The authors who contributed the interviews that follow did so with the understanding that their individual interviews, when considered collectively, could help readers gain a preliminary understanding of some of the fundamental values associated with indigenous leadership. Consistent with this intent, readers are urged to read all five interviews…

In this essay, the author aims to further complicate the blurrings of Native poetry and autobiography and to make a plea. His general "complicating" genre claim is that an overlooked but absolutely essential form of Native identity expression--that is both preliterate and contemporary--is the traditional song, especially songs that from a…

This article presents the author's confessions about being an anthropological poser. He shares a series of short fragments that evidence the ways he has drawn the line around his work. He draws some lessons about how to work collaboratively and effectively as Natives, scholars, and Native scholars. He closes this confession by admitting that he…

The story, known as "The Theft of Fire," illustrates numerous meanings and teachings crucial to understanding Anishinaabe nationhood. This story contains two discernible points. First, it reveals how the Anishinaabe obtained fire. The second discernible feature within this story is the marking of the hare by his theft of fire. Stories…

In this article, the author aims to answer three questions that Ken Lincoln asked in the introduction to his book. Where have Indians come? What have they learned? And what lies ahead? The author argues that many Indian tribes have power now with their business opportunities. Things are changing in many ways for them. They can say what they want…

The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, in celebration of the quadricentennial anniversary of Columbus's landing in the Americas, spread over six hundred acres of reclaimed marsh lands in Chicago's South Side. Fourteen great buildings and two hundred additional buildings stood on the fairgrounds, and if tourists had visited every exhibit, they…

This essay is a short history of imitation "tithu," dolls representing "katsinam," the Hopi supernaturals. It is a study of "authenticity" in the marketplace and its perceived relation to "magic," "spirituality," and "antiquity," as the article follows early changes at Hopi through the…

In this article, the author talks about "listening," "hearing," and negotiating with tribal leaders, and the possibility that, in effect, the idea that giving voice to Native American concerns necessarily implies that tribes are going to be happy enough with the opportunity to be heard and then be willing to forgo their most powerful interests…

In reading queer Native American images, Lisa Tatonetti (2010) criticizes film in which the "boundaries of nation in indigenous contexts are constructed and maintained by the heteronormative gaze" that restricts lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and two-spirit (LGBTQ2) representations. The author's own work differentiates the mere…

In 2005 the author published an article discussing the teaching method teachers used for an introduction to American Indian studies course at Iowa State University. In his previous piece, the author did not delineate the elements that go into an American Indian pedagogy. In this article, the author discusses some elements of American Indian…

In this article, the authors juxtapose Allison Hedge Coke's poetry collection "Blood Run" (2006) with the larger context in which Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) operates in order to investigate how "Blood Run" exposes the limitations of repatriation legislation, most significantly, how NAGPRA's…

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…

In order to account for several puzzling, if not inexplicable, things that happened to the author while researching the life and times of Wovoka, also known as Jack Wilson, 1890 Ghost Dance prophet, he proposes the neologism "extraordinary personal experience" (EPE). An EPE, simply put, references events and circumstances that occur during and…

In 1978 Congress passed an astonishing piece of legislation that gave Native American tribes a considerable amount of jurisdiction over matters of child custody and the adoption of their children. In 1976, the Association of American Indian Affairs gathered statistics relevant to the adoption of Indian children that Congress found "shocking…

Gerald Vizenor is one of several American Indian writers who reflect on the place of objects as they are displayed for cultural consumption, questioning the role of museums particularly in housing and displaying those objects. In light of such works of literature the author argues that in different ways each of these writers presents a critique of…