Sex estimation in bioarchaeological research is paramount for comparative analyses of skeletal remains and developing estimates of other demographic variables. Frequently, sex is estimated utilizing the morphology of pelvic and cranial bones in archaeological skeletal samples. Regrettably, these bones are often damaged, destroyed, or lost and cannot be employed for the estimation of sex. Fortunately, a variety of metric and visual sex estimation methods have been developed on modern skeletal samples with known demography. Disappointingly, due to the population specific nature of many of these metric methods, they cannot be accurately applied directly to alternate skeletal samples. However, these methods can be redeveloped and retested for archaeological skeletal samples if the proper protocol is utilized. This research utilizes the protocol for developing methods of sex estimation on samples with unknown sex developed by Murail et al. (1999). Utilizing select hand and foot bones from four prehistoric Native American skeletal samples from Alabama and Illinois, multiple discriminant functions were developed and tested on both Archaic and Mississippian Period skeletal samples. Furthermore, the four individual site samples were combined into two geographical and two temporal samples, as well as an all pooled sample in order to test the broader applicability of these methods. The results indicate that sex estimation methods can be developed on samples where sex is not known. Additionally, the discriminant functions developed produce high levels of classification for the sites, individually, as well as for the geographic, temporal, and all pooled samples. The latter suggests these functions have broader applicability for these regions and temporal periods. Moreover, the concordance rates for these functions are similar to the accuracy rates when these bones were applied to samples with known sex.

abstract: Indian gaming casinos are now a common sight around Arizona. The study of the history of the Arizona Indian Gaming establishments is the topic of my thesis which focuses on the conflicts in 1992, between J. Fife Symington, governor of the State of Arizona, and the Arizona Indian tribes, particularly the Fort McDowell Yavapai Indian Community. In order to learn more about this small band of Yavapai, my thesis examines the early history of the Yavapai and some of its remarkable leaders, along with the history of Indian Tribal gaming in America and Arizona following the blockade by the Yavapai. My thesis examines how the Modern Political Economy Theory (MPET) framed Yavapai survival and identity along with their determination to achieve economic self-sufficiency. My research extended into use the legal court system the by American Indian Tribes to achieve their economic goals, that culminating in the Supreme Court ruling in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians (1987) confirming the rights of Indian tribes to conduct gaming on tribal reservation lands. Congress followed with the "Indian Gaming Regulatory Act" of 1988, (IGRA) to regulate the conduct of gaming on Indian lands, including the stipulation that states negotiate in good faith with the state's Indian tribes. Arizona Governor Symington refused to negotiate the necessary compacts between the State of Arizona and the Arizona Indian tribes. The dispute reached a climax on May 12, 1992, when Attorney General of the U.S., Linda A. Akers, ordered a raid on Arizona Indian gaming casinos and the Fort McDowell Yavapai countered with a blockade to prevent the removal of their gaming machines. The result of this action by the Yavapai blockade opened compact negotiations between Governor Symington and the Arizona Indian tribes. This resulted in the growth in tribal gaming casinos along with increased political and economic influence for the Arizona Indian tribes. My conclusion explains the current state of the Fort McDowell Yavapai Indian Nation and describes the benefits from Indian casino gaming in the greater Phoenix area. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. History 2011

abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a gender difference in how students perceived their classroom environment on the Navajo Nation public school. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2011

abstract: Many Indigenous communities in North America develop tribal museums to preserve and control tribal knowledge and heritage and counteract negative effects of colonization. Tribal museums employ many Indigenous strategies related to Indigenous languages, knowledges, and material heritage. I argue that architecture can be an Indigenous strategy, too, by privileging Indigeneity through design processes, accommodating Indigenous activities, and representing Indigenous identities. Yet it is not clear how to design culturally appropriate Indigenous architectures meeting needs of contemporary Indigenous communities. Because few Indigenous people are architects, most tribal communities hire designers from outside of their communities. Fundamental differences challenge both Indigenous clients and their architects. How do Indigenous clients and their designers overcome these challenges? This dissertation is a history of the processes of creating a tribal museum, The Museum At Warm Springs, on the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon. The focus is to understand what critical activities Tribal members, designers, and others did to create a museum whose architecture represents and serves its community. The study also considers how people did things so as to honor Indigenous traditions. Design and construction processes are considered along with strategies that Tribal members and their advocates used to get to where they were prepared to design and build a museum. Interviews with Tribal members, designers, and others were central sources for the research. Other sources include meeting minutes, correspondence, Tribal resolutions, and the Tribal newspaper. Visual sources such as drawings, photographs, and the museum itself were significant sources also. This study revealed several key activities that the Confederated Tribes did to position themselves to build the museum. They built an outstanding collection of Tribal artifacts, created and supported a museum society, and hired an outstanding executive director. The Tribes selected and secured a viable site and persisted in finding an architect who met their needs. Collaboration--within the interdisciplinary design team and between designers and Tribal members and contractors--was key. Tribal members shared cultural knowledge with designers who adapted to Indigenous modes of communication. Designers were sensitive to the landscape and committed to representing the Tribes and their world. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Architecture 2012

abstract: The call for an Inter-Civilizational Dialogue informed by cosmopolitical forms of Comparative Political Theory as a way to address our unprecedented global challenges is among the most laudable projects that students of politics and related fields across the world have put forth in centuries. Unfortunately, however, up until this point the actual and potential contributions of the Indigenous or 'Fourth' World and its civilizational manifestations have been largely ignored. This has clearly been the case in what refers to Indigenous American or Abya-Yalan cultures and civilizations. The purpose of this dissertation is to acknowledge, add to, and further foster the contributions of Indigenous American cultures and civilizations to the emerging fields of Comparative Political Theory and Inter-Civilizational Relations. Guided by a cosmopolitical concern for social and environmental justice, this work adds to the transcontinental and transdisciplinary effort to decolonize knowledges and practices by offering socio-ecologically balanced alternatives beyond the crisis of globalized Western modernity. This work draws on three broad Indigenous traditions, Mesoamerican, Andean, and Native North American, to offer some historical and contemporary examples of the many possible ways in which the recovery, revalorization, and revitalization of Indigenous modes of thought, practice, organization and planning can contribute to foster forms of comparative political theorizing that address the challenges of a global age bedeviled by the confluence of social and environmental crises of an unprecedented scale and scope. The dissertation first introduces comparative political theory as a framework for the inter-civilizational dialogue, arguing that Indigenous contributions have been marginalized and must be considered. Part I then focuses and elaborates on specifically Mesoamerican contributions; Part II is dedicated to Andean contributions; and Part III to Native North American contributions. The dissertation closes with a brief reflection of how Indigenous American contributions can help us address some of our most crucial contemporary global challenges, especially in what concerns the construction of cosmopolitical alternatives built on post-anthropocentric forms of socio-ecological justice. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Political Science 2012

Ces trente dernières années témoignent de changements significatifs en terre indienne depuis l'arrivée des casinos amérindiens. Le travail présenté ici se concentre sur une tribu du Minnesota, la tribu des Ojibwe de Mille lacs, et étudie son évolution depuis 1991, date de l'ouverture de son premier casino. L'histoire du jeu indien aux États-Unis et la situation d'autres tribus du Minnesota sont aussi présentées afin de donner davantage de profondeur à l'argumentation qui démontre que le jeu indien a eu un impact conséquent non seulement sur les conditions de vie des tribus, mais aussi sur leur souveraineté et leur force. Les choix tribaux incluent le recrutement de lobbyistes et d'avocats efficaces qui promeuvent les droits tribaux à la fois au niveau législatif (au Congrès américain) et au niveau judiciaire maintenant que les tribus peuvent se défendre avec des moyens décuplés. Les taux de chômage et de pauvreté ont baissé sur de nombreuses réserves, et les tribus donnent la priorité à l'éducation, en construisant de nouvelles écoles, à la santé, avec de nouvelles cliniques, et à la préservation culturelle (stages de langue, musées, centres culturels). Malgré la menace d'assimilation que les casinos représentent, ils ont donné aux tribus les moyens d'être plus autonomes dans leurs choix et les ont aidées à redéfinir leur identité contemporaine. En trois décennies, les casinos ont créé une nouvelle image de l'Amérique indienne. / The past thirty years have seen significant changes taking place in Indian Country following the advent of Native American casinos. This work focuses on one Minnesota tribe, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, and studies its evolution since 1991, when its first casino opened. The history of Indian gaming in the United States and the situation of other Minnesota tribes are also presented to give more depth to the argumentation which demonstrates that gaming has had a substantial impact not only on the living conditions of tribal people, but also on Native American sovereignty and strength. Tribal choices include the hiring of efficient lobbyists and lawyers to promote tribal rights bath on the U.S. legislative level (Congress) and on a judiciary one now that tribes can defend themselves through effective means. Unemployment and poverty levels have dropped on many reservations, and tribes give priority to education, through the building of new schools, health, with new clinics, and cultural preservation (language tables, museums, cultural centers). Despite the assimilative threat casinos represent, they have empowered tribes to be more autonomous in their choices and helped them redefine their contemporary identity. In three decades, gaming has created a new representation of Native America.

This research will study cultural appropriation that is presentable in 2010th music videos by famous artists/bands like Coldplay, Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey, No Doubt and Iggy Azalea. The term cultural appropriation is about the taking over of practices, artistic forms or themes from usually a minority culture. The focus will lay on two different cultures, Indian culture and Native American culture. I will with the help of researchers like Erich Hatala Matthes and James. O Young argue the harms of cultural appropriation, where I will include bell hooks to supports my arguments. My task will also be to enlighten the common behavior traits that show occurring cultural appropriation in music videos. Deeply analysis of these music videos will help me reach my concluded arguments about the harms of cultural appropriation. Every music video will focus on three concepts and they are, romanticization, sexualization and exotification. With tracing these concepts, I will argue the differences of the cultural appropriation Indian culture and Native American culture experiences.

Most of the innovations of the Tunica language happen in a top-down manner, with a core group of people mostly from outside of the tribe hashing out neologisms, internally consistent rules, and accessible educational materials. While many of the tribal children, especially teenagers, experience interest in learning and participating in cultural traditions such as crafts, storytelling, and powwow, most of the shaping and development of the language has up to this point happened out of their sight. This is beginning to change with multiple strategies to include students more directly in the creation of neologisms, encouragement to take ownership of their language and culture, and attempts to reframe all participants young and old as simultaneously “speakers” and “learners.” Ideologies of identity, language, education, and academic expertise all combine to create this unique Tunica reawakening experience.

xxiv, 505 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Yakima Ichishkíin/Sahaptin is spoken in the Yakama Nation, located in the Pacific Northwest of the United States in what is now south central Washington State. The Ichishkíin and Nez Perce languages comprise the Sahaptian Family, classified as a member of the Plateau branch of Penutian. Ichishkíin speakers of a number of related dialects, including Yakima, live in the southern plateau region along Nch'iwána , the Columbia River, and its tributaries. The dialects are mutually intelligible, with slight differences in phonology, morphology, lexical items and orthographic representation. The fieldwork supporting this work was done in and around Toppenish, Washington with elders of the Yakama Nation. There are few fluent speakers, but there is great interest in language learning, teaching, and revitalization. Sahaptin is a synthetic to polysynthetic language with rich verbal morphology. The phonemic inventory is similar to other Pacific Northwest languages and consists of a large set of consonants and small set of vowels. Stops and affricates are voiceless with a plain and glottalized series. Grammatical relations are indicated with case-marking, verb agreement, and second position enclitics. Syntactic alignment is primarily nominative-accusative but there are also ergative and absolutive patterns. Word order is flexible, serving discourse/pragmatic functions. The language has a direct/inverse alternation in which the coding of participants depends on person and topicality hierarchies. Verbs are morphologically complex. A verb stem can be fully composed of bound morphemes that include lexical prefixes, motion prefixes, and stems that indicate a change of state or a location or direction. This dissertation is intended to support speech community members and scholars in language preservation and academic goals. The second and third chapters, covering the sound system and an overview of the grammar, constitute a condensed pedagogical grammar. Subsequent chapters offer more in-depth information about major aspects of the language Appendices include texts and classroom materials as well as a case study of a college-level Ichishkíin course that uses materials collected in a language documentation project as teaching tools. This dissertation includes previously published and unpublished co-authored material. / Committee in charge: Scott DeLancey, Chairperson, Linguistics; Eric Pederson, Member, Linguistics; Spike Gildea, Member, Linguistics; Janne Underriner, Member, Linguistics; Robert Davis, Outside Member, Romance Languages

xii, 75 p. / Wintu is a moribund Penutian language once spoken in the Sacramento River Valley in Northern California. Presently unexplored is Wintu expression of movement and location. Several avenues exist for nouns and verbs. Nouns receive optional locative suffixation, or location may be implied in the absence of a noun. Verbs may receive locative prefixes and/or an implied trajectory may be inherent to a verb's semantics; inherent location may also be expressed by nouns. In more complicated cases, nouns appear to receive established verbal morphology, or the nominal locative suffix or verbal locative prefixes occur in unusual contexts. In order to reach primary conclusions, it was necessary to address other difficulties, including nominal aspect, unclear word-class boundaries, inconsistent glossing, lack of native speakers and an overall paucity of information. Primary data consist of texts recorded and transcribed in the 1970s and two English/Wintu dictionaries; analysis was based on forms from these documents. / Committee in charge: Prof. Scott DeLancey, Chairperson; Prof. Spike Gildea, Member