Billy Day, a Tunica/Biloxi, recently described the significance of the sun for Caddoan people. Day quoted an "old Caddo relative" of his who said: "I used to go outside and hold my hands up and bless myself with the sun--'a'hat.' Well, I can't do that anymore because they say we are sun worshipers. We didn't worship the sun. We worshiped what was…

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…

This study addresses the ways in which Natives practiced self-silence in regard to public Civil War commemoration. Notwithstanding the incredible impact on Indian Territory and Indian lives, Oklahoma Indians themselves did not typically commemorate the Civil War. Therefore, Native American contribution to the Civil War was largely skewed in the…

Change due to natural disturbances and disasters, population growth and decline, economic crises, and environmental and climate change creates significant cultural challenges. Rapid change and the transformation it brings also involve complex relationships between sovereign tribes, resources, and the global system. This article explores how salmon…

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…

In August 1676 Nathaniel Bacon brought his campaign to "ruin and extirpate all Indians in general" to the Green Dragon Swamp on the upper Pamunkey River. While there, he attacked and massacred nearly fifty Pamunkey Indians, who had been at peace with the government of Virginia for thirty years. Having once formed the backbone of the…

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…

From the late nineteenth century through the early 1930s a succession of collectors, ethnologists, and other scholars scoured the Menominee Reservation for data and items of material culture, which they presented to the American public through both publication and display. They did this with the cautious aid of Menominees they hired to provide…

This article explores possibilities for extending aboriginal language education opportunities into the urban domain based on qualitative research in Vancouver, British Columbia. The author argues that aboriginal language revitalization efforts have a place in the city, as demonstrated by emerging language ideologies of urban aboriginal people…

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…

Plant species utilized by Cherokees have been documented by several authors. However, many of the traditional uses of plants were lost or forgotten in the generations following the Trail of Tears. The pressures of overcoming the physical and psychological impact of the removal, adapting to a new landscape, rebuilding a government, rebuilding…

Americans in the East were great fans of Black Hawk, whose popularity on tour overtook that of Andrew Jackson's parallel tour of the Northeast. Undoubtedly, then, Black Hawk was a celebrity. He remained popular even in 1837, when he attended Catlin's gallery opening in New York, which included his 1832 painting of Black Hawk. Black Hawk may also…

This article presents a review which embodies a general inquiry about the growth of the Native American gaming industry and possibilities the future may hold for America's indigenous people. Tribal gaming is different from other forms of gaming. It is conducted by Native American governments as a way to carry out their natural self-governing…

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 1953 California Indians watched as the U.S. Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 108 to effectively terminate federal trust protection of American Indian reservation lands. Included in the wording of the Termination Act is the following: It is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to make the Indian within the ... territorial…