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Native Americans: History, Culture, & Tribes: Indigenous Heritage

This guide covers the history and culture of Native American tribes. This guide is an ongoing project. As such, additional content will be added throughout the academic year.

Indigenous Heritage

Journals & Reference Materials (Log in Required)

Invasion of America

Explore the Invasion of American interactive map, created by history professor Claudio Saunt, shows Indian land cessions 1776–1887. Interactive features let you find specific locations or tribes.

Source: https://usg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=eb6ca76e008543a89349ff2517db47e6

100 Years

100 YEARS documents the David vs. Goliath story of Elouise Cobell's courageous fight for justice for hundreds of thousands of Native Americans who were cheated out of billions of dollars by the United States Government.

Indigenous In Plain Sight

The indigenous existence in Western and American culture is narrowly viewed and accepted with little to no input from actual Indigenous people. Gregg Deal talks about the use of history as a tool while he navigates the restrictions thrusts upon his work as a contemporary artist while challenging those who hear his words to take responsibility for their knowledge, and create room for this nation’s First Peoples.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3FL9uhTH_s

Perspectives

State of the World's Indigenous Peoples

While indigenous peoples make up around 370 million of the world's population - some 5 per cent - they constitute around one-third of the world's 900 million extremely poor rural people. Every day, indigenous communities all over the world face issues of violence and brutality. Indigenous peoples are stewards of some of the most biologically diverse areas of the globe, and their biological and cultural wealth has allowed indigenous peoples to gather a wealth of traditional knowledge which is of immense value to all humankind. The publication discusses many of the issues addressed by the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and is a cooperative effort of independent experts working with the Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. It covers poverty and well-being, culture, environment, contemporary education, health, human rights, and includes a chapter on emerging issues.

Indigenous Peoples' Wisdom and Power

Capturing the narratives of indigenes, this book presents a unique anthology on global Indigenous peoples' wisdoms and ways of knowing. Covering issues of religion, cultural self-determination, philosophy, spirituality, sacred sites, oppression, gender and the suppressed voices of women, the diverse global contexts across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, North and South America, and Oceania are highlighted. The contributions represent heart-felt expressions of Indigenous peoples from various contexts - their triumphs and struggles, their gains and losses, their reflections on the past, present, and future - telling their accounts in their own voices. Opening new vistas for understanding historical ancient knowledge, preserved and practiced by Indigenous people for millennia, this innovative anthology illuminates areas of philosophy, science, medicine, health, architecture, and botany to reveal knowledge suppressed by Western academic studies.

A Global History of Indigenous Peoples

A Global History of Indigenous Peoples examines the history of the indigenous/tribal peoples of the world. The work spans the period from the pivotal migrations which saw the peopling of the world, examines the processes by which tribal peoples established themselves as separate from surplus-based and more material societies, and considers the impact of the policies of domination and colonization which brought dramatic change to indigenous cultures. The book covers both tribal societies affected by the expansion of European empires and those indigenous cultures influenced by the economic and military expansion of non-European powers. The work concludes with a discussion of contemporary political and legal conflicts between tribal peoples and nation-states and the on-going effort to sustain indigenous cultures in the face of globalization, resource developments and continued threats to tribal lands and societies.

Cartographic Encounters

There's no excuse for getting lost these days--satellite maps on our computers can chart our journey in detail and electronics on our car dashboards instruct us which way to turn. But there was a time when the varied landscape of North America was largely undocumented, and expeditions like that of Lewis and Clark set out to map its expanse. As John Rennie Short argues in Cartographic Encounters, that mapping of the New World was only possible due to a unique relationship between the indigenous inhabitants and the explorers.             In this vital reinterpretation of American history, Short describes how previous accounts of the mapping of the new world have largely ignored the fundamental role played by local, indigenous guides. The exchange of information that resulted from this "cartographic encounter" allowed the native Americans to draw upon their wide knowledge of the land in the hope of gaining a better position among the settlers.             This account offers a radical new understanding of Western expansion and the mapping of the land and will be essential to scholars in cartography and American history.

Unworthy Republic

In May 1830, the United States formally launched a policy to expel Native Americans from the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Justified as a humanitarian enterprise, the undertaking was to be systematic and rational, overseen by Washington's small but growing bureaucracy. But as the policy unfolded over the next decade, thousands of Native Americans died under the federal government's auspices, and thousands of others lost their possessions and homelands in an orgy of fraud, intimidation, and violence. Unworthy Republic reveals how expulsion became national policy and describes the chaotic and deadly results of the operation to deport 80,000 men, women, and children.Drawing on firsthand accounts and the voluminous records produced by the federal government, Saunt's deeply researched book argues that Indian Removal, as advocates of the policy called it, was not an inevitable chapter in U.S. expansion across the continent. Rather, it was a fiercely contested political act designed to secure new lands for the expansion of slavery and to consolidate the power of the southern states. Indigenous peoples fought relentlessly against the policy, while many U.S. citizens insisted that it was a betrayal of the nation's values. When Congress passed the act by a razor-thin margin, it authorized one of the first state-sponsored mass deportations in the modern era, marking a turning point for native peoples and for the United States.In telling this gripping story, Saunt shows how the politics and economics of white supremacy lay at the heart of the expulsion of Native Americans; how corruption, greed, and administrative indifference and incompetence contributed to the debacle of its implementation; and how the consequences still resonate today.

What Does Being Indigenous Mean?

To mark National Indigenous Peoples Day, this film shares the profiles of 18 Indigenous leaders and change-makers.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-zwP6q1GkM

Who Controls the Land

Native American actor Martin Sensmeier travels to San Juan County, Utah, to investigate the controversy over the Bears Ears National Monument.

While there, he learns how the fight over the monument is just one more battle in a long-running war between the county's Native American citizens and their Mormon neighbors over who will control the future of the county.

His journey reveals how voting rights denied by the Mormons have led to the marginalization of their Native neighbors and learns about the long history of looting of sacred archeological sites in the county.

Source: Kanopy