specialcollections@tulane.edu / This dissertation looks at the complex set of representations of Native Americans of the upper and lower Mississippi Valley at stake in four French cultural productions of the late 17th to mid-18th century (1683-1753). These cultural productions extend throughout the French colonial effort in Louisiana. They include two travel narratives – Louis Hennepin’s Découverte de la Louisiane (1683) and Jean-François Benjamin Dumont de Montigny’s Mémoires Historiques (1753) – a newspaper chronicle from the Mercure de France, which relates the visit of five Louisianan Natives to Paris in 1725, and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s entrée Les Sauvages (1736) from his opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes. Through a close literary and musical analysis of these four cultural productions, this dissertation uncovers the multifold and dissonant discourses displayed when representing Native Louisianans. This research is grounded in the understanding that representations of indigenous characters provide limited knowledge about the Louisianan tribes, yet reveal extensive information about their authors, intended audience, and consequently about French identity and culture during this time. These dissonant discourses reflect major uncertainties about the French colonial venture in Louisiana, inquiries into other models of societal organizations and sets of values, interrogations about the potential degeneration of European civilization, questioning of the universality of the Christian faith, and epistemological contradictions associated with the curiosity toward foreign cultures. Moving away from the binary opposition between the “noble” or “ignoble” savage, this dissertation demonstrates how the complex image of Native Americans is fabricated and used to mirror the contemporaneous conflicting epistemologies characterizing the late years of early modern France. / 1 / Sophie Capmartin

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Childhood obesity has become a national epidemic. Although many of the consequences of childhood obesity are known, such as physical, social, emotional, and academic effects on a student's development, there is a lack of literature on the topic of childhood obesity in Native American tribes. The purpose of this case study was to explore how school personnel address the effects of obesity on students' social, emotional, academic, and physical development in an elementary school in the southwest United States where 90% of the students are Native Americans. Bronfenbrenner's socioecological model served as the theoretical foundation. The research questions explored strategies for how school personnel addressed childhood obesity. Interviews with 7 teachers, 1 administrator, 1 school nurse, 1 school psychologist, and 1 cafeteria manager were conducted. Open, axial, and selective coding strategies were employed to analyze the data. Findings revealed that the local school personnel lack professional development on working with Native American obese students and desire to implement a prevention and intervention obesity program targeted for Native American students. Recommendations include creating professional development related to childhood obesity, providing alternatives to food rewards, allotting time for healthful living practices, writing grants for healthy snacks, and collaborating with families and tribal affiliations. Implications for social change include greater understanding among school personnel at the study site of practices to address childhood obesity in Native American students, which may lead to effective interventions for enriching the academic success of obese students.

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This essay takes the novel Sundown (1934), written by Native American writer John Joseph Mathews in the context of the Osage oil boom, as a literary source in order to address the question of how oil projects expectations of a glorious future, but actually prevents development in a colonial context. In this paper modernity is seen as a process of creation and destruction, able to create new ways of living and destroying the previous order, able to cause problems, but also find solutions in its never-ending movement. Oil-capitalism is one of the main reasons why modernity as we know it is possible, but it is also the cause of many modern problems. This essay examines negative impact of modernity outside the European and Euro-American cultures, and raises the possibility of an alternative to Western modernity, where development would be fair not only on the economic level, but also on the social and environmental one. In the first part the essay analyses the social effects of oil, such as the destabilization of the Osage culture and their exclusion from the system, which leads to stagnation and personal frustration; in the second part it interprets Sundown as a modernist anti-developmental novel, arguing that the stunted main character and plot are direct reflections of the context of impossible development. The paper concludes with an ecocritical discussion about the possibility of a post-oil future of human and environmental justice, and by extension, about an alternative to the Western modernity.

Até recentemente, o povoamento das Américas era visto como um produto de uma expansão em linhas paralelas do norte para o sul do continente. Sob este cenário, os sítios arqueológicos dos primeiros americanos deveria obedecer um gradiente cronológico seguindo a mesma lógica, independente de sua longitude. Recentemente, no entanto, especialistas começaram a reconhecer que certas características dos diferentes biomas poderiam favorecer diferentes taxas de expansão populacional. Beaton (1991), por exemplo, sugeriu que as expansões humanas em escala continental seriam mais condicionadas às características do ambiente (biomas) de que a distâncias geográficas lineares, ideia esta, também suportada por Dixon (2001). Neste estudo foi testada a hipótese de Beaton e Dixon, aplicada às Américas, investigando se a estrutura genética dos nativos americanos atuais é influenciada pelos biomas que elas ocupam. Para fazer isso, três diferentes tipo de matrizes foram construídas baseadas em dados de DNA mitocondrial e microssatélites de grupos de nativos americanos: uma, formada por distâncias genéticas (Fst) entre as populações, outra formada pelas distâncias geográficas entre as mesmas populações em quilômetros, e uma última formada pelas distâncias fisiográficas. Essas matrizes foram comparadas pela correlação de Pearson seguida de testes de Mantel e parciais de Mantel. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que em geral os diferentes biomas não tiveram um papel significativo na estruturação genética das populações nativas americanas, ao menos como estão distribuídas hoje. / Until recently, the settlement of the Americas was seen as the product of a \"bow wave\" human expansion from north do south. Under this scenario, the archaeological sites of the first americans should obey a chronological gradient following the same logic, independent of their longitude. Recently, however, specialists began to recognize that certain characteristics of different biomes could have favored different rates of demic expansion. Beaton (1991), for instance, suggested that human expansions in continental scales are much more conditioned by the ecological attributes of the macro environmental zones (biomes) involved than by linear geographic distances, an idea also spoused by Dixon (2001). In this study we test Beaton´s and Dixon´s ideas, as applied to the Americas, by investigating if the genetic structure of recent native american populations is influenced by the biomes they occupy. In order to do this, three different kinds of matrices were constructed based on the frequency of mtDNA and microsatelites from native american groups: one formed by the genetic distances (Fst) among the populations, a second one formed by the geographic distances among the same populations in kilometers, and a last one formed by their \"physiographic\" distances. These matrices were compared by Pearson´s correlation followed by Mantel and partial Mantel tests. The results obtained showed that in general the different biomes did not play a significant role in the native american genetic structuring, at least as they are distributed today.

Historic preservationists have struggled with how to best interpret the diverse history of the United States. This is especially true when faced with sites that represent the continued colonization of American Indian populations. While preservationists are continually striving to provide a more inclusive history, historic sites remain where preservationists are omitting Native voice, perpetuating stereotypes, and telling history with an emphasis on damage within communities. Whiteclay, Nebraska offers a case study of a site with a complex history where multiple cultures have embedded the same place with different meaning. This thesis argues that through the incorporation of agency, the challenging of stereotypes, and the addition of desire-based research into the historic preservation field, a re-interpretation of Whiteclay, as well as other sites with multifaceted pasts, can emerge and places of colonization can become places of healing.

Wolf Village is a Fremont farming village located at the southern end of Utah Valley where Brigham Young University has conducted six field schools there and recovered 135 awl and awl fragments. The Wolf Village awls, like the awls from many Fremont sites, represent a large range of morphological variability. Because of the ubiquity and diversity of Fremont bone awls, many different approaches have been taken to organize and understand them; focusing more on morphological characteristics than interpretation. In order to better understand the life use of bone awls, experiments were conducted to replicate the manufacture and use of these tools and to create a comparative collection for diagnostic characteristics. Based on the results of analysis and comparison, the craftspeople at Wolf Village used a variety of methods to make tools for use in basket-making, leatherwork, and other activities.