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Native Americans experience a higher rate of homicide, suicide, and injury, on average, than do others in the United States. There has been little research, however, on turning point and epiphany experiences as factors that contribute to resilience in Native Americans. The purpose of this study was to add to this body of knowledge, and promote social change such as greater engagement and dialogue within Native American communities. The theory that informed the study was resilience theory. Two questions were answered: (a) the ways in which turning point life experiences have correlated with resilience in Native American individuals, and (b) the manner in which characteristics (e.g., gender, age, socioeconomic status, spirituality, disability, and sexual orientation) are influential with respect to the turning point experiences that Native Americans report relative to resilience. Inclusionary criteria were purposefully broad in order to encourage participation in the process. Narratives were invited that detailed life histories, for a psychological study. Snowball methodology was also employed in an area where census records indicated that Native Americans resided, resulting in a sample of 4 adult individuals (2 men and 2 women) of Native American descent. Data from the autobiographical narratives were analyzed for themes. These participants experienced a pivotal experience or group of experiences that led them to engage in behavior that produced beneficial results impacting career prospects and producing subjective life satisfaction. Findings support the theory that certain turning point experiences (specifically, interactions with supportive family and community members) enhance resilience in Native American individuals.

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Class of 2013 Abstract / Specific Aims: This study assessed the extent to which American Indians were involved in the research process (i.e. design, implementation, analysis, and dissemination) in relationship to funding sources and reported limitations in research interventions that addressed diabetes, as well as research method or design. Methods: Systematic searches of The Cochrane Library, PubMed, CINAHL, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA), Web of Science, ERIC, and PsychINFO identified studies focused on type 2 diabetes in American Indians published between October 5, 2010 and April 30, 2012. Studies selected for inclusion were those that were interventional or programmatic in nature, used a comparison group for statistical analysis and reported patient level or patient related outcomes. Data were extracted and analyzed for study characteristics, reported limitations, funding sources, and extent to which the community was involved in the research process.       Main Results: A total of 6 studies were included. There was no difference between American Indian involvement in the research process with respect to funding sources and reported limitations (p = 0.17 and p = 0.23, respectively). The majority of studies were conducted in a clinic setting (33.3%) on tribal/sovereign land (66.7%). Study design was evenly split between randomized controlled trials and observational studies (50% for both). The most frequently reported intervention was combination/multimodal (50%).       Conclusion: American Indian involvement in the research process was not impacted by either funding sources or reported limitations.

Indigenous peoples in North America have a long history of understanding their societies as having an intimate relationship with their physical environments. Their cultures, traditions, and identities are based on the ecosystems and sacred places that shape their world. Their respect for their ancestors and 'Mother Earth' speaks of unique value and knowledge systems different than the value and knowledge systems of the dominant United States settler society. The value and knowledge systems of each indigenous and non-indigenous community are different but collide when water resources are endangered. One of the challenges that face indigenous people regarding the management of water relates to their opposition to the commodification of water for availability to select individuals. External researchers seeking to work with indigenous peoples on water research or management must learn how to design research or water management projects that respect indigenous cultural contexts, histories of interactions with settler governments and researchers, and the current socio-economic and political situations in which indigenous peoples are embedded. They should pay particular attention to the process of collaborating on water resource topics and management with and among indigenous communities while integratingWestern and indigenous sciences in ways that are beneficial to both knowledge systems. The objectives of this paper are to (1) to provide an overview of the context of current indigenous water management issues, especially for the U.S. federally recognized tribes in the Southwestern United States; (2) to synthesize approaches to engage indigenous persons, communities, and governments on water resources topics and management; and (3) to compare the successes of engaging Southwestern tribes in five examples to highlight some significant activities for collaborating with tribes on water resources research and management. In discussing the engagement approaches of these five selected cases, we considered the four "simple rules" of tribal research, which are to ask about ethics, do more listening, follow tribal research protocols, and give back to the community. For the five select cases of collaboration involving Southwestern tribes, the success of external researchers with the tribes involved comprehensive engagement of diverse tribal audience from grassroots level to central tribal government, tribal oversight, on-going dialogue, transparency of data, and reporting back. There is a strong recognition of the importance of engaging tribal participants in water management discussions particularly with pressing impacts of drought, climate change, and mining and defining water rights.

At a very early date, it must have been apparent to the Chickasaws that their only hope of survival in the face of a steadily encroaching white man's world would be to imitate and emulate the latter's society, his Constitution, and his laws. Long before Andrew Jackson signed the Removal Act destined to uproot large numbers of peoples and result in some of the greatest mass migrations in the history of the United States, the Chickasaws, largely by a process of trial and error, attempted to sow the seeds for their plan of survival in keeping with their realization of this all-important fact. After arriving in the new land soon to be known as Indian Territory, they continued this process in the hope that their identity as a tribe and a Nation might never be lost. The Chickasaw experience in Indian Territory became indicative of a culture confronted with possible extermination by a larger and more powerful culture. Their story illustrates an intense struggle on the part of the Chickasaws to utilize and regulate the land on a tribal basis of ownership in the face of a fast encircling world which favored the concept of individual private property. One of the major problems that concerned the Chickasaws during this crucial period was how to absorb some of the white man's institutions and way of life, and still cling to tradition and remain basically Chickasaw.

The history of the Osages from 1808 to 1839 may be conveniently divided into three major sections, each separated by a cession treaty. The first begins with the cession treaty of 1808 and terminates with the cession of 1818. It covers the Osages' relations with the whites and the eastern tribes during that decade. The second section begins with the 1818 session treaty and ends with the land cession of 1825. It likewise covers the tribe's relations with the eastern tribes and the whites. The concluding division covers the period from the Osages' last major cession treaty to their removal to Kansas in 1839, and includes their relations with the eastern tribes, the western tribes, and the whites. These three sections combined cover the most turbulent period in Osage history, a period in which the United States Government and the powerful eastern tribes took the extensive Osage lands by right of conquest.

This work explores the impact of the “vanishing Indian” paradigm on historical, museological, and anthropological interpretations of Native American Indian peoples along the Quinneticook—the middle Connecticut River Valley of west-central Massachusetts. The seventeenth century documentation of the region’s Agawam, Nonotuck, Pocumtuck, Quaboag, Sokoki, and Woronoco people is surprisingly dense, but their presence after that time is poorly understood. Sophisticated systems for reckoning and maintaining Indigenous governance, trade, kin relations, and inter-tribal alliances, and various means of preserving localized knowledges, were in operation long before colonial settlement, and survived after colonization. The records of this activity and the movements of Native families to other locales were obscured, during the nineteenth century, by local White historians. Accurate understandings of local Native histories have subsequently been difficult to reconstruct, given the lack of ethnographic information in Euro-American records, the flawed representations of Native people and events in local town histories, and the failure to recognize the lineal descendants of middle Connecticut River Valley Native families among today’s Western Abenaki populations. I suggest that the “invisibilizing” of the valley’s Native peoples is a trick of misdirection, caused, in part, by the research interests of three local collectors: geologist Edward Hitchcock Jr. of Amherst College, antiquarian George Sheldon of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, and zoologist Harris Hawthorne Wilder of Smith College. These men unearthed numerous Native individuals from local gravesites, and amassed thousands of artifacts, portraying the skeletal remains of dead Indians as “real,” while representing their descendants as “unreal” remnants of the presumably more authentic Native past. This project, therefore, discusses the ways in which local Native histories and oral traditions were marginalized, ignored or colonized, at the same time that Native bodies were being exoticized, fetishized, and commodified. One means of decolonizing the valley’s Native history is a four-part process that: first, reveals the discursive processes that disconnected living Native peoples from their own histories; second, investigates the physical interferences of archaeological collectors; third, articulates the persistence of Native families over time by linking oral traditions, family names, and material evidence; and fourth, begins to repair some of the damage done by restoring and repatriating the scattered archaeological collections. To illustrate the impact of misrepresentation on local Native histories, I discuss the appearances, in various documents over time, of one local Native family lineage (from Shattoockquis to Sadochques to Msadoques to Sadoques), and their repeated efforts to make their presence known to Deerfield historians. This case study directs attention to some of the Indigenous knowledges and territorial understandings that could be used to construct more accurate regional narratives. In sum, this work aims to demonstrate how decolonizing methodologies can reveal heretofore missing connections, while establishing a more equitable social venue within which the real work of restorative history can begin.