Visitors to the Yakama Indian Reservation in south-central Washington State can't help but notice Mount Adams. Known as Patu, or snowtopped mountain, and Xwayama, or golden eagle, in the Sahaptin language of the Columbia Plateau, the 12,276-foot peak stretches more than a mile above the forested ridges of the Cascade Range. Images of the mountain…

In this article, the author talks about labored learning under the auspices of the "outing program" of Sherman Institute, an Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. The outing system functioned as a vital part of a larger federal Indian boarding school system that sought, in the words of historian Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, to…

In this article, the author shares his comments on the past, present, and future of the American Indian Studies Center (AISC). He discusses how AISC was established and describes how American Indian studies have come a long way from the neglect and disparagement of Native Americans in the way American history is written and taught. He also…

While American Indian language reclamation efforts are often motivated by a desire to learn and embrace traditional culture, they generally occur within multicultural populations in which community members speak the dominant group's language(s), practice its ways, and use contemporary technologies. For this and related reasons, some mixture of the…

This paper uses Philip Deloria's "Indians in Unexpected Places" as a lens by which to understand the expectations and reviews of Navajo author Blackhorse Mitchell's "Miracle Hill." Written in Navajo English, the book, from an introduction by T. D. Allen to a number of reviews of the book in the popular press, consistently misrecognized the…

In this article, the author focuses on the foundations of Anishinaabe treaty-making with the United States and Canada. The author first describes a story of "The Woman Who Married a Beaver," which illustrates Anishinaabe principles of respect, responsibility, and renewal that are critical in treaty making. "The Woman Who Married a…

Interest in North American Indian code talkers continues to increase. In addition to numerous works about the Navajo code talkers, several publications on other groups of Native American code talkers--including the Choctaw, Comanche, Hopi, Meskwaki, Canadian Cree--and about code talkers in general have appeared. This article chronicles recent…

Greg Sarris's 1994 "Grand Avenue" offers tough urban stories about a long-fought, still-continuing struggle for survival and self-determination. Sarris's stories present the day-to-day lives of a contemporary, fictional Pomo community living in a multiracial neighborhood not far from their traditional homeland. The stories depict poverty, high…

On a chilly Toronto evening in November 2005, an envelope was opened in a darkened auditorium, and the words spoken reached out across the land to Muskoday First Nation in Saskatchewan. No doubt Lindsay Knight's family was watching the televised Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards that night and would have felt elated to hear her being honored with…

Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine in "Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages" state that indigenous peoples represent about 4 percent of the world's population but speak at least 60 percent of the world's languages. They point out the reality of an ominous linguistic crisis of global proportions--languages die and continue to…

Popular cultures are key sites Philip Deloria has called the "production of expectations," and as a major form of popular culture, film has figured prominently in the circulation and reproduction of expectations about Native American peoples since the early twentieth century. This paper explores the ideologies and practices involved in the process…

Communication patterns and explanatory processes are culturally specific and not often compatible with research data-gathering approaches. Particularly in areas of medical research and health and health-care behavioral research, indigenous educators and researchers note their frustration when Western paradigms, academic traditions, and medical…

In this article, the author talks about schooling and the development of literacy within Algonquian communities in eighteenth-century southern New England. With the founding of Moor's Indian Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1754, congregational minister Eleazar Wheelock launched an educational regimen that aimed to Christianize and…

The recognition and implementation of American Indian treaty rights beginning in the last quarter of the twentieth century are transforming the ways in which landscapes are managed, tribal and state institutions are structured, and civic identities are constructed in a number of states that surround Indian nations. This national treaty-rights…

The Native American Renaissance has generated a number of excellent discussions of tribal humor, including Vine Deloria's "Custer Died for Your Sins." In the book's pivotal chapter, "Indian Humor," Deloria reminds readers that humor is often simultaneously entertaining and an essential aspect of survival. These discussions of tribal humor are…