Omaha Research Articles

Harold Gifford, Sr., M.D. Omaha's premier turn of the century ophthalmologist.

Harold Gifford, Sr., M.D. Omaha's premier turn of the century ophthalmologist.

Perspectives of Someday Isle, Bernadette, Vocalist, Age 27: Omaha, NE

Perspectives of Someday Isle, Bernadette, Vocalist, Age 27: Omaha, NE

Authentic Alaska: Voices of Its Native Writers

These are gritty, forthright narratives about late-twentieth-century life in remote Alaska...A wonderful collection indeed!--Julie Cruikshank, author of The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon Territory (Nebraska 1998) and Life Lived Like a Story: Life Stories of Three Yukon Native Elders (Nebraska 1991). These stories add a new dimension to the genre of Native American literature.--Robin Ridington, coauthor of Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe (Nebraska 1997). In this lively and sometimes poignant collection of essays and autobiographies, nearly fifty Alaska Native writers tell of their unique way of life and bear witness to the sweeping cultural changes occurring in their lifetimes. They explore a range of experiences and issues, including skinning a polar bear; traditional domestic and subsistence practices; marriage customs; alcoholism; the challenges and opportunities of modern education; balancing traditional and contemporary demands; discrimination; adapting to urban life; the treatment of Native peoples in school textbooks; and the social realities of speaking standard and village English. With its fresh perspectives and unfailingly authentic voices, this collection is essential for an understanding of Alaska Native peoples today. Susan B. Andrews and John Creed are award-winning journalists and associate professors in the humanities at the Chukchi campus of the University of Alaska in Kotzebue.

Blessing for a Long Time: A Circle of Stories

Robin Ridington and Dennis Hastings. Blessing for. Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Xv. 259 pp.

The Gate City: a History of Omaha

The Gate City: a History of Omaha

Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe

Robin Ridington and Dennis Hastings ingeniously adopt the conventions of Omaha oral narratives to tell the story and convey the significance of the Sacred Pole. Portions of classic anthropological texts (particularly Fletcher and La Flesche's Omaha Tribe), Omaha narratives, and other historical and contemporary accounts are repeated - each time in a different, more enlightening context - in a circle of stories seamlessly woven around Umon'hon'ti. The result is an innovative account that effortlessly glides between past and present. This unique blend of Omaha poetics, ethnography, and ethnohistory is a significant contribution to our understanding of the religious life of Native Americans. Robin Ridington is a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Trail to Heaven: Knowledge and Narrative in a Northern Native Community and other works. Dennis Hastings is the director of the Omaha Tribal Historical Research Project.

The Cry of the Living Creatures: An Omaha Performance of Blessing

Abstract: Performance is a powerful language. It speaks through an ordered syntax of studied action. From action it creates This article presents two sets of ethnographic texts that describe a traditional Omaha ceremonial performance. The first is a reconstruction of the 19th-century ceremony inscribing the tattooed Mark of Honour on a young woman whose father is completing initiation into the Night Blessed Society. The second is an epilogue stimulated by critical readings of the first text and based on interviews Jillian Ridington and I conducted in 1985 and 1986 with three elderly Omaha women who bore the Mark of Honour. The information in this study complements material presented in Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe (Ridington and Hastings, 1997).Resume: La performance constitue un langage puissant. Elle s'exprime au moyen d'une syntaxe ordonnee d'action etudiee. partir de l'action elle cree la syntaction. Le present article expose deux ensembles de textes ethnographiques qui decrivent une performance ceremonielle traditionnelle omaha. Le premier texte est une reconstruction de la ceremonie du XIXe siecle gravant la marque d'honneur tatouee sur une jeune femme dont le pere termine l'initiation dans la societe de la nuit sacree. Le second texte est un epilogue provoque par des lectures critiques du premier texte et s'appuie sur des entrerues que Jillian Ridington et moi-meme avons menees en 1985 et 1986 avec trois dames agees qui arboraient la >. Les donnees de cet article apportent un complement au materiel presente dans Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe (Ridington et Hastings, 1997).IntroductionThis article presents two sets of ethnographic texts. The first is a reconstruction of the 19th-century Omaha ceremony inscribing the tattooed Mark of Honour on a young woman whose father is completing initiation into the Night Blessed Society. My account is based on information about the ceremony that Alice C. Fletcher and her Omaha collaborator, Francis La Flesche, collected in the 1880s, augmented by information from Reo Fortune's 1932 book on Omaha Secret Societies. The second text is an epilogue stimulated by critical readings of the first text and based on interviews Jillian Ridington and I conducted in 1985 and 1986 with three elderly Omaha women who bore the Mark of Honour, referred to colloquially as the Blue Spot.I wrote the first text to be an almost filmic reconstruction of the ceremony, relying on Omaha texts and the interpretive language used by Fletcher and La Flesche in their classic 1911 ethnography, The Omaha Tribe. I wrote it when I was on the Omaha reservation in 1991, documenting the tribe's reburial of human remains from the former Omaha village of Ton'wontonga. I was also working with Omaha Tribal Historian, Dennis Hastings, on a book, Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe (Ridington and Hastings, 1997). Parts of the reconstruction went into a chapter in the book entitled, A Fragment of Anything to Its Entirety.I submitted my reconstruction of the ceremony as a text that might stand alone; a dramatic reading of pre-modern ethnographic texts that were themselves readings of what Omaha informants told Fletcher and La Flesche. Peer reviewers for the journal made some telling comments that led me to expand the study to include material from the interviews with living bearers of the tattoo. The reviewers felt that the paper touched on issues of gender and power that needed to be addressed further. Following the original text, I will quote from their comments before presenting material from the interviews.The Language of PerformancePerformance is a powerful language. It speaks through an ordered syntax of studied action. From action it creates Its props and actors, sets and blocking, timbre and rhythm, situate both actor and audience in a place where the unfolding of events becomes generative and transformative. …

Musculoskeletal injury in children.

1. Walter W. Huurman, MD* 2. Glen M. Ginsburg, MD† 1. 2. *Editorial Board. 3. 4. †Pediatric Orthopaedics, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE. 1. Compartment syndromes result from decreased vascular perfusion due to increased pressure in a closed osteofascial compartment. 2. Placement of ice packs is an important immediate therapy for soft-tissue injuries, but packs must be applied for at least 20 minutes. 3. More severe sprains require protection against another injury during healing. 4. Nursemaid’s elbow is a common injury and can be treated safely by the pediatrician. 5. Supracondylar fractures commonly are associated with neurologic and vascular injury. Over the past 2 decades, the number of musculoskeletal injuries sustained by children and adolescents has increased markedly. This may reflect an increasing use of motorized and high-speed wheeled vehicles among this population. Orthopedic injuries incurred while using all-terrain vehicles, inline skates, and skateboards that rarely were seen 20 years ago now are common. It is important to recognize the basic skeletal differences between children and adults; the common signs and symptoms of fractures, sprains, strains, and dislocations; and the initial treatment and stabilization of these injuries in children. A reasonable understanding of the basic physiology involved in bone growth and development is required to identify and recognize appropriate treatment for fractures in the skeletally immature individual. The patient and parents should anticipate return to as normal function as could be expected given the circumstances of a particular injury. Bone is a dynamic organ that is ever-changing and, especially in the growing child, possesses tremendous healing characteristics. The skeleton is involved in up to 20% of childhood injuries, with 18% to 30% of these occurring directly to the growth mechanism. The unique features of this organ in the pediatric population distinguish it and the treatment of its problems due to trauma from those in the skeletally mature. ### ANATOMY The outer layer of young bone, periosteum, which is thick and flexible but strong (Fig. 1⇓), often remains partially …

The Ultimate Management Perk

(1996). The Ultimate Management Perk. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas: Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 95-96.

News for all: America's coming-of-age with the press

American, wrote Victorian journalist Edward Dicey, might be defined as a newspaper reading animal. Nineteenth-century taverns boasted of their newspapers as much as their drinks. Indeed, Americans' news-consumption habits were so obvious that Omaha Indians, on visits to St. Louis, mimicked newspaper reading as a courtesy when in the company of white men. But today, countless papers have closed or consolidated, and magazines built on mass readership seek to limit (or target) their subscriber base. Now Thomas C. Leonard captures this sea change in American history, exploring the reality and critical importance of print journalism in daily life. In News for All, Leonard provides a fascinating account of the love-hate relationship we have always had with the news, from the early nineteenth century to the present. Reading the news was once a central social function, as citizens eagerly gathered in taverns, inns, post offices, and elsewhere to hear the latest reports. During an era when travel was slow and when geography, religion, class, race, and language divided the nation, all shared the universal habit of taking a favorite paper. Readers formed an alliance with publishers, declaring their politics by what they read in an age of highly partisan editorial policies: there were papers for the women's movement, antislavery, temperance reform, political parties large and small. Men and women courted by exchanging their beloved papers. Other hot-blooded readers protested items that offended them politically, even forming mobs after publication of unfriendly news. The press prospered with the democratization of news: they welcomed the pennies of succeeding waves of immigrants, and engaged in devastating circulation wars that slashed the price of the daily paper. Press barons learned to adjust to the desires of readers (the young William Randolph Hearst, for example, learned that what his subscribers wanted was more advertising). The end of the twentieth century, however, has seen journalists pull back from readers. Magazines seek to limit their readers in order to the affluent public to attract advertising dollars; publishers market subscribers' names ruthlessly, often cooperating with big advertisers. And the development of other major media threatens the role of the printed page as the ultimate word. The idea of news for all, it seems, is a faded dream. America's insatiable appetite for news played a critical role in the growth of democracy, but never before have the readers, rather than the periodicals, been examined in detail. News for All bridges this critical gap, bringing to life the nation's cantankerous love affair with the press.

Ke-Ma-Ha: the Omaha Stories of Francis La Flesche

'A splendid new addition to Native American fiction' - Louis Owens, author of Nightland. 'Interesting and informative' - South Dakota History. 'An intriguing selection...Aside from the stories, which alone would make this book worth reading, the editors have provided an excellent introductory sketch of La Flesche's life' - Annals of Iowa.Born on the Omaha Reservation in 1857, Francis La Flesche was raised in the years when federal policy encouraged Indians to assimilate. He learned English at a mission school, acquiring a fluency that prepared him for a career that moved between tribal and national concerns. Most of the stories in Ke-ma-ha have never before been published.Written to bring public attention to the Omahas, they tell us about that culture in ways that anthropological treatises cannot. Francis La Flesche collaborated with anthropologist Alice C. Fletcher on The Omaha Tribe and A Study of Omaha Indian Music. These titles, as well as La Flesche's autobiographical The Middle Five: Indian Schoolboys of the Omaha Tribe, are available as Bison Books. James W.Parins, a professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, is the author of John Rollin Ridge (Nebraska 1991). Daniel F. Littlefield Jr., director of the American Native Press Archives, wrote Alex Posey: Creek Poet, Journalist, and Humorist (Nebraska 1992) and edited Posey's Fus Fixico Letters (Nebraska 1993).

Geography, First Peoples, and Social Justice

The geography of native or indigenous groups in the United and other former British colonies is evolving as result of both internal and external forces. Native groups in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Africa are experiencing opportunities for self-expression and for establishing native-voiced priorities that are very much part of the postcolonial present. In the United two related situations, gaming and probable cuts in the budget of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), twist the administrative tasks of tribal governments into pretzel-like contortions. On one hand, the decline of BIA funds means less revenue from federal sources; on the other, in isolated cases activities like gaming are producing revenue that greatly increases tribal autonomy. In other regions of the postcolonial world, native groups face diminishing governmental funds and lack the ability to create capital, even as they express the confident rhetoric and hope of self-governance - especially in looking toward control of land and natural resources. These conditions are part of historical process, one that not only affects the present condition of native groups but also sets the agenda for native issues in the next century. The ability and desire of native groups to define their own landscapes by modifying natural environments, establishing settlement patterns, and formally acknowledging the symbolic importance of specific sites is part of wider global system which unites hundreds of culture groups that have experienced British imperialism since the sixteenth century. Though culturally unique, the groups were systematically faced with centrally organized state power that attempted to create homogeneous relationship with all of them, as if they were one. The primary objectives of the British were to dominate other European powers in global trade and to acquire land and resources. But British colonial imperialism, in which American federal Indian policy had its roots, is ending; and native, aboriginal, or Indian groups are more able than ever to participate in determining cultural landscapes and economic survival. The pace of native survival is much like an Apache women's circle dance: small steps to slow and constant rhythm, swaying shawls leaving trail in the dust of the powwow ground. The progress is slow, sometimes the drumming is faint, sometimes the drumming is louder, but the circle is not broken. The same pattern is evident in the history of native adjustments to British colonial systems: A constant circle of native life has withstood considerable disruption. Adjustments to imperialism required natives to reestablish individual and group identity that had to satisfy two contradictory worldviews. These contradictions have created sense of ambiguity and sometimes hopelessness that can be found in almost all native communities today. The task now for those communities is to escape the reproduction of contradictions and hopelessness by returning to production of native-defined worlds in the present. David I. Wishart, geographer at the University of Nebraska, reminds us of major source of Indian hopelessness in An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians. The title of his book comes from phrase that an Omaha Indian used in 1912 to describe his sense of loss. Quoted by Wishart, White Horse says, Now the face of all the land is changed and sad. The living creatures are gone. I see the land desolate, and I suffer unspeakable sadness. Sometimes I wake in the night and feel as though I should suffocate from the pressure of this awful feeling of loneliness (Wishart 1994, v). This despair follows the Nebraska into the modern era, according to Wishart. Having defined the pervasive turmoil of the Nebraska, Wishart goes on to construct an impressive and convincing argument about the process of land losses of the Nebraska as a means of determining the justness, or lack of justness, of the United States in its treatment of the Nebraska (p. …

Blackbird and Son: A Note concerning Late-Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century Omaha Chieftainship

Recueillie par l'histoire, la vie du chef omaha Blackbird a la fin du 18 eme siecle a aussi ete l'objet de mythes et de legendes. Un de ses fils, egalement appele Blackbird, acquit le statut de chef principal des Omahas au debut du 19 eme siecle. Les sources omaha et europeennes de la fin de ce meme siecle semblent confondre les episodes de la vie du pere et du fils. Le 3 juin 1795, le Lieutenant gouverneur Trudeau promit au plus jeune une medaille et la reconnaissance espagnole de son acces a la chefferie a la mort de son pere. Une commission datee du 12 mai 1796 accompagnee d'une petite medaille appartenait au fils et non au pere, comme on le croyait, qui recu, lui, une large medaille doree a la meme date. Blackbird junior succeda a son pere en 1800-1801 mais il fut depose autour de 1807 avant de mourir aux environs de 1831

Cultural Identity and Control of Diabetes among Members of the Omaha Tribe in Nebraska

Diabetes is one of the leading health problems in the United States today, particularly among Native Americans. For those diagnosed with non-insulin dependent (Type II) diabetes mellitus, control of the disease involves significant changes in life style. A number of cultural factors affecting an individual's ability to control diabetes have been investigated. Rarely, however, has the variable of cultural identity been studied in this regard. The exploratory study reported in this article describes the development of a scale designed to measure cultural identity among diabetic members of the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska. The 19-item scale was subsequently used to test the hypothesis that high cultural identity would be positively correlated with measures of diabetes control. Control of diabetes was measured using both behavioral self-report, and fasting blood sugar levels. Support for the hypothesis was found with regard to fasting blood sugar levels, but not behavioral self-reports.

Further evidence of lead contamination of Omaha skeletons.

A previous analysis of Omaha skeletons dating between A.D. 1780 and 1820 revealed the presence of lead in all skeletons with high concentrations in children and adult males (Reinhard and Ghazi [1992] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 89:183-195). Two likely explanations for the high lead levels were presented: 1) metabolic absorption of lead and 2) diagenetic uptake of lead by the bones from postmortem application of pigments to the corpse. Two types of lead were available to the Omaha tribe: 1) Mississippi Valley type, and 2) non-Mississippi Valley type. It has been suggested that red-lead pigment mixed with mercury sulphide (cinnabar) applied to the corpse may have been one of the sources of lead found in bones. Further isotopic analyses of samples of pigment and metallic lead artifacts associated with the skeletons revealed that non-Mississippi Valley type lead is present in the pigment while Mississippi Valley type lead comes from metallic artifacts. Both lead and mercury were found in the pigment samples, verifying that a lead-based pigment mixed with cinnabar-based pigment was used as a cosmetic by the Omaha. Isotopic analysis of lead in skeletons indicates that the pigment contributed most to lead content of bone. This new evidence clarifies the previous study and suggests specific mechanisms by which lead became incorporated into bone.

Lead in archaeological samples: an isotopic study by ICP-MS

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) has been used to measure the concentration and isotopic composition of Pb in archaeological human and animal skeletal remains, soil from a village site of the Omaha tribe (U.S.A.) and cosmetic pigments. Lead concentrations in human bones from the Omaha tribe vary between 4.8 and 2570 μg/g, with younger people having the highest concentrations. Lead concentrations in animal bones from an Omaha village vary between 0.6 and 3.7 μg/g, and those of three soil samples range between 18 and 21 μg/g. Lead concentrations found in human bones from Anasazi (Utah, U.S.A.) and Alta (Peru) populations vary between 0.7 and 3.2 μg/g. Isotope ratios of a reagent grade Pb(NO 3) 2 solutions were measured by thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS), as well as by ICP-MS to provide laboratory reference materials. The accuracy of the ICP-MS measurements relative to TIMS for the standard solution were found to be within 0.02–0.31% for 206Pb/ 204Pb, 0.02–0.55% for 207Pb/ 204Pb, and 0.16–0.56% for 208Pb/ 204Pb. The precision of measurements on artifacts was 0.42–0.65% for 206Pb/ 204Pb and 0.41–0.62% for 207Pb/ 204Pb, whereas the precision for the same ratios for the bones was 0.85–1.8 and 0.82–1.67%, respectively. For the cosmetic lead-bearing pigments, a precision of 0.07–0.15% was found for both 206Pb/ 204Pb and 207Pb/ 204Pb ratios. Lead isotope ratios of artifacts give a radiogenic Pb signature, of which are close to signatures from Pb Zn mines of the central U.S. region. Lead isotope ratios of the pigments give non-radiogenic Pb signatures. Lead isotope ratios of the bones differ from those of the artifacts, and although similar in isotopic ratio to the pigments, they are more scattered, suggesting potential mixing of Pb from different regions.

A Sacred Object as Text: Reclaiming the Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe

A Sacred Object as Text: Reclaiming the Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe

The Upstream People: An Annotated Research Bibliography of the Omaha Tribe

...a valuable research tool...it is a handy device for anyone interested in Omaha research materials. - GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

Archaeology and ethnohistory of the Omaha Indians: the Big Village site

Archaeology and ethnohistory of the Omaha Indians: the Big Village site

Evaluation of lead concentrations in 18th-century Omaha Indian skeletons using ICP-MS.

The analysis of skeletal remains of Omaha Indians buried between AD 1780 and 1820 indicated that lead was incorporated in cortical bone. The diagenetic or biogenetic origin of the lead was evaluated by examination of lead isotope ratios of the bones and artifacts, and comparison of lead concentrations in burial soils with those of the bones. The isotopic values of the lead artifacts demonstrate that the lead was mined in the Missouri region. Although the isotope ratios in the bones are not identical with that from the lead artifacts, there is a strong relationship between them. This finding indicates that the lead in the bone was at least partly derived from the artifacts. Because lead artifacts rarely accompanied the burials but lead was ubiquitous in the bones, we suggest a biogenetic origin for the lead. There is also the possibility that some of the lead may have been derived from pigments applied to the corpse during mortuary ritual.