Indigenous North America Research Articles

Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America, edited by Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton

Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America, edited by Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton. Durham & London, Duke University Press, 2014. 360 pp. $94.95 US (cloth), $26.95 US (paper). Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America is sure to become a crucial tool for furthering discussions of as Canada confronts its dark past. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Chair, Justice Murray Sinclair, described the treatment of Indigenous peoples in residential schools as genocide (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2015). Some might find the qualifier as downplaying the applicability of the more common understanding of as the physical destruction of people. Others will take issue with any use of the term genocide. Still others might find the phrase cultural as opening up an analytical space for clarifying different forms of genocide. These various lines of debate invite further research and analysis, especially with respect to the residential school system in Canada. The introductory chapter situates the emergence of the term in historical vantage point by asking if research might launch the unsettling dialogue and the arduous process of fashioning decolonizing forms of redress and reconciliation (p. 3). Is an accurate descriptor? How might we pursue research across different times and spaces in a way that accounts for contextual specificities while demonstrating common purposes and effects? By asking questions like these, the text provides crucial tools for situating Canada's residential school system in its global context, while also providing a basis for theoretical advancement. The book's first section provides an overview of the historical and theoretical terrain of studies. Andrew Woolford (chapter one) focuses on the residential school systems in Canada and the United States. He introduces the notion of the colonial mesh to account for complex dynamics of mass violence aimed at annihilating Indigenous peoples. Robbie Etheridge (chapter two) trains attention on violence in Mississippi from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. He introduces the notion of shatter zones as a lens for studying specific incidences of and their connection to wider political processes, such as slavery, imperialism, and global capital. Both Woolford and Etheridge see as fostering certain norms, expectations, and ways of living and being. Threats to these ideals become targets of genocide. Christopher Powell and Julia Peristerakis (chapter three) stress how seemingly disparate institutional milieus operate relationally to shape a cumulative annihilating force threatening a group's survival. The second section brings together empirically grounded studies that encourage the reader to think of histories as a form of memory. Benjamin Madley (chapter four) and Gray Whaley (chapter five) provide accounts of events insufficiently assessed as genocide. Madley's study of violent campaigns against the Modoc in California and Oregon highlights the frequency with which is sanitized under the rubric of war. Whaley's examination of western Oregon Territory highlights how racialized assumptions naturalized abject violence. Tricia Logan (chapter six) and Jeremy Patzer (chapter seven) focus on how discussions about are often shaped by forgetting and willful ignorance. …

Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America ed. by Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, Alexander Laban Hinton (review)

Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America ed. by Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, Alexander Laban Hinton (review)

Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America. Edited by Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton . Foreword by Theodore Fontaine. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. x + 344 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, bibliographical notes, index. $94.95, cloth; $26.95, paper.)

<b><i>Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America</i></b>. Edited by Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton . Foreword by Theodore Fontaine. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. x + 344 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, bibliographical notes, index. $94.95, cloth; $26.95, paper.)

The World of Indigenous North America

The World of Indigenous North America

Colonial genocide in indigenous North America

Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton eds., Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. 360 pages. ISBN 978-0-8223-5779-7. $26.95 USD paperback.In recent years, the field of studies has experienced a great deal of attention with various scholars exploring different approaches, limitations, and perspectives. One focus concerns Raphael Lemkin's intentions when he developed the concept of genocide which became the cornerstone of the United Nations Genocide Convention in 1948. Some prefer a more stringent approach and view in largely legal terms with a heavy focus on special intent, while others have argued that Lemkin had a broader vision in mind: one that encompasses colonialism and the experiences of indigenous populations. Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America is a book that situates itself firmly within this latter stance. The expansion of studies into alternative arenas such as the impact of colonial practices on Indigenous populations fundamentally challenges the traditional perception of with its heavy reliance on intent, deterrence and prosecution.In this volume, the editors Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton have compiled a selection of essays drawn from the proceedings of a recent conference on colonial that make a compelling case for understanding the topic as less of an event and more of a process, especially where colonialism is concerned. Taking a critical studies approach and written by a variety of distinguished scholars, this book attempts to tackle many debates and perspectives. It reformulates as a series of processes and structural arrangements that are inherently destructive, and from this perspective, genocidal. Essentially, those who apply to colonial relationships make the argument that is less an intentional episodic form of violent and destructive action, and more of a type of relationship characterized by an asymmetry of power in the political, economic, and social spheres. As such it is inherently destructive to native cultures and peoples.In its approach to these various viewpoints, this edited volume is organized into four sections, Intersections and Trajectories, Erasure and Legibility, Transformations, and (Re)Imaginings. In the first section, the contributing authors provide insights on different levels of genocidal penetration and connections within society, while the second section discerns the that enabled the development of against Indigenous populations in North America. Such policies include the honoring of murderous acts of settlers by the US government (Madley), prejudices, beliefs, and truths as perpetrated by society (Whaley, Logan), as well as that led to the creation of an extensive boarding school system (Patzer). The third section of the book is concerned with the institutionalization and power distribution within North American settler society. The chapters by Jacobs, Benvenuto, Ladner, and Samson provide a glimpse at the workings of governmental power on Indigenous relations. In the fourth and final section, Gone addresses the debates concerning historical trauma as an indicator of genocide, a contention that is widely disputed, even within this book. …

Intersecting Histories of Gender, Race, and Disability

Intersecting Histories of Gender, Race, and Disability Alison M. Parker (bio) Dea H. Boster. African American Slavery and Disability: Bodies, Property, and Power in the Antebellum South, 1800–1860. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2013. xiii + 198 pp. ISBN: 978-0-415-53724-7 (cl). Kim E. Nielsen. A Disability History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press, 2012. 272pp. ISBN: 978-0-8070-2202-3 (cl). Leslie J. Reagan. Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. xi + 392 pp.; ill. ISBN: 978-0-520-25903-4 (cl). Susan M. Schweik. The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public. New York: New York University Press, 2010. ix + 448 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8147-4057-6 (cl). Over the past few decades, historians of gender and race have become increasingly aware of the interconnections between their fields of study. In keeping with the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of “intersectionality,” they are exploring the confluence of race, gender, sexuality, and class in their subjects’ lives.1 At the same time, the burgeoning field of disability studies has produced fascinating scholarship on the social construction of ability and disability, the pervasive power of normative notions such as “ablebodiedness” to limit citizenship, and American society’s refusal to engage with those whose bodies or minds may not fit the norm. Scholars of disability have examined gender as a category of analysis, exploring how notions of disability play into ideas about weak females, effeminate men, or sex-indeterminate “inverts.” Most scholars of disability in the United States thus far have neglected to take race into account, and scholars of race and gender have not delved into disability theory or histories. Fortunately, the four books under review here make substantive contributions to a more interconnected history. Kim E. Nielsen’s A Disability History of the United States pulls together the most path-breaking intersectional research to provide an excellent overview of American history through the lens of disability history, highlighting the important ways in which disability history enriches the histories of race and gender. Nielsen explains that while disabilities are real, what people perceive to be “disabilities” changes over time and is socially constructed. [End Page 178] Although some cultures accept and accommodate people with disabilities, more often than not, Americans have feared and stigmatized disabilities, equating them with dependency and incapacity for full citizenship. Not only do many people have what we currently understand to be physical and mental disabilities, Nielsen points out that at various moments throughout American history “African Americans, immigrants, gays and lesbians, poor people, and women have been defined categorically as defective citizens incapable of full civic participation” (xii). The scope of her study is wide-sweeping and synthetic, beginning with indigenous North America, pre-European contact, and concluding with the post-1968 disability rights movement. From the moment colonists introduced slavery into North America, they justified it by claiming that “Africans brought to North America were by definition disabled” and unable to care for themselves (42). Captured and enslaved Africans faced the excruciating and perilous middle passage; if they survived, they encountered many potentially disabling situations, from severe punishment to work-related injuries. Although whites viewed all slaves as disabled by virtue of their race and condition of servitude, only those whom they deemed unfit for labor were considered “damaged goods” (46). Just as ideas about race and disability helped to justify slavery, so too did they inform debates about immigration. The U.S. Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1882, for instance, mandating that immigrants be screened and excluded if they appeared to be “unable to take care of [themselves] without becoming a public charge” (103). Nielsen rightly notes that increased immigration from Southern and Eastern European countries made many native-born white Americans nervous about maintaining racial purity, yet she misses an opportunity to highlight the links between white society’s fears of the physically and mentally disabled (a concept that included “sexual perversion,” or homosexuality), and its fears of racial others. Although she mentions the 1875 Page Law, Nielsen does not identify it as the first immigration law to single out Asian female immigrants as probable prostitutes who should...

Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton, editors. Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America

Journal Article Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton, editors. Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America Get access Andrew Woolford, Jeff Benvenuto, and Alexander Laban Hinton, editors. Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America. Foreword by Theodore Fontaine. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. x, 344. Cloth $94.95, paper $26.95. The American Historical Review, Volume 120, Issue 1, February 2015, Page 382, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/120.1.382 Published: 09 February 2015

Gender, Kinship, and Sexuality in Native American Societies

Research Article| July 01 2014 Gender, Kinship, and Sexuality in Native American Societies Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400–1850. Edited by Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarbrough. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011. 200 pp. $34.95 (cloth).When Did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty. By Mark Rifkin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 440 pp. $35 (paper). Michelle LeMaster Michelle LeMaster Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2014) 33 (4): 94–98. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.33.4.0094 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Michelle LeMaster; Gender, Kinship, and Sexuality in Native American Societies. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2014; 33 (4): 94–98. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.33.4.0094 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France (review)

Reviewed by: Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France Jarett Henderson Rushforth, Brett – Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France. Chapel Hill, N.C: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Pp. 406. This sharp and superb study begins with an indigenous woman weaving the fine fibers of dogbane, porcupine quills, and moose hair into an intricate Indian slave halter. Although few of these works of “fine art” and “human cruelty” have been preserved, Brett Rushforth reminds us that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such tools of enslavement were used in every quarter of North America (p. 3). But this halter and the bondage it symbolized were apart of a wider history. Across the Atlantic and far from the region known as the Pays d’en Haut, French manufacturers were mass-producing straight-bar shackles for the French Empire’s expansive and expanding Atlantic slave trade. Bonds of Alliance seeks to understand how Up Country, a territory sufficiently removed from French settlements along the St. Lawrence River, operated as the destination from where free Indians were legitimately captured, then traded by allied nations, and sold into slavery in French settlements throughout New France and the Caribbean. In Bonds of Alliance Brett Rushforth charts the “dynamic interplay” between indigenous and Atlantic slaveries by tracing the cultural, legal, and social practices in a particular corner of the French Empire: New France. Rushforth counters a historiographical tradition that has tended to characterize Canadian slavery as a failed version of French Caribbean slavery. In contrast, Rushforth contends that slavery in New France was “a thing of its own” (p. 300) locating its dynamism in the similarities and differences between indigenous and French understandings of enslavement; the various ways that free native peoples in the Pays d’en Haut used the slave trade to meet the challenges of colonialism; the central role that the slave trade played in maintaining and eroding French–Indian alliances; and how slaves themselves lived, loved, and labored across the colony. After nearly 400 pages of Rushforth’s elegant yet dense prose, New France emerges as a colonial society structured by slavery: it was a place where individuals like Pierre Chesne dit Labutte of Detroit or Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Verendrye – whose “trail” is commemorated on highway signs in rural Manitoba – were able to ascend the colonial order of things through their involvement in the Indian slave trade. This book challenges us to seriously re-think slavery’s role, and the history of race, in French colonial projects in early Canada. Like many before him, Rushforth draws upon Jesuit dictionaries and published recollections, notarial registers and state correspondence, travelogues and archeological evidence – all impeccability acknowledged in impressive footnotes – illustrating that how we frame historical sources is as important as the sources we use to craft our histories. Rushforth’s focus on slavery enables him to revisit these documents to shed light on how French settlers, missionaries, traders, and colonial officials as well as allied and enemy, free and enslaved Indians used, understood, and experienced enslavement in New France. Chapter one examines the “general custom of the country” that located honour in the Ottawa, Iroquois, Fox, Cree, Sioux, and Illinois warriors’ practice of taking captives. Rushforth found that “Indians of the Pays d’en Haut expressed their relationship to slaves through metaphors of domestication and mastery, comparing captives to dogs and other domesticated animals” (p. 35). Jesuit priest Jacques Gravier recorded this social and cultural process as nitaïe – which he defined as “my domesticated animal, my dog, [End Page 454] my cat, also, my slave” (p. 37). In chapter two, Rushforth takes readers from indigenous North America to the trans-Atlantic world of French imperial slavery. By interrogating how French society understood slavery and justified its existence in their Christian nation, Rushforth argues that Nigritie functioned in the French geographic imagination as a space “uniquely suitable as the presumptive source of slaves” (p. 104). Chapter three explores French efforts like Jacques Raudot’s 1709 Ordinance that made Indian slaves in New France “like the Negros of the Islands” (p. 137). The second half of the book hones in on the various ways...

ReviewGender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400–1850. Edited by Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarbrough. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011. 202 pp. Notes, index. $34.95.)

Review<b><i>Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400–1850</i></b>. Edited by Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarbrough. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011. 202 pp. Notes, index. $34.95.)

Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400-1850

Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400–1850. Ed. by Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarbrough. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011. viii, 202 pp.)

Gender and sexuality in indigenous North America, 1400-1850

Gender and sexuality in indigenous North America, 1400-1850

Sandra Slater and Fay A. Yarbrough , editors. Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400–1850 . Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. 2011. Pp. vii, 202. $34.95.

Sandra SlaterGender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400–1850. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. 2011. Pp. vii, 202. $34.95 Get access Sandra Slater and Sandra Slater, editors. Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400–1850. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. 2011. Pp. vii, 202. $34.95. The American Historical Review, Volume 116, Issue 4, October 2011, Page 1239, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.116.4.1239 Published: 01 October 2011

Rebuilding Native nations: strategies for governance and development

A revolution is underway among the Indigenous nations of North America. It is a quiet revolution, largely unnoticed in society at large. But it is profoundly important. From High Plains states and Prairie Provinces to southwestern deserts, from Mississippi and Oklahoma to the northwest coast of the continent, Native peoples are reclaiming their right to govern themselves and to shape their future in their own ways. Challenging more than a century of colonial controls, they are addressing severe social problems, building sustainable economies, and reinvigorating Indigenous cultures. In effect, they are rebuilding their nations according to their own diverse and often innovative designs.Produced by the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy at the University of Arizona and the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, this book traces the contours of that revolution as Native nations turn the dream of self-determination into a practical reality. Part report, part analysis, part how-to manual for Native leaders, it discusses strategies for governance and community and economic development being employed by American Indian nations and First Nations in Canada as they move to assert greater control over their own affairs. Rebuilding Native Nations provides guidelines for creating new governance structures, rewriting constitutions, building justice systems, launching nation-owned enterprises, encouraging citizen entrepreneurs, developing new relationships with non-Native governments, and confronting the crippling legacies of colonialism. For nations that wish to join that revolution or for those who simply want to understand the transformation now underway across Indigenous North America, this book is a critical resource. CONTENTS Foreword by Oren Lyons Editor's Introduction Part 1 Starting Points 1. Two Approaches to the Development of Native Nations: One Works, the Other Doesn't Stephen Cornell and Joseph P. Kalt 2. Development, Governance, Culture: What Are They and What Do They Have to Do with Rebuilding Native Nations? Manley A. Begay, Jr., Stephen Cornell, Miriam Jorgensen, and Joseph P. Kalt Part 2 Rebuilding the Foundations 3. Remaking the Tools of Governance: Colonial Legacies, Indigenous Solutions Stephen Cornell 4. The Role of Constitutions in Native Nation Building: Laying a Firm Foundation Joseph P. Kalt 5 . Native Nation Courts: Key Players in Nation Rebuilding Joseph Thomas Flies-Away, Carrie Garrow, and Miriam Jorgensen 6. Getting Things Done for the Nation: The Challenge of Tribal Administration Stephen Cornell and Miriam Jorgensen Part 3 Reconceiving Key Functions 7. Managing the Boundary between Business and Politics: Strategies for Improving the Chances for Success in Tribally Owned Enterprises Kenneth Grant and Jonathan Taylor 8. Citizen Entrepreneurship: An Underutilized Development Resource Stephen Cornell, Miriam Jorgensen, Ian Wilson Record, and Joan Timeche 9. Governmental Services and Programs: Meeting Citizens' Needs Alyce S. Adams, Andrew J. Lee, and Michael Lipsky 10. Intergovernmental Relationships: Expressions of Tribal Sovereignty Sarah L. Hicks Part 4 Making It Happen 11. Rebuilding Native Nations: What Do Leaders Do? Manley A. Begay, Jr., Stephen Cornell, Miriam Jorgensen, and Nathan Pryor 12. Seizing the Future: Why Some Native Nations Do and Others Don't Stephen Cornell, Miriam Jorgensen, Joseph P. Kalt, and Katherine Spilde Contreras Afterword by Satsan (Herb George) References About the Contributors Index

The Colour of Time: Head Pots and Temporal Convergences

Colour symbolism permeated the world of indigenous North America. This symbolism was often tied to the cosmos where the earth was viewed as a quadrilateral disk and each of the four cardinal directions was linked with a colour array such as red, white, black, and blue. We suggest that the recurring use of certain colours and colour contrasts comprised a suite of long-term historical practices that were essential for reproducing certain views about the world and about being in the world. Further, the rendering of colour had a plasticity that allowed it to enter a discourse about daily life that was intertwined with notions of the long-term. As a case study, we focus on well-known ceramic head effigies in the central Mississippi Valley to argue that their veneers of contrasting red and white were imbued with a notion of time immemorial that converged with other conceptions of temporality, most importantly, a pressing concern with regional violence, personal safety, and spiritual integrity.

Reflections on Conservation, Sustainability, and Environmentalism in Indigenous North America

Building on a range of issues presented initially in The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, and debated subsequently in reviews and various papers, this article ranges widely in time to address traditional environmental knowledge, oral history, conservation and sustainability, and environmentalism in Indian Country. I also offer thoughts on the involvement of Native people in large‐scale development, as well as comanagement schemes today and in the future.

The Work That Must Be Done

The Work That Must Be Done Daniel Heath Justice (bio) Although I can clearly recall the first day I met Simon, the memory of that afternoon doesn't quite fit my sense of reasonable time, because in many ways his words have guided me for much longer. I was twenty when I first read Woven Stone, at a time when I was shuffling off the heavy shame I felt as a mixed-blood Cherokee hillbilly from a poor mountain town, and Simon's deep love of land, language, and his Acoma Pueblo community—the substantive concerns of all his work—found a healing home in my spirit. It was a while before I read more of his work, as my focus quickly moved from literature by American Indians in general to Cherokee literature in particular, but each time I returned to Simon's poems, essays, and stories, I listened to new rhythms in his words, and new dimensions to the driving purpose of his writer's voice. Thus it was with no small bit of apprehension that I prepared to meet him for lunch on my first day as an Aboriginal literatures job candidate at the University of Toronto, where Simon was in his first year as a visiting professor in the English Department. After all, it's one thing to be inspired by a writer's work, but quite another thing to risk watching that inspiration vanish if the writer turns out to be something less than generous. I needn't have worried, because Simon was just as I hoped he'd be: kind, thoughtful, and certain in his dedication to the dignified continuity of indigenous peoples. Although I was still a graduate student at the University of Nebraska and felt rather overwhelmed by the rush and bustle of Toronto and the Anglophilic splendor of U of T, [End Page 93] Simon put me at ease during our conversation. He'd read some of my writing and shared his thoughts on it and made clear to me that there was a lot of work to be done in Toronto for whomever was hired for the position. It was my first personal meeting with Simon, and a memorable one, for he provided encouraging support coupled with high expectations. I was fortunate enough to be the chosen candidate for the job, and in the two years since, I've had many opportunities to work with Simon on a number of projects dedicated to increasing the presence, access, and visibility of indigenous people at the University of Toronto. Rather than focus exclusively on U of T or even on Toronto, Simon's attention starts with the local but also encompasses hemispheric and international indigenous concerns. He's given U of T a stronger name in indigenous studies and provided time, energy, and money to developing or enhancing projects like the Indigenous Literary Reading Series and the Aboriginal Studies Distinguished Lecture Series, which bring renowned native scholars, artists, and political leaders to share their knowledge with the city and university communities; an ambitious, interdisciplinary indigenous studies journal; and the development of a critical reference project on the literatures of indigenous North America. Simon's work and life are embedded in the teachings of the ancestors, the traditions and spirits of the land and the people. He has noted that "we are living today only because the generations before us—our ancestors—provided for us by the manner of their responsible living," and this ethic of respect and humility characterizes everything he does.1 He is an energetic mentor to young native writers and scholars across North America, leading us toward good creative and economic opportunities and reminding us by his example that our work is not just for ourselves, but for all our people today and in the days to come. Never content to just stay put and speak from the security of the Ivory Tower, he travels across the world to speak about the continuing indigenous struggle for justice and provides his poetic voice as a powerful healing tool in that struggle. As a professional writer and an indigenous professor, Simon is one of a small but growing group of native scholars...

Review Essay: Reversing Language Shift in Indigenous North America - What Schools Can and Can't Be Expected To Do

Review Essay: Reversing Language Shift in Indigenous North America - What Schools Can and Can't Be Expected To Do

Democracy and Social Choice

The problem ofjustifying democracy arises when a society sees the need for cooperative, collective action. Collective action may be needed to solve coordination problems, public goods problems, Prisoner's Dilemmas, and other structural problems of human interaction or perhaps to realize common ideals of justice in concrete political institutions. Once the need for collective action is established, one must ask how the goals of a cooperative endeavor are to be secured. Cooperation requires that individuals, at least over a specified range of activity, pursue a joint strategy. To assure voluntary compliance in a joint venture, cooperation must be to each person's advantage. However, each person may have an incentive to induce others to cooperate and to defect from the joint strategy in the hope of enjoying the fruits of cooperation without incurring the opportunity costs of compliance. This is the essence of the Prisoner's Dilemma, and considerations of this sort suggest that if collective action is to succeed, policies or strategies formed collectively must be coercively enforceable. Coercion, however, requires justification. Because solving the problem of rational noncompliance requires that collective decisions be coercively enforceable, the rules by which collective decisions are reached require justification. Douglas Rae neatly puts the problem of justification that emerges when political solutions are coercively enforceable as follows: "Once a political community has decided which of its members are to participate directly in the making of collective policy, an important question remains: 'How many of them must agree before a policy is imposed on the community?"" This is essentially the question to which the principle of democratic rule provides an answer: by what process are collective decisions to be made? Answering Rae's question requires a normative framework. We could say that a procedure for making collective decisions is justified if and

Literacy in Three Metaphors

Although literacy is a problem of pressing national concern, we have yet to discover or set its boundaries. This observation, made several years ago by a leading political spokesman (McGovern 1978), echoes a long-standing complaint of many policymakers and educators that what counts as literacy in our technological society is a matter "not very well understood" (Advisory Committee on National Illiteracy 1929). A dominant response of scholars and researchers to this perceived ambiguity has been to pursue more rigorously the quest for definition and measurement of the concept. Many approaches have been taken (among them, Adult Performance Level Project 1975; Bormuth 1975; Hillerich 1976; Kirsch and Guthrie 1977-78; Miller 1973; Powell 1977), and at least one attempt (Hunter and Harman 1979) has been made to put forward an "umbrella definition." Each of these efforts has identified important parameters of literacy, but none has yet won consensual agreement (for a thoughtful historical and conceptual analysis of shifting literacy definitions, see Radwin [1978]). The definitional controversy has more than academic significance. Each formulation of an answer to the question "What is literacy?" leads to a different evaluation of the scope of the problem (i.e., the extent of illiteracy) and to different objectives for programs aimed at the formation of a literate citizenry. Definitions of literacy shape our perceptions of individuals who fall oh either side of the standard (what a "literate" or "nonliterate" is like) and thus in a deep way affect both the substance and style of educational programs. A chorus of clashing answers also creates problems for literacy planners and educators. This is clearly evident in the somewhat acerbic comments of Dauzat and Dauzat (1977, p. 37), who are concerned with adult basic education: "In spite of all of the furor and the fervor for attaining literacy . .. few have undertaken to say what they or anyone else means by literacy.