Human occupation of the New England region of North America during the early Holocene has long been established archaeologically. However, the data exists almost solely from terrestrial sites. Vast portions of aerial land once available to early occupants of the area for resource procurement and living surfaces are now submerged. Underwater pre-Contact resources embedded in these submerged landforms will undeniably contribute to a holistic understanding of New England’s cultural history. Examination of current archaeological procedures reveal that the archaeological standards, practices, and theories commonly employed in terrestrial archaeology are largely not being extended past the coastline into the underwater environment. This is due, in part, to the past history of professional skepticism regarding the preservation and accessibility of terrestrial archaeological deposits post-Holocene sea level rise. A report of global, submerged, terrestrial archaeology projects that show submerged, intact resources challenge this skepticism. A detailed review of an underwater survey in Boston Harbor, designed to predict, locate, and investigate submerged pre-Contact sites, is used as a case study to argue that these resources deserve the same rigorous study as terrestrial archaeological resources. Post-glacial deposition may act as an agent of preservation in New England waters, and past concerns of transgressive erosion are discussed in light of current geophysical research. Recommendations of how and why submerged pre-Contact archaeological resources should become commonplace within archaeological inquiry are supported by advances in technology, increased geophysical survey of the marine environment and knowledge of the prevailing laws governing archaeological resources underwater.

For centuries, American media has consistently romanticized the image of the Native American Indian. This persistence in producing these romanticized stereotypical and therefore negative images of "Indians" in American popular culture through comic books, graphic novels, computer video games and tattoo imagery is a static narrative that relegates "Indians" to America's past. Consequently, these negative images which have been circulated, reproduced and received for generations, are now deeply – some may even argue inextricably-imbedded in the American national and global meta-narrative. As a result, Native American's protestations regarding their misrepresentation have been repeatedly rendered moot due to the non-native's belief of possessing an already and always knowing of Native American Indian culture. American media and the dominant culture which allows and perpetuates the continued production of stereotypical images deployed through rhetorical and contextual acts, is a blatant reflection of the Euro American consciousness, or lack there of, regarding "Indians".

Despite low life expectancy, high suicide and homicide rates, and excessive levels of poverty and violence, American Indians continue to survive. However, few researchers have assessed the correlates of resilience among adult American Indians. Current researchers assessing American Indian resilience have focused primarily on adolescents and preadolescents, resulting in a definition of resilience that is more often than not defined by the lack of negative youth outcomes. In this quantitative survey study, data were collected from 103 American Indians living off-reservation in a northwestern state. Gender, age, education level, degree of enculturation (using the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure), level of stressful life events (using the Life Events Checklist) were tested using linear regression as potential predictors of resilience (measured with the Resilience Scale). Results suggested that higher enculturation was associated with higher resilience; other predictors were not statistically related to resilience. It was surprising that the data did not support a relationship between trauma and lowered resilience. Implications for positive social change include understanding more clearly the role of enculturation in resilience; such knowledge can be used to foster activities that value local culture and can have a positive impact on mental and physical health.

Based on a review of one tribal government's strong membership powers exercised in General Tribal Council (GTC) meetings, tribal leaders do not analyze or review the activities in those meetings on an ongoing basis to determine where or if improvements are needed or are effective when implemented. The purpose of this study was to bridge the gap in empirical studies and to identify a process by which tribes can review GTC meetings to implement continuous improvements. Based on the tenets of Habermas' deliberative democracy framework, this qualitative study used the Discourse Quality Index (DQI) to determine the level of participation and deliberation occurring in membership meetings. Through a content analysis of transcripts from a year of GTC meetings of a single tribe, findings provided insight on speaker interruptions, reasons underlying opinions, respect given to others, and community-based decisions. The findings also identified that GTC meetings score high in all elements except regarding respect for others. By focusing on improvements in deliberative forums, Tribal leaders can create a more inviting atmosphere to individuals to speak, improve community networking, and increase levels of respect for others. Implications for social change are the development of meetings that improve over time, resulting in the generation of a greater range of solutions to public issues and creation of networking relationships as members hear other solutions and positions.

Mattanock Town's Restoration Plan is a science-based restoration process that evaluates the site's history, the tribal history, and the most current research to maximize native habitats, enhance coastal resilience, and reconnect the Nansemond people to the local river. Restoration priorities include increasing native plant species, incorporating oyster habitat, and addressing erosion. This plan details how synthesizing existing and new physical, biological, and cultural information can help the Nansemond Indian Nation prioritize projects that benefit their community and the surrounding environment.

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No description available.

<p>The marketing of Indigenous peoples, lands, art and culture from within areas that can loosely be drawn together under the rubric of “tourism,” draws Indigenous peoples in a tenuous and complex web of negotiations of imagery, authenticity, nationalism, economics, and identity. Many scholars have explored the economic implications of such interactions. My dissertation, however, is instead focused on attending to the relationship between the contemporary representation of Indigeneity, Canadian national identity, and the intensifying commoditization of ‘all things Indigenous’ (such as Indigenous bodies, identities, languages, spirituality, and material culture) within such spaces. My work asks, what are the consequences of particular forms of commodification of Indigenous culture and identity? In what ways are Indigenous peoples complicit with such forms and in what ways do we negotiate and/or resist them? How do current representations differ from those during the height of “Wild West” shows during Canada’s early nation- building phase, if at all? Mapping a trajectory of representations and visual spectacle in the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries across a number of sites I explore Indigenous and Canadian tourism marketing, the 1976, 1988 and 2010 Olympics, and Casino Rama. Such Indigenous self-conscious representation has often taken up through a constitutive, discursive lens of “Aboriginality.” Since the Canadian state’s entrenchment of the term “Aboriginal” within the <em>Constitution Act</em> (1982), Aboriginality has become its own representational force whereby some Indigenous peoples embrace it as a pathway to community economic revitalization. It is rather more productive, I argue, to recognize the Aboriginal as an allegorical figure of a contemporary market-focused society. While certainly related to what Daniel Francis refers to as the “Imaginary Indian,” the figure of the Aboriginal and of Aboriginality conceals much more sinister state projects that are tied to lingering Canadian state racism and colonializing agendas that seek, through, neoliberal economic terms, to assimilate Indigenous peoples. This assimilationist project is relaunched by the intensification of the corporatization and marketing of culture and identity. Indigenous peoples participation in the production of Aboriginality is increasingly positioned by the state as evidence of a willingness to assimilate but also as evidence of the reconciled nature of relationship between Indigenous and settler Canadians and the indigenization of settler Canadians. I close out by engaging in the fourth chapter a discussion of the artistic expression of Indigenous mixed media artists Rebecca Belmore and Terrance Houle, artists who, I contend, resist the increasingly regimented frame of Aboriginality and challenge the ease with which the state and settlers lay claim to Indigenous imagery, stories, lives, and lands.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>In 1760, when British victory was all but assured and hostilities in the northeastern colonies of North America came to an end, the future of the southeastern colonies was not nearly so clear. British authorities in the South still faced the possibility of a local French and Indian alliance and clashed with angry Cherokees who had complaints of their own. These tensions and events usually take a back seat to the climactic proceedings further north. I argue that in South Carolina, by destabilizing relations with African and Native Americans, the Cherokee Indians raised the social and political anxieties of coastal elites to a fever pitch during the Anglo-Cherokee War. Threatened by Indians from without and by slaves from within, and failing to find unbridled support in British policy, the planter-merchant class eventually sought to take matters into its own hands. Scholars have long understood the way the economic fallout of the French and Indian War caused Britain to press new financial levies on American colonists. But they have not understood the deeper consequences of the war on the local stage. Using extensive political and military correspondence, ethnography, and eighteenth-century newspapers, I offer a narrative-driven approach that adds geographic and ethnographic breadth and context to previous scholarship on mid-eighteenth century in North America. I expand understandings of Cherokee culture, British and colonial Indian policy, race slavery, and the southeastern frontier. At the same time, I also explain the origins of the American Revolution in the South.</p> / Dissertation

One of the most profitable fields of exploration for the history student today is in the realm of Indian history. Many books have been written concerning the social, cultural, and military aspects of the Indiana, but few have been written to expost the abuse and fraud the savage suffered at the hands of the traders, agents, and government officials. It was for this purpose that this study of the Miami Indians has been prepared.