This article looks at what origin stories teach about the world and what kind of material presence they have in Southwestern Amazonia. We examine the ways the Apurinã relate to certain nonhuman entities through their origin story, and our theoretical approach is language materiality, as we are interested in material means of mediating traditional…

Aboriginal perspectives are a very important topic in today's educational system. There is an urgent need for educators to infuse these perspectives in classrooms and school culture, ultimately benefitting communities. However, in doing so, there are several challenges, including how to infuse these perspectives respectfully while embracing the…

In an art world dominated by non-Indian curators and experts, being "Indian" was confined to an ethnographic fiction of storytellers, dancers, and medicine men attired in traditional clothing and regalia, in which the colonization of indigenous lands and peoples is left to the margins like an Edward S. Curtis portrait. These are the…

Members of the Pima, or Akimel O'odham, community, despite their experiment with a pre-1934 constitutional government, not to mention their conversion to Christianity and sending their children to school, have not generated writers and activists as did their tribal peers in other parts of the United States such as Oklahoma, the Upper Plains, and…

In north central Virginia there is a local tale--The Legend of Jump Mountain, which purports to explain the origins of the Hayes Creek Indian Burial Mound. A highly romantic legend, it immortalizes post colonial intertribal warfare during the early nineteenth century while ignoring the antiquity of the mound and the local descendants of its…

The Ozark Mountains occupy a large area within the state boundaries of southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and northeastern Oklahoma as well as the southeastern-most tip of Kansas. Missouri and Arkansas make up the bulk of the Ozarks, while Oklahoma and Kansas straddle their outer rim. From 1800 to 1865 the Ozarks region was in constant flux, as…

If the typical premise of American Indian history is actually the history of Indian-white relations, then the "other" side of the coin must be turned over for understanding an Indian point of view and what is called "writing from home." Conceptually, "writing from home" is the challenge of historians who are American Indian and who write history…

What is the relationship between Indigenous peoples and violent reactions to contemporary states? This research explores differing, culturally informed notions of attachment to land or place territory. Mechanistic ties and organic ties to land are linked to a key distinction between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples. Utilizing the…

An ilkak'mana called Multnomah once lived near the river where New England merchants chopped Portland, Oregon, out of a Douglas-fir forest. With a bow and shield slung behind his back, the chief stood imperiously in Hermon A. MacNeil's 1904 statuette inscribed at its base with his name. Nearby tribes preserved Multnomah in words, but years later…

In the American southwest, Pueblo Indian tribes have managed to retain their languages and cultures far longer than many American Indian tribes who have suffered complete language loss as a result of historical oppression, displacement and annihilation. In more recent times, however, Pueblo Indian tribes have faced tremendous pressures to abandon…

Discusses how the stories passed on from Native American tribal elders can preserve Indian cultural history, mutual dependence, respect for nature, and values rooted in tribal culture. (HTH)

For American indigenous peoples, oral tradition maintains each group's cultural identity and world view; documents history; and links the group's past, present, and future. Storytelling has been a major mode of passing moral values and teachings to children, as well as passing sacred and specialized knowledge to new specialists but is now…

This book contains 16 stories that chronicle the history and culture of the Cheyenne people. Intended for grades 3-8, the stories present an alternative viewpoint on historical events and thus provide a more balanced understanding of the Cheyenne and other Native peoples. The stories are told chronologically, from creation to the present, as seen…

This collection of stories and memories, suitable for adolescents, offers a perspective on both traditional and contemporary ways of California Indians. Some stories are from old reports and books, and some are from people of today. The introduction ties the wide variety of Indians that live in California to the variety of landscape and climate.…

This book of essays draws on a cultural geography project in which an ethnographer and Apache consultants mapped the area around Cibecue, on the Fort Apache Reservation (Arizona). The essays focus on different Apache individuals and examine the ways that Apache constructions of place reach deeply into other cultural spheres. Many Apache place…