Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining
thousands of acres of their homeland in what is now Michigan,
Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Their success rested partly on their
roles as ...sellers of natural resources and buyers of trade goods,
which made them key players in the political economy of plunder
that drove white settlement and U.S. development in the Old
Northwest. But, as Michael Witgen demonstrates, the credit for
Native persistence rested with the Anishinaabeg themselves.
Outnumbering white settlers well into the nineteenth century, they
leveraged their political savvy to advance a dual citizenship that
enabled mixed-race tribal members to lay claim to a place in U.S.
civil society. Telling the stories of mixed-race traders and
missionaries, tribal leaders and territorial governors, Witgen
challenges our assumptions about the inevitability of U.S.
expansion. Deeply researched and passionately written, Seeing
Red will command attention from readers who are invested in
the enduring issues of equality, equity, and national belonging at
its core.
Cary Miller'sOgimaag: Anishinaabeg Leadership, 1760-1845reexamines Ojibwe leadership practices and processes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At the end of the nineteenth ...century, anthropologists who had studied Ojibwe leadership practices developed theories about human societies and cultures derived from the perceived Ojibwe model. Scholars believed that the Ojibwes typified an anthropological "type" of Native society, one characterized by weak social structures and political institutions. Miller counters those assumptions by looking at the historical record and examining how leadership was distributed and enacted long before scholars arrived on the scene. Miller uses research produced by Ojibwes themselves, American and British officials, and individuals who dealt with the Ojibwes, both in official and unofficial capacities.
By examining the hereditary position of leaders who served as civil authorities over land and resources and handled relations with outsiders, the warriors, and the respected religious leaders of the Midewiwin society, Miller provides an important new perspective on Ojibwe history.
Anthropologists widely agree that identities--even ethnic and racial ones--are socially constructed. Less understood are the processes by which social identities are conceived and ...developed.Legalizing Identitiesshows how law can successfully serve as the impetus for the transformation of cultural practices and collective identity. Through ethnographic, historical, and legal analysis of successful claims to land by two neighboring black communities in the backlands of northeastern Brazil, Jan Hoffman French demonstrates how these two communities have come to distinguish themselves from each other while revising and retelling their histories and present-day stories.French argues that the invocation of laws by these related communities led to the emergence of two different identities: one indigenous (Xoco Indian) and the other quilombo (descendants of a fugitive African slave community). With the help of the Catholic Church, government officials, lawyers, anthropologists, and activists, each community won government recognition and land rights, and displaced elite landowners. This was accomplished even though anthropologists called upon to assess the validity of their claims recognized that their identities were "constructed." The positive outcome of their claims demonstrates that authenticity is not a prerequisite for identity. French draws from this insight a more sweeping conclusion that, far from being evidence of inauthenticity, processes of construction form the basis of all identities and may have important consequences for social justice.
Cultural understandings of well-being often differ from scientific measures such as health, happiness, and affluence. For the Indigenous A'uwẽ (Xavante) people in the tropical savannas of Brazil, ...special forms of intimate and antagonistic social relations, camaraderie, suffering, and engagement with the environment are fundamental aspects of community wellness. Anthropologist James R. Welch transparently presents ethnographic insights from his long-term fieldwork in two A'uwẽ communities. He addresses how distinctive constructions of age organization contribute to social well-being in an era of major ecological, economic, and sociocultural change. Welch shows how A'uwẽ perspectives on the human life cycle help define ethnic identity, promote cultural resilience, and encourage the betterment of youth. They provide frameworks that people may creatively mobilize to responsibly and respectfully engage with others at different stages of life. They also motivate people to access and manage landscape resources essential to the social construction of good living. Through careful analysis, Welch shows how contemporary traditional peoples can foster enthusiasm for service to family and community amid dominant cultures that prioritize individual well-being. This book is an essential resource for students and scholars interested in sociocultural anthropology, Indigenous cultures, health and culture, and human ecology.
An acclaimed book and widely acknowledged classic, The Middle Ground steps outside the simple stories of Indian-white relations – stories of conquest and assimilation and stories of cultural ...persistence. It is, instead, about a search for accommodation and common meaning. It tells how Europeans and Indians met, regarding each other as alien, as other, as virtually nonhuman, and how between 1650 and 1815 they constructed a common, mutually comprehensible world in the region around the Great Lakes that the French called pays d'en haut. Here the older worlds of the Algonquians and of various Europeans overlapped, and their mixture created new systems of meaning and of exchange. Finally, the book tells of the breakdown of accommodation and common meanings and the re-creation of the Indians as alien and exotic. First published in 1991, the 20th anniversary edition includes a new preface by the author examining the impact and legacy of this study.
Instituting nature Mathews, Andrew S
2011, 20111104, 2011-11-04, 2013-06-26, 20110101
eBook, Book
A study of how encounters between forestry bureaucrats and indigenous forest managers in Mexico produced official knowledge about forests and the state.
California's earliest European colonists-Russian merchants and Spanish missionaries-depended heavily on Native Americans for labor to build and maintain their colonies, but they did so in very ...different ways. This richly detailed book brings together disparate skeins of the past-including little-known oral histories, native texts, ethnohistory, and archaeological excavations-to present a vivid new view of how native cultures fared under these two colonial systems. Kent Lightfoot's innovative work, which incorporates the holistic methods of historical anthropology, explores the surprising ramifications of these long-ago encounters for the present-day political status of native people in California. Lightfoot weaves the results of his own significant archaeological research at Fort Ross, a major Russian mercantile colony, into a cross-cultural comparison, showing how these two colonial ventures-one primarily mercantile and one primarily religious-contributed to the development of new kinds of native identities, social forms, and tribal relationships. His lively account includes personal anecdotes from the field and a provocative discussion of the role played by early ethnographers, such as Alfred Kroeber, in influencing which tribes would eventually receive federal recognition.Indians, Missionaries, and Merchantstakes a fascinating, yet troubling, look at California's past and its role in shaping the state today.
"For more than a century, the vast lands of Northern Ontario have been shared among the governments of Canada, Ontario, and the First Nations who signed Treaty No. 9 in 1905. For just as long, ...details about the signing of the constitutionally recognized agreement have been known only through the accounts of two of the commissioners appointed by the Government of Canada. Treaty No. 9 provides a truer perspective on the treaty by adding the neglected account of a third commissioner and tracing the treaty's origins, negotiation, explanation, interpretation, signing, implementation, and recent commemoration."
"Restoring nearly forgotten perspectives to the historical record, John Long considers the methods used by the government of Canada to explain Treaty No. 9 to Northern Ontario First Nations. He shows that many crucial details about the treaty's contents were omitted in the transmission of writing to speech, while other promises were made orally but not included in the written treaty. Reproducing the three treaty commissioners' personal journals in their entirety, Long reveals the contradictions that suggest the treaty parchment was never fully explained to the First Nations who signed it."--pub. website.
The Lake Huron area of the Upper Great Lakes region, an area spreading across vast parts of the United States and Canada, has been inhabited by the Anishnaabeg for millennia. Since their first ...contact with Europeans around 1600, the Anishnaabeg have interacted with-and struggled against-changing and shifting European empires and the emerging nation-states that have replaced them. Through their cultural strength, diplomatic acumen, and a remarkable knack for adapting to change, the Anishnaabeg of the Lake Huron Borderlands have reemerged as a strong and vital people, fully in charge of their destiny in the twenty-first century.
Winner of the North American Indian Prose Award, this first comprehensive cross-border history of the Anishnaabeg provides an engaging account of four hundred years of their life in the Lake Huron area, showing how they have been affected by European contact and trade.Three Fires Unity examines how shifting European politics and, later, the imposition of the Canada-United States border running through their homeland, affected them and continue to do so today. In looking at the cultural, social, and political aspects of this borderland contact, Phil Bellfy sheds light on how the Anishnaabeg were able to survive and even thrive over the centuries in this intensely contested region.
An absorbing and comprehensive survey,The Eagle Returns: The Legal History of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indiansshows a group bound by kinship,geography, and language, struggling ...to reestablish their right to self-governance. Hailing from northwest Lower Michigan, the Grand Traverse Band has become a well-known national leader in advancing Indian treaty rights, gaming, and land rights, while simultaneously creating and developing a nationally honored indigenous tribal justice system. This book will serve as a valuable reference for policymakers, lawyers, and Indian people who want to explore how federal Indian law and policy drove an Anishinaabe community to the brink of legal extinction, how non-Indian economic and political interests conspired to eradicate the community's self-sufficiency, and how Indian people fought to preserve their culture, laws, traditions, governance, and language.
