Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native CultureSince first contact, Natives and newcomers have been involved in an increasingly complex struggle over power and identity. Modern “Indian wars” are fought over land and treaty rights, artistic appropriation, and academic analysis, while Native communities struggle among themselves over membership, money, and cultural meaning. In cultural and political arenas across North America, Natives enact and newcomers protest issues of traditionalism, sovereignty, and self-determination. In these struggles over domination and resistance, over different ideologies and Indian identities, neither Natives nor other North Americans recognize the significance of being rooted together in history and culture, or how representations of “Indianness” set them in opposition to each other. In Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native Culture, Gail Guthrie Valaskakis uses a cultural studies approach to offer a unique perspective on Native political struggle and cultural conflict in both Canada and the United States. She reflects on treaty rights and traditionalism, media warriors, Indian princesses, powwow, museums, art, and nationhood. According to Valaskakis, Native and non-Native people construct both who they are and their relations with each other in narratives that circulate through art, anthropological method, cultural appropriation, and Native reappropriation. For Native peoples and Others, untangling the past—personal, political, and cultural—can help to make sense of current struggles over power and identity that define the Native experience today. Grounded in theory and threaded with Native voices and evocative descriptions of “Indian” experience (including the author’s), the essays interweave historical and political process, personal narrative, and cultural critique. This book is an important contribution to Native studies that will appeal to anyone interested in First Nations’ experience and popular culture. |
From inside the book
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... protests that mark the social landscape of this continent . This is Indian Country , land that was occupied by ancient Indians and colo- nized by the ancestors of other North Americans . The encounters between Indians and Others are ...
... Washington and Wounded Knee in South Dakota . The angry protests of those years were influenced by the politics of the times and empowered by the newly discernible voices of Native intellectuals . In 1969 , Vine Deloria , 4 < INTRODUCTION.
... protest south of the border . The counter - attack on the White Paper was led by the National Indian Brotherhood , later renamed the Assembly of First Nations . This alliance of Native nations adopted what Indians called the “ Red Paper ...
... protest the order to leave Wisconsin , and in 1862 to petition for larger land base on the new reservation and the promised annuity payments ( Bartlett 1929 : 74 , 82 ) . Our Elders witnessed the starvation of the Chippewa who marched ...
... protests at Wounded Knee and Rosebud and Alcatraz . The visitors drove quietly through Lac du Flambeau , no longer stopping to ask , “ Where are the Indians ? ” attributing their distance as outsiders to an exaggerated sense of our ...
Contents
1 | |
9 | |
35 | |
Indians and Artifacts | 67 |
Claiming Land in Native America | 89 |
Images and Native Women | 125 |
Pow Wow and Being Indian | 151 |
Researching Indian Objects | 175 |
Being Indian and Belonging | 211 |
All My Relations | 255 |
REFERENCES | 259 |
INDEX | 283 |