John Milton Oskison (1874-1947) was a Cherokee writer, journalist, and activist and the author of novels and biographies as well as numerous short stories, essays, and articles about a great variety of subjects. Oskison thought of himself as "an interpreter to the world, of the modern, progressive Indian." The kind of representation Oskison gave…

In this article the author starts from the premise that, although there were no renowned Indian poets at Carlisle and other Indian boarding schools in the United States, students in federal boarding schools read and wrote poetry. She argues that the rhetorically bold Carlisle poems--along with the letters and articles published in the Carlisle…

Through his many works calling for the evolution of indigenous theory, Duane Champagne has emphasized the importance of recovering indigenous voices such as Chilocco Indian Industrial School graduate Mack Setima's and documenting forms of cultural continuity. According to Champagne, case studies such as K. Tsianina Lomawaima's scholarship on…

American Indian studies claimed a space to interrogate Western disciplinary epistemologies utilizing Indigenous ways of "knowing". This epistemological struggle has, not surprisingly, been that: a struggle. As the author writes in 2010, people understand that their continuing desire to bring Indigenous community-based ways of knowing into dialogue…

In the summer of 1970, the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklife, an annual event on the National Mall featuring tradition bearers from around the country, premiered a new American Indian program that combined presentations of Native traditions with panel discussions of contemporary social, political, and economic issues facing Native…

Twenty-five years ago a "perfect storm" of economic, environmental, and social conditions swirled in northern Wisconsin and battered attempts by the Ojibwe to exercise their treaty-based fishing rights. This article examines the socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors that contributed to the spearfishing crisis twenty-five years…

What is the value or perceived necessity--for an Indian or for a white man--of changing Northern Cheyenne history? How are a reader's conclusions affected by her perception of the race of the person altering that history? Why is it acceptable to sell but not tell American Indian history? An examination of the visual and discursive rhetoric of "The…

This article discusses Clyde Warrior's campaign for a "Greater Indian America" during the 1960s. Warrior was an activist who demanded a new style of leadership and new rules for living, and was a founding member of the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC). Warrior was a leading influence upon the generation of college-educated Indians who…

What does it mean to "work from home"? Despite the way the phrase rolls easily off the tongue, there is nothing simple or transparent about it. The essays in this issue stake out a different territory in which home is not only the location of work but also its subject and perhaps its methodology. While working from home may sound (and be)…

In this article, the author presses the virtues of insider research, suggesting that Native American studies might profit from a deeper engagement with the broader debates that have taken place in other disciplines and fields. Insider research, he suggests, can generate questions not available to those with outsider perspectives. Participating in…

The author was born in Robeson County, North Carolina, a place that Lumbees refer to as "the Holy Land," "God's Country," or, mostly, "home," regardless of where they actually reside. Her parents raised her two hours away in the city of Durham, making her an "urban Indian". She has a Lumbee family; both of her parents are Lumbees, and all of her…

In his keynote address to the Fifth Annual American Indian Studies Consortium in 2005 David Wilkins began by commenting on earlier attempts to formally organize such a gathering in ways that might help establish and accredit Indian studies programs. He said he had the sense that the thrust of earlier meetings "was really an opportunity for Native…

As neocolonial institutions designed to assimilate American Indians to European American cultural and religious values, social institutions, and economic practices, most schools run by the federal government and missionaries during the first part of the twentieth century sought to suppress all or most aspects of their young students' Indian…

American Indian studies should have a theoretical and methodological focus sufficient to organize an academic discipline. A primary focus of American Indian studies as a discipline is to conceptualize, research, and explain patterns of American Indian individual and collective community choices and strategies when confronted with relations with…

American Indian symbols are used extensively as logos, mascots, nicknames, and trademarks. These images identify postsecondary as well as secondary academic institutions, professional sports franchises, commercial products, and geographic locations. Over the past few decades, efforts have been directed at eliminating or at least reducing the use…