American Indian Identity Research Articles

To Be Indian: The Life of Iroquois-Seneca Arthur Caswell Parker (review)

Reviewed by: To Be Indian: The Life of Iroquois-Seneca Arthur Caswell Parker David Anthony Tyeeme Clark (bio) Joy Porter . To Be Indian: The Life of Iroquois-Seneca Arthur Caswell Parker. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. 309 pp. Some readers may assume "Porter" signifies a kinship relationship to the Seneca Nation of Indians whose over 7,200 citizens today hold [End Page 120] title to three territories in the state of New York: the Allegheny, Cattaraugus, and Oil Springs reservations. Not so. The connection is theoretical and intercontinental, not familial and indigenous. Joy Porter identifies herself as "a scholar from the Northern Ireland . . . writing about an American Indian intellectual," Arthur Caswell Parker. "[T]here are connections between the larger cultural and political contexts surrounding my life and Parker's," she tells us. "[B]oth of us have a cross-cultural heritage" and "share a fascination with the process of mediation between one culture and another" (xv). As a biography of Arthur Parker's life, To Be Indian offers a storehouse of information on one man's existence and his relationships with and contributions to certain people, some events, and devastating policies that subsequently have shaped government-to-government relationships between the United States and Indian nations. Readers both unfamiliar and familiar with Parker will find much to treasure and even more to regret (Parker, for instance, never was a lands-rights advocate for Indian nations; he was an intellectual among the academic establishment that has worked against efforts among Iroquois peoples to speak for themselves). Especially interesting and hopeful is Porter's treatment of Parker's publications and writings for children (227–239) that, she muses, were "a way Parker could positively connect all things Indian with American patriotism, with national vigor, and with the great outdoors" (228). Also intensely fascinating—and important—are Parker's attempts late in his life, in Porter's words, "to resacralize the area around his home as indelibly Seneca" (220). In To Be Indian, Parker's closest relatives will find a confidently glowing, sensitive portrayal of their father and grandfather, uncle and cousin. Arthur Parker's daughter Martha Anne, to whom Porter extended her deepest thanks and respect, no doubt is pleased with the results of sharing her father's personal papers with the scholar from Northern Ireland. Porter's book largely follows a chronological path through Parker's life from 1881 to 1955. The opening chapter, entitled "Beginnings," labors to situate Parker in a standard narrative of "Iroquois" history to make the odd point that "the Parker family had been structural models of the kind of Indian assimilation sought by . . . the 1887 [End Page 121] General Allotment Act" (19). Chapters 2 through 4 are Porter's attempts to identify the origins of Parker's anthropology and museum work in his acceptance of eugenics—"a natural intellectual refuge for Parker" (29)—resistance to cultural theory advanced by Franz Boas, admiration for the conjecture of Lewis Henry Morgan, and in Ely Parker whom, according to Porter, Parker found "an inspiring model of the successful, educated Indian, respected by powerful and significant whites and Indians alike" (46). She also discusses the scathing critiques Parker's early anthropologically disciplined publications received from his peers and his early work in archaeology and in museum exhibitions, characterizing them both as attempts by Parker "to educate the wider public on the Indian's role within the American past" (68). In chapter 5, Porter mirrors Hazel Whitman Hertzberg's 1971 treatment of the Society of American Indians in her book The Search for an American Indian Identity three decades later with Parker once again still at the center of the story. She discusses his fascination with secret societies and freemasonry in chapter 6. In chapters 7 and 8, she further discusses Parker's museum career and what she calls his "achievements" during the 1930s through his retirement from the Rochester Museum and Science Center in 1946. Unfortunately, as scholarship, To Be Indian is flawed. Editors and readers for the University of Oklahoma Press did not give Porter's dissertation the necessary attention prior to its premature publication as a book in 2001. Thus, readers now are left with a biography...

Recent Dissertations

Agbe-Davies, Anna Sophia. "Up in smoke: Pipe-making, smoking, and Bacon's Rebellion." PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2004. Alwyn, Eleanor. "Traditions in a colonized world: Two realities of a First Nation." PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2004. Ambelang, Joel R. "Zuya: A journey of understanding Lakota leadership through the life of Little Soldier." EdD diss., Cardinal Stritch University, 2003. Anselmi, Lisa Marie. "New materials, old ideas: Native use of European-introduced metals in the Northeast." PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2004 Arndt, Grant Paul. "No middle ground: Ho-Chunk powwows and the production of social space in Native Wisconsin." PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2004. Ashley, Keith H. "Interaction, population movement, and political economy: The changing social landscape of northeastern Florida (ad 900—1500)." PhD diss., University of Florida, 2003. Beard-Moose. "Public Indians, private Cherokees: Indigenous identity at the intersection of tourism, acculturation, and cultural continuity." PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2004. Bieter, John Patrick, Jr. "Showdown in the Owyhees: Land, myth and government in the American west." PhD diss., Boston College, 2004. Blackbird, Russell Leon. "Understanding the reasons why Native American students are not entering the teaching profession." PhD diss., Kansas State University, 2004. Blair, Susan Elizabeth. "Ancient Wolastoq'kew landscapes: Settlement and technology in the lower Saint John River valley, Canada." PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2004. Bond, Bruno. "L'Entente sur les repercussions et les avantages dans le secteur minier: Un instrument qui permet de minimiser les risques et de maximiser [End Page 738] les avantages d'un projet minier pour les communautes autochtones. Le cas de l'era Raglan, au Nunavik." PhD diss., University of Ottawa, 2003. Boomer, Holly Rae. "Writing red: Vine Deloria Jr. and contemporary American Indian fiction." PhD diss., University of Nebraska, 2000. Bowes, John Patrick. "Opportunity and adversity: Indians and American expansion in the nineteenth century trans-Mississippi West." PhD diss., University of California, 2003. Boyd, Billy Joe. "Implicit racist attitudes towards African Americans and American Indians among Caucasian university students." PhD diss., Oklahoma State University, 2003. Burgess, Kim Graham. "The stakes of recognition: Contesting American Indian identity in Connecticut." PhD diss., Harvard University, 2004. Carroll, Alton. "Medicine bags and dog tags: How the military influenced American Indian traditions and how the image of Indians influenced the military." PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2004. Cattelino, Jessica R. "High stakes: Seminole sovereignty in the casino era." PhD diss., New York University, 2004. Craig, Douglas Broward. "Beyond snaketown: Household inequality and political power in early Hohokam society. PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2004. Curtis, Jenneth Elizabeth. "Processes of cultural change: Ceramics and interaction across the middle to late Woodland transition in south-central Ontario." PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2004. Danver, Steven Laurence. "Liquid assets: A history of tribal water rights strategies in the American Southwest." PhD diss., University of Utah, 2004. Dixon, Christopher A. "Indians in the house of God: A socio-economic investigation of the San Antonio mission community." PhD diss., Boston University, 2004. Dudgeon, Roy C. "Eco-holism and Native American philosophy: An exploration of their common ground." PhD diss., University of Manitoba, 2003. Elias, Brenda Denise. "The influence of the social environment on the health of Manitoba First Nations communities." PhD diss., University of Manitoba, 2004. Fowles, Severin M. "The making of made people: The prehistoric evolution of hierocracy among the Northern Tiwa of new Mexico." PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2004. Fox, Shari. "When the weather is uggianaqtuq: Linking Inuit and scientific observations of recent environmental change in Nunavut, Canada." PhD diss., University of Colorado, 2004. Fuller, Amy. "A female Hispanic school leader's experience in a native American community: An heuristic inquiry." EdD diss., Arizona State University, 2004. [End Page 739] Garey-Sage. "Washoe women's wisdom: Ethnobotany and its role in contemporary cultural identity." PhD diss., University of Nevada, 2003. Gooding, Erik D. "Sing from the heart, sing for the people: An ethnography of Dakotan singing, 1660–2000." PhD diss., Indiana University, 2004. Hammond, James Quezon. "Leadership strategies for school...

Detecting Indianness: Gertrude Bonnin's Investigation of Native American Identity

Detecting Indianness:Gertrude Bonnin’s Investigation of Native American Identity Cari Carpenter (bio) Be very cautious,—say nothing on this matter for publication. Just quitely [sic] secure information, but do not attempt to see them alone, always have a good friend with you.1 With these words, American Indian activist and writer Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša) sent Charlotte Jones, a new member of her National Council of American Indians (NCAI), on a kind of racial detective case to investigate "Princess Chinquilla," a New York woman who claimed to have been separated from her Cheyenne parents at birth.2 Although Bonnin had written to Chinquilla a year earlier urging her to join the NCAI, she began to question Chinquilla's Indian identity in 1926 when she learned of her affiliation with Red Fox James (aka Skiuhushu), another suspected Indian imposter. Jones, a loyal follower who had introduced herself to Bonnin at an NCAI dinner a few months earlier, struck Bonnin as an ideal private eye. The detective case described in their letters demonstrates the complex racial identities not only of Chinquilla but of Jones and Bonnin as well; in investigating Chinquilla's Indianness, they sought to define and assert their own. Despite Bonnin's investment in determining Chinquilla's real identity, scholars have said little about her letters on the subject; those who analyze her correspondence tend to focus on her communication with one-time fiancé Carlos Montezuma or her commentary on her literary work.3 One of the few references to Chinquilla appears in [End Page 139] Hazel W. Hertzberg's classic study of early pan-Indian movements, which describes her as an earnest woman who was involved in a number of efforts to improve American Indian lives. According to Hertzberg, Chinquilla visited the Tongue River Agency when she was in her sixties in an unsuccessful attempt to learn the details of her parents and her birth.4 Hertzberg distinguishes between Chinquilla and the "impecunious" Indians who sought loans from the club (229). She does not comment on the controversy that, according to Bonnin, surrounded Chinquilla. Much remains to be said about how exactly Bonnin came to doubt Chinquilla's Indianness as well as what these doubts indicate about her own—and others'—understanding of the physical, cultural, and political dimensions of Indianness. This article is not an attempt to pick up the case where Bonnin and Charlotte Jones left off—that is, to determine whether Princess Chinquilla and her associates were or were not Native American—but rather to investigate why these figures sparked such fear and intrigue. In considering what these letters say about Bonnin's own identity, I do not mean to suggest, as a number of critics have, that she was profoundly conflicted about who she was. While a number of studies portray her as a figure who led a "schizophrenic life," who was "caught between two cultures," and who existed in "two diametrically opposed worlds,"5 I would argue that her letters demonstrate that her challenge was not to maintain her connection to an American Indian identity but rather to fine-tune the public persona that was most amenable to her activist work. My study is more congruent with the work of critics like Ruth Spack, Dorothea M. Susag, and P. Jane Hafen, who see Gertrude Bonnin as a figure who actively manipulated available (and sometimes conflicting) genres and identities in order to improve conditions for American Indians.6 At a time when what it meant to be Indian was being redefined, this often meant making difficult decisions about how to represent herself to a wide—and often non-Indian—audience. Bonnin's correspondence with Charlotte Jones gives us insight, I contend, into the ways that such prominent American Indians were producing and revising their public Indianness in the 1920s. Such attempts to define "real" Indians were not altogether new, of course; Native American writers and leaders had long tried to balance their conceptions of themselves with the expectations of a non-Native public. Bonnin's letters are particularly insightful, however, for their articulation of Indian identity in the 1920s, a decade marked by contestation over what it meant to be Indian—and American...

Native voices: American Indian identity and resistance

Native peoples of North America still face an uncertain future due to their unstable political, legal, and economic positions. Views of their predicament, however, continue to be dominated by non-Indian writers. In response, a dozen Native American writers here reclaim their rightful role as influential voices in the debates about Native communities at the dawn of a new millennium. These scholars examine crucial issues of politics, law, and religion in the context of ongoing Native American resistance to the dominant culture. They particularly show how the writings of Vine Deloria, Jr., have shaped and challenged American Indian scholarship in these areas since the 1960s. They provide key insights into Deloria's thought, while introducing some of the critical issues still confronting Native nations today. Collectively, these essays take up four important themes: indigenous societies as the embodiment of cultures of resistance, legal resistance to western oppression against indigenous nations, contemporary Native religious practices, and Native intellectual challenges to academia. Individual chapters address indigenous perspectives on topics usually treated (and often misunderstood) by non-Indians, such as the role of women in Indian society, the importance of sacred sites to American Indian religious indentity, and the relationship of native language to indigenous autonomy. A closing essay by Deloria - in vintage form - brings the book full circle and reminds Native Americans of their responsibilities and obligations to one another - and to past and future generations. Ranging from insights into Native American astronomy to critiques of federal Indian law, this book strongly argues for the renewed cultivation of a Native American Studies that is much more Indian-centered. Without the revival of that perspective, such curricula are doomed to languish as academic ephemera - missed opportunities for building a better and deeper understanding of Indian peoples and their most pressing concerns and aspirations.

“I’m Indian Too!”

The author examines the ways in which people who are not “ethnically Indian” have, nevertheless, strategically claimed Indianness to argue in favor of Native American mascots. The selective (mis)use and inflation of American Indian identity is hardly a new practice, but in this context, it occurs to very specific political ends. This debate has important consequences for all Native Americans. Indeed, it is argued here that a number of White people are now rhetorically fabricating Indianness in debates, not to realign themselves psychically or sympathetically withNative Americans but rather to obscure, if not dissolve, Native voices.

Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance (review)

Reviewed by: Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance Rebecca Bales (bio) Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance edited by Richard A. Grounds, George E. Tinker, and David E. WilkinsUniversity of Kansas Press, 2003 Very rarely do I read a book that inspires me as an intellectual and scholar and that allows me to reflect on and appreciate my ancestry in ways that strengthen my convictions and life course. Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance,edited by Richard Grounds, George Tinker, and David Wilkins, has done both. This collection of essays by and about Native Americans explores the historical significance and contemporary influences of Native voices throughout the Americas. Vine Deloria Jr., to whom this book is appropriately dedicated, has inspired past generations of scholars and the future of indigenous communities; this book reaffirms his dedication to indigenous studies and peoples, and opens the door to the understanding of the complexity inherent in indigenous struggles throughout the Americas. Broken into four sections that span the four directions, these essays consider the meanings of Native identity, the importance of language and stories (histories) told in indigenous languages, the impact of colonization, and the contradictory policies emerging on a global scale that continue to deny and dismantle indigenous lives. Several themes emerge and intertwine throughout the entire book. Clara Sue Kidwell, John Mohawk, Henrietta Mann, and Joy Harjo's respective articles place Natives in proper historical perspective from origins to the present day; each claims that Native studies must be grounded in Native origins and worldviews. Inés Hernández-Ávila and Richard Grounds delve into the importance of language in reclaiming that history and in directing Native lives and courses of action. Taking this one step further, Glenn Morris, George Tinker, S.James Anaya, David Wilkins, and Cecil Corbett address the rejection of the colonizers' language in defining Native peoples, philosophies, and spiritual awareness. Ward Churchill, Michelene Pesantubbee, and Inés Talamantez round out the collection by incorporating indigenous thought into the intellectual and academic arenas that have categorically denied access to people of color. Vine Deloria concludes the book by recognizing those who have influenced him and whom he has influenced throughout his illustrious career. Of all the essays, the most perplexing piece is Ward Churchill's analysis of Vine Deloria's influence on Native American intellectual development, not so much for its content as for the context in which he places it. After reading articles emphasizing the importance of contextualizing [End Page 198] Native histories and intellectualism in and on Native terms (see especially Hernández-Ávila and Grounds), I question why Churchill would draw from the philosophical "canon" of "western thought" to describe and critique Vine Deloria's influence. Clearly Churchill's analysis places Deloria in the canon of traditional Western philosophy, but where are other Native philosophers of centuries past and in contemporary times? Why do non-Native philosophers like Marx, Derrida, and Foucault take precedence over Native thinkers? What audience does Churchill wish to reach? Every scholar interested in indigenous studies, philosophy, and intellectual thought should read this book thoroughly for a clear perspective of indigenous peoples' histories and struggles. It establishes acontext for the study of indigenous peoples that few other books address or recognize. It certainly inspires hope for future generations. Rebecca Bales Rebecca Bales (Choctaw/Cherokee/ Chicana) received her PhD in history from Arizona State University and teaches history at Diablo Valley College. She is the first in her family to receive a doctorate. Her work focuses on Native American history, women’s history, and race relations in the United States. Copyright © 2004 The Association for American Indian Research

The Political Economy of Tribalism in North America: Neotribal Capitalism?

The article examines Elizabeth Rata’s model of ‘neotribal capitalism’ in the light of ethnographic and historical evidence from Native North America. In her analysis of Maori tribalism, Rata argues for a view of modern tribes as organizations of capitalist accumulation that are legitimized through a ‘neotraditionalist’ ideology that recreate present-day class relations in precolonial terms. Despite some differences in the historical development of tribes, this model proves useful for the analysis of the political economy of US American Indian identity. Since the late 19th century, tribes have been dominated by new economic and bureaucratic elites that control access to tribal revenues. The discourse on ‘tradition’ and ‘cultural preservation’ has become the latest currency of representing tribal social relations to the American state and legitimizing the political status quo before the local population. It is argued that a political-economic approach is particularly well suited for explaining the political processes and economic inequalities in postcolonial indigenous societies.

Imagining the Nation with House Odds: Representing American Indian Identity at Mashantucket

This article examines representational strategies used by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation to define and display cultural authenticity—in tribal, regional, and pan-Indian terms—in public, tourist spaces. It focuses upon the articulation of cultural identity, and narratives of the exotic and the authentic, in two major tribally owned and operated sites of representation on the Mashantucket Reservation: the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center and the Foxwoods Resort Casino.

Our Elders Lived It: American Indian Identity in the City

Our Elders Lived It: American Indian Identity in the City

How American Public Schools Using Down-Linked News Media Shape American Indian Identity

This article examines how some inaccurate news media perceptions commonly found in down-linked American news media may be reinforced in American public schools. After describing how American Indians are addressed in the educational news media that is down-linked to a large number of public school classrooms, this essay examines a number of issues related to the potential consequences of such programming on American Indian cultures, especially on the identity and self-esteem of American Indian children. These issues are examined from a more traditional American Indian perspective. American Indian identity public schools

Book Review: D. D. Jackson,Our Elders Lived It: American Indian Identity in the City DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002

Book Review: D. D. Jackson,Our Elders Lived It: American Indian Identity in the City DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002

How American Public Schools Using Down-Linked News Media Shape American Indian Identity

How American Public Schools Using Down-Linked News Media Shape American Indian Identity

Our elders lived it: American Indian identity in the city

More than half of all Native Americans live in cities, yet urban indians have not received the same attention as traditional indians who dwell on reservations. This groundbreaking anthropological investigation shatters stereotypes of what it means to be an ndian in America, arguing that the transition to an urban lifestyle requires a reshaping and reconceptualizing of self-identity. One of the most pressing concerns facing urban Native Americans today is the question of what constitutes a legitimate claim to Native identity. The importance of identity emerges in such practical matters as participation in tribal functions, entitlement to community aid, and political representation. The appropriation of indian symbols and lifeways by nonIndians has further blurred notions of identity. Explaining that ethnic identity is constructed and maintained through social interaction, Jackson demonstrates the importance of community in indian culture. Our Elders Lived It is the result of extensive fieldwork in an Upper Great Lakes midsized city, where life has been complicated by economic misfortune and social deprivation. Informed but not dominated by identity theory, Jackson's sensitive interviews and personal narratives allow the indian community to speak for itself and to present its own vision of the challenges facing urban Native Americans.

Who is an American Indian?

Who is an American Indian? This study draws on complexity theory and Deloria’s concept of spatial thinking to suggest that practical and conceptually useful qualitative differences in Indianness can be expressed by understanding tribes as complex adaptive systems (CAS). This understanding supports a model of American Indian identity that more fully reflects the diversity of Indian identities that exist and continue to evolve in the larger context of American society. American Indian identities can be placed on a continuum. At one end lies a spatially defined Indian identity fundamentally shaped and literally “grounded” in specific, geographically identifiable places. At the other end lies an aspatial Indian identity that is essentially disconnected from a geographically identifiable place and formed in the dominant American society.

Placing the Ancestors: Postmodernism, "Realism", and American Indian Identity in James Welch's Winter in the Blood

Placing the Ancestors: Postmodernism, "Realism", and American Indian Identity in James Welch's Winter in the Blood

American Indian Boarding School Experiences: Recent Studies from Native Perspectives

In the past decade, the study of American Indian boarding schools has grown into one of the richest areas of American Indian history. The best of this scholarship has moved beyond an examination of the federal policies that drove boarding school education to consider the experiences of Indian children within the schools, and the responses of Native students and parents to school policies, programs, and curricula. Recent studies by David Wallace Adams, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Brenda Child, Sally Hyer, and Esther Burnett Home and Sally McBeth have used archival research, oral interviews, and photographs to consider the history of boarding schools from American Indian perspectives. In doing so, they have begun to uncover the meaning of boarding school education for Indian children, families, and communities, past and present. Perhaps the most fundamental conclusion that emerges from boarding school histories is the profound complexity of their historical legacy for Indian people's lives.The diversity among boarding school students in terms of age, personality, family situa tion, and cultural background created a range of experiences, attitudes, and responses. Boarding schools embodied both victimiza tion and agency for Native people, and they served as sites of both cultural loss and cultural persistence. These institutions, intended to assimilate Native people into mainstream society and eradicate Native cultures, became integral components of American Indian identities and eventually fueled the drive for political and cultural self determination in the late twentieth century. David Wallace Adams has provided the most useful general overview of Indian boarding schools in Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928. The strength of Adams's book lies in its attention to several key aspects of boarding school history across a broad spectrum of schools. He begins by outlining the political and intellectual context that shaped the attitudes and assumptions of politicians, reformers, and educators and became translated into federal educational policy. Adams also discusses the implementation of that policy through a federal bureaucratic system and within individual institutions, and he explores the ways in which Indian students and parents experienced and responded to boarding school education. Adams's story of Indian people's boarding school experiences is largely one of cultural struggle. He argues that through the boarding schools, reformers, educators, and federal agents waged cultural, psychological, and intellectual warfare on Native students as part of a concerted effort to turn Indians into Americans. School admin istrators and teachers cut children's hair; changed their dress, their diets, and their names; introduced them to unfamiliar conceptions of space and time; and subjected them to militaristic regimentation and discipline. Educators suppressed tribal languages and cultural practices and sought to replace them with English, Christianity, athletic activities, and a ritual calendar intended to further patriotic citizenship. They instructed students in the industrial and domestic skills appropriate to European American gender roles and taught them manual labor. For many Indian children, this cultural assault led to confusion and alienation, homesickness and resentment. Yet Adams insists that Indian students and parents were not passive victims of the government's assimilation campaign; rather, they helped define the terms of their educational experiences in unanticipated ways. Many students accommodated themselves to the process of cultural change, some wholeheartedly, most ambivalendy and selectively. Others resisted institutional authority through covert strategies such as devising insulting nicknames for teachers, writing manipulative letters to school administrators, or perpetuating tribal traditions in secret through storytelling, dances, and games. Some students practiced overt resistance by running away, fighting, or setting fire to school buildings. Parental resistance to cultural assimilation also took several forms: refusing to send their children to school, sending orphaned or less desirable children, complaining to agents or educators about aspects of their children's educational experiences, or reinforcing tribal relationships and cultural values during visits home. In addition to Adams's overview, other scholars have researched American Indian boarding school experiences within specific insti tutions. Even more so than Adams's work, studies by K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Brenda Child, and Sally Hyer have highlighted Indian people's own perspectives on their experiences in boarding schools. Both Lomawaima and Child have personal connections to the

American Indian identity and intellectualism: The quest for a new red pedagogy

In this article Grande argues that American Indian intellectualism and its central concerns - sovereignty and self-determination - have been ignored, obscured, and impeded by dominant modes of educational theory. More specifically, she argues that current obsessions with identity theory and formation work to deny the critical difference of American Indians as tribal peoples of distinct nations with sovereign status and treaty rights. Dominant modes of identity theory, thus, work to obscure the real sources of oppression of Indigenous peoples, substituting radical social transformation with a politics of representation. In working to address the inner contradictions between dominant modes of identity theory and American Indian tribal subjectivity, Grande employs the use of narrative, examining the text of her own identity formation through the lenses of differing modes of identity theory, namely essentialist, postmodern, and critical identity theories. She analyzes the potential of each theory to produce transformative knowledge and inform the discourse on American Indian identity and intellectualism. The author ends with a discussion of the need for a critical Indigenous theory of tribal identity and liberation, for a collectivity of critique that ultimately forms the foundation for a new Red Pedagogy.

The Crucible of American Indian Identity: Native Tradition versus Colonial Imposition in Postconquest North America

L'A. met en evidence les mecanismes, les idees, et les politiques gouvernementales qui, depuis la conquete de l'Amerique du Nord, ont pour objectif l'internalisation par les autochtones de l'ideologie de la societe dominante, et qui visent la soumission volontaire et l'auto-colonisation des Amerindiens. A partir de l'analyse des lois qui determinent l'appartenance amerindienne aux Etats-Unis et au Canada, il tente de differencier ce qui releve de la voie indienne pour l'attribution de l'identite amerindienne, et ce qui releve des politiques de l'Etat dont l'objectif est d'empecher la souverainete et l'autodetermination des societes autochtones. Montrant comment la determination de l'identite indienne a ete soumise au projet colonial de la societe blanche americaine, son objectif est de contribuer a la clarification des methodes et strategies politiques pour la liberation de l'oppression coloniale.

Examining Two Facets of American Indian Identity: Exposure to Other Cultures and the Influence of Historical Trauma

SUMMARY Specialized content about factors that influence the cultural identity of Native people must be included within the social work knowledge base to increase practitioners' effectiveness with this population. This article explores some of the factors which shape cultural identity for Native people and the implications of Native cultural identity for social work practice. The authors begin by recounting theoretical perspectives on culture, then report the findings of two studies that examine different factors which impact upon identity. The first study examines the impact of exposure to more than one culture on a sense of identity among Native youth in the Northeastern United States. The second study examines historical trauma and unresolved grief among the Lakota. Implications of multicultural exposure and historical unresolved grief for social work practice with Native people are discussed.

Urban American Indian Identity Attitudes and Acculturation Styles

SUMMARY Implicit in much of American Indian acculturation research is the erroneous assumption that acculturation is synonymous with identity and, as a result, can be used as a proxy for identity in survey research. This lack of distinction between the two means may partly explain some discrepant findings in American Indian wellness studies. To clarify the conceptual distinction, the current study examined the relationship between urban American Indian identity attitudes and acculturation styles. The findings indicate that although identity attitudes and acculturative behaviors are related they are separate constructs that should not be used as proxies for one another in survey research or mental health studies. Contrary to the assimilationist models, native peoples have survived by taking the best of both worlds, integrating them, maintaining and transforming native cultures, and, ultimately buffering against negative colonizing processes through the internalization of positive identity attitudes and the externalization of negative dominant group attitudes.