Fracturing and Formation of Cultural Spaces of Florida Seminole: From Settlements to Reservation

Abstract

The displacement, reallocation, and repatriation often create zoning of communities from their ecological spaces of habitation to created “reservations” (Dippel in J Econ Soc 82(6):2131–2165, 2014; Adams in Who belongs? Race, resources, and tribal citizenship in the native south. Oxford University Press, 2016). Creating reservations or nations within the nation had been a Federal and State politics in the twentieth century United States of America (hereafter USA). How these spaces of “Reservations” affected the cultures of the communities which were displaced from their actual ecological spaces (Guha in Environ Ethics 11(1):1–7, 1989; Hayward in Ecological space: The concept and its ethical significance. Just World Institute Working Paper 2013/02. University of Edinburgh, 2013) in Native American history? For these reservations as spaces defined transitions in the cultural identities, value systems, ethics, and cross-cultural relationships of Native American communities with the neighboring settler cultures. In the research paper, the ecological-cultural-geopolitics of reservations will be discussed in context to formation of Seminole identities in Florida and how it affected their cultural spaces in the twentieth and twenty-first century. The dynamics of reservations will then be investigated further through the socio-cultural relationships and formation and transitions in the identities of Seminole community. The research methods in the paper are primarily based on archival and public domain data available in print and visual media resources. Some aspects of ethnographic observations in the public domain are in the form of field notes and digital observations, which are also applied in the narrative as a methodology to discuss historical transition of Seminole identity in Florida. In the chapter, discussions and arguments are raised about the creations of Seminole reservations through the multiple narratives. These reservations of Seminole community are in spatial geographies which are integral part of the microscopic historic narratives of state of Florida and Native American history. Thus, the research paper will discuss upon the ideas of identities in the historical context of the Seminole community in their ecological-cultural spaces of Florida.