Risk is perceived differently by different people which affects risk perception and responses to hazards. This dissertation explores the relationships between American Indian worldviews, risk perceptions and disaster planning. To carry out this research 28 American Indians were interviewed. The sample consists of 14 American Indians residing in a rural are on the northern plains and 14 urban American Indians. The results only partially support that worldview is linked to risk perception and subsequent disaster planning. Other factors found to relate to risk perception and disaster planning for this non-representative sample of American Indians include various forms of social vulnerability.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 183-207).

Master of Arts / Department of Geography / Kevin S. Blake / Monuments and memorials are how we record history on the landscape. History is created, preserved, and remembered by those who envision, design, and ultimately pay a visit to, these sites. The Oregon Trail is replete with interpretive sites relating to various events and people who lived along or traveled this route. From Independence, Missouri to Fort Laramie National Historic Site in Wyoming along the Great Plains section of the trail, Plains Indians are represented in thirty-two sites that convey various versions of history. The majority of these sites, twenty-seven, either ignore the Plains Indians or turn them into a stereotypical form of Sioux. These two representations give a sense that “No One is Home” or that “Siouxification” has occurred, a process by applying Sioux cultural traits to non-Sioux Plains Indians. The other five sites are categorized as “Getting It Right.” These sites either portray an accurate or close-to-accurate representation of the Indians and their role along the Oregon Trail. “No One is Home” is found all throughout the trail; “Siouxification” is clustered in the eastern study area; and “Getting It Right” primarily in the eastern portion.

In 1917, Henry Billiot sued the Terrebonne Parish School Board because his children, who identified as Houma Indian, were denied access to a local white school. The resulting case, Henry Billiot v. Terrebonne Parish School Board, shaped the way in which the community of Terrebonne Parish categorized the race of not only the Billiot family but also the Houma tribe over the course of fifty years. Through the use of Jim Crow legislation, the white community legally refused to consider the Houma tribe as American Indian, and instead chose the derogatory term Sabine as the racial classification of this indigenous group, which detrimentally impacted the United Houma Nation’s fight for federal recognition as an American Indian tribe.

The art and art history of the American West has long been uncritically accepted as embodying positive nationalistic values that include courage, optimism, democracy, and individualism. In 1991, William Truettner's The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920 (1991) became one of the most politically charged western art exhibitions in American history to question and criticize these values and to underscore the ideological content of western art. The exhibition with its accompanying catalogue reinterpreted nineteenth-century images of the American West as expansionist propaganda. In spite of this groundbreaking and controversial exhibition and catalogue, exhibitions continue to promote largely romanticized and idyllic images of pristine landscapes with American Indians living in a harmonious world. The scholarly essay and museum exhibition entitled Lone Wolf (Hart M. Schultz): Cowboy, Actor and Artist, focuses on the artwork and life of Blackfeet artist Lone Wolf, (aka Hart Merriam Schultz, 1882-1970), who was active from 1915 to 1960, painting in Montana at Glacier National Park in the summertime, and wintering in Tucson, Arizona. As a little known and understudied American Indian artist, this exhibition and essay serve to expand awareness of the significant contributions by marginalized artists who successfully negotiated the terrain of the mainstream art world. Lone Wolf exemplifies a unique case study as an artist with American Indian heritage, who actively participated in the creation of stereotypical and romantic images about the American West, while he maintained that his first-hand experience and indigenous knowledge helped him to accurately depict what was considered the authentic American West. The exhibition and essay adds to the growing scholarly interest in the art of the American West and incorporates contemporary theories and scholarship that recognizes the American West and the art devoted to it as distinctly heterogeneous and embedded in a number of discourses that are overshadowed by the lingering romanticism and nostalgia that clings to much art of the American West.