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.

This research examines the social construction of a Virginia Indian reservation community during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Between 1824 and 1877 the Iroquoian-speaking Nottoway divided their reservation lands into individual partible allotments and developed family farm ventures that mirrored their landholding White neighbors. In Southampton's slave-based society, labor relationships with White landowners and "Free People of Color" impacted Nottoway exogamy and shaped community notions of peoplehood. Through property ownership and a variety of labor practices, Nottoway's kin-based farms produced agricultural crops, orchard goods and hogs for export and sale in an emerging agro-industrial economy. However, shifts in Nottoway subsistence, land tenure and marriage practices undermined their matrilineal social organization, descent reckoning and community solidarity. With the asymmetrical processes of kin-group incorporation into a capitalist economy, questions emerge about the ways in which the Nottoway resituated themselves as a social group during the allotment process and after the devastation of the Civil War. Using an historical approach emphasizing world-systems theory, this dissertation investigates the transformation of the Nottoway community through an exploration and analysis of their nineteenth-century political economy and notions of peoplehood.

No description available.

No description available.

Over a century before the Cherokees' Infamous "Trail of Tears," uprooted refugees already made up a majority among Indians in many regions of the American backcountry. Using the Tuscarora Indians as a case study, I take a new look at the role of refugee Indian groups in the construction of colonial frontiers and examine the ways that Indians thrown together from varying regional and cultural backgrounds wrestled with questions of collective identity. Although the Tuscaroras had once been eastern North Carolina's most influential Indian nation, after devastating military defeat, in the words of one contemporary, they "scattered as the wind scatters smoke." Some remained in North Carolina where they resided uneasily on the periphery of a plantation society and saw their lives restructured as "tributaries" of that colony. A few moved to South Carolina where they found employment as mercenaries, working to buy back enslaved kin.;Nearly two thousand trekked to Pennsylvania and New York where they settled with the Iroquois, a powerful five-nation confederacy that adopted the newcomers as their "sixth nation." The result of such dispersals was an eighteenth-century backcountry tied together by new bonds of trade, war, diplomacy, and kinship: Indian travelers, often members of displaced nations, constantly visited each other on worn valley paths hidden behind Appalachian ridge lines. at the same time, massive refugee movements that crossed colonial boundaries forced previously insular colonial governments to square off in either cooperation or competition in implementing frontier policies.;This study is the first detailed examination of the Tuscaroras and a provocative case study in the interrelations between migration, culture, and politics.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the origin and development of the Southern States Mission of the Mormon Church as it relates to the Catawba Indians of York County. The primary purpose of this relationship was to teach the Indian people the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It is also the purpose of this study to show the significance of the change in the Catawba society resulting from this mission. From the time the first Mormon missionaries came into contact with the Catawbas, their lives have been deeply influenced by the teachings of the LDS Church. Every aspect of the Catawbas' lives was changed as a direct result of Mormonism.It was found that an enormous amount of courage, time, and effort was expended on the part of the Catawbas, as well as the Mormons, in developing this relationship. As a result, the Catawba Indians are atypical as compared with other Indian tribes in that they have much lower rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, crime, suicide, and illiteracy.

Since the Supreme Court of Canada's Calder (1973) decision, Canada has been forced to recognize that Aboriginal title exists. As a result, Canada has indirectly recognized that Indigenous peoples were self-governing prior to British occupation, however, there has yet to be a comprehensive and adequate articulation of the ongoing sovereignty of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Indigenous Nations across Turtle Island have questioned to what degree Canada "owns" their lands, and have done so in a myriad of ways. Primarily, I centre my critical analysis on Canada’s land claims policy regime and its relationship to the Supreme Court of Canada's jurisprudence regarding Aboriginal title. I ask: a) what does it mean for Canada to "give" land back to Indigenous Nations that it does not hold title to in the first place, and b) by what strategies has Canada come to claim sovereignty and radical title over Indigenous lands? These questions may only be answered by uncovering the political rationalities and objectives that Canada has enacted and sought since the establishment of the colony under British colonialism. I argue that the project of settler-colonialism, as a form of governmentality, is an unfinished project that constantly seeks the erasure of Indigenous peoples and polities in favour of white-settler society.

The aim of this project is to investigate howdecolonial research can be conducted in practice whenthe researcher is a member of the majority population.I ask: what does it mean to be an ally as well as anacademic? Through autoethnography and ParticipatoryAction Research (PAR) I am attempting to “decolonisemy mind” in order to unlearn oppressive systems ofknowledge and I am using academic disobedience asan intentional strategy to disrupt colonial epistemichegemonies. Following feminist and other criticaltheory traditions and using decolonial and indigenousresearch ethics I am criticising the remnants of positivistresearch structures that exists within the social sciencesand the colonising, racialised, gendered and classed wayin which knowledge is traditionally constructed.I am also attempting to position PAR as adecolonising research methodology. Because a PARanimator does not have an automatic right to writeup and disseminate the knowledge that has beencollectively constructed by the co-researchers, however,I am inserting myself into the narrative in order toAbstractdisrupt the traditional academic voice. I attempt toquestion critically how I (auto) act in relation to myown culture and Sámi culture (ethno) through theprocess of reflective writing and analysis (graphy) – inother words, autoethnograpy.I set out to conduct a PAR project within a Sámiorganisation in Stockholm but despite my efforts theproject never really got off the ground. So apart fromexploring my own positionality relative to the Sámi,and apart from constructing an argument for decolonialresearch and allyship, this essay also offers my thoughtson why the project didn’t happen and my journey intolearning how to be a better academic ally. / <p>Student thesis MA in Culture, Diaspora and Ethnicity at Birkbeck, University of London. Presented as a seminar in "Kunskapsproduktion bortom normerna". May-Britt Öhman was supervisor to the thesis.</p>

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.

This paper is a study of folklore in literature; specifically, it is the study of the folklore in the poetry of Leslie Marmon Silko, a Laguna Pueblo women, and a half-breed. Her family situation, its place in the community, and its oral tradition are briefly noted, and the basic works of folklore in literature scholars are cited; therefore, the groundwork is established on which to examine the specific elements of folklore in the poems from Silko’s books, Laguna Woman and Ceremony. Taking a Jungian approach to the archetypes in these poems, three subsequent chapters deal with three separate item of folklore: the Coyote figure, the Indian migration legend, and witchery. In the chapter on Coyote it is noted that he is a cultural expression as well as a political symbol of rebellion, and, on a deeper, psychological level, he represents the anarchist in the human psyche. The chapter on the sea journey on the sea journey explores the legend of Indians crossing the Pacific ocean from Asia to America as it relates to the Jungian notion of “individuation.” Here the poet’s personal psychological needs are discussed, for example, her need to relate to the racial origins of her Indian half. Finally, with the chapter on the witches, the paper reveals that Silko uses folklore to satisfy her need for an Indian identity, as opposed to that of a half-breed or a white. The witches creation of the white race in a contest of evil indicates Silko’s rejection of that part of her which is non-Indian, casting the white race in the role of the Jungian “shadow figure.” In concluding the paper notes the need for seeing the psychological implications of folklore. It is stated that folklore in Silko’s poetry functions on a cultural, political, and psychological level in that it is the tool by which she tries to build her identity as an Indian.