Frankfurt (Main), Universiẗat, Diss., 2007.

Studies have shown that ecotourism is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the tourism market. To date, there has been very little systematic research focused on the general topic of ecotourism development on Indian reservations. This study researches possible ecotourism alternatives on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation (SRSIR) in North Dakota. Choice experiments were employed to analyze the preferences of reservation residents and those of cultural tourists. Reservation tourism personnel and local investors will benefit from the information this study provides. Data for this research were collected through a series of field surveying campaigns. Surveying was conducted on the SRSIR as well as off reservation sites in the surrounding area. All respondents were adults and included a random sample of reservation residents and tourists who demonstrated an interest in cultural and/or nature-based tourism experiences. Results of this study demonstrate an overwhelmingly positive attitude by all populations toward ecotourism development. Local residents and powwow tourists proved to be insensitive to price, contradicting economic theory. Non-powwow tourists proved to be sensitive to price.

In 2016, An estimated 15,000 people representing 400 Indigenous Nations and non-indigenous allies gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in solidarity against the Dakota Access Pipeline to protect Mni Sose, the Missouri River. They became known as the Water Protectors. This dissertation analyzes the response in environmental philosophy journals to the #noDAPL protest at Standing Rock. Even though the Stand at Standing Rock became one of the most important and monumental environmental protests of the last decade, neither Standing Rock nor the Water Protectors appear in environmental philosophy journals at all--not once. Why? I suggest a possible answer by exploring the Stand of the Water Protectors as a moment in a much longer continuous history of resistance to settler colonialism. Settler colonialism attempts to facilitate the erasure of Indigenous populations by colonial ones, in order to gain access to territory—to land. The omission of Standing Rock from environmental philosophy journals represents the ease with which environmental philosophy can become complicit in the project of settler colonial erasure and replacement through absence. Drawing on Indigenous land-based philosophies of kinship, Latin American decolonial philosophy, settler colonial theory, and frameworks of Indigenous environmental justice, I show how the geo-politics of colonialism have come to produce environmental injustice and planetary ruin. I work to break the silence on Standing Rock in environmental philosophy and allow the Water Protectors example to guide the project toward an environmental philosophy which centers colonialism and Indigenous resurgence as core concerns.

American Indian author Susan Power’s novel The Grass Dancer is often categorized as magical realism, yet Power has stated the novel is a representation of her reality and that it is not a magical realist text. The term magical realism was first applied to the work of Latin American authors such as Gabriel García Márquez whose writing depicts magical events in a matter-of-fact narrative tone. It has since expanded to include other cultures. The question is whether it is a term that can readily be applied to the literary work of all cultures. The closest Wendy B. Faris, one of the most prominent experts on magical realism, comes to discussing the term in relation to the work of American Indian authors is by simply acknowledging Ojibwe writer Louise Erdrich’s label as a magical realist author. In order to aid Power in her rejection of the association, I delve into both her Dakota heritage and her life through the lens of biographical criticism in order to obtain a working image of her reality. By locating and examining the seeds of truth in her fiction, I explain the magical qualities of her novel in a rational and logical manner.