Winds of Change and Contact History: a Euro-American epistemology and ontology 
(The Riverbed of Euro-American Contact History)

Dates: January 20 - February 8  (7 sessions)   MORE SESSIONS

• Topics:

  • American "Cultural Values" and the Impacts of the Horse (Plains map), Diseases, Missionaries, War, Treaties and Allotment on Indian society, Indian Reorganization Act, Self-Determination, Revitalization Movements (Handsome Lake and Ghost Dance), Historic Trauma, the Assault on Tribal Sovereignty, and Traditionalism and the Wheel.  

• Readings: 

  • Oswalt 2006: 33-67 and 469-493 

  • Frey and Elders 2012 "Head Knowledge" pp. 43-49, "Culture Change" pp.115-122, and the "Mutually Exclusive" and the "Wheel" pp. 91-96, 97-110, 130

  • Emerging Values of Americanism (for clarification on Cultural Values)

  • Gill 2005: 103-128 (review)

• Lecture Outlines and Handouts:  

  • Tribal Sovereignty - defined, and on the difficulty in defining Tribal Sovereignty 

  • Change Model 

  • Disease

  • Influences of the Horse:  Images,  Map of Relocated Plains Tribes, and  Joe Medicine Crow and War Deeds

  • John Gast's "American Progress", (Emerging American Values), and Sovereignty and Assimilation - an outline

  • Indian Wars: example of the Sand Creek Massacre

  • Indian Removal Act, Treaties and Executive Orders, Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1851 and the Dawes - Allotment Act

  • Demise of the Buffalo

  • Prohibiting of Dances, and Boarding Schools and Missionaries Images

  • Revitalization Movements: Ghost Dance Images and Native American Church (Peyote) Images

  • Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and John Collier

  • Termination Policy of 1950s and early 1960s

  • Self Determination and Education Assistance Act (1975) and one example: Benewah Medical and Wellness Facility

  • Current Examples of renewed sovereignty: National Congress of American Indians (1944), Native American Rights Fund (1970),  Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (take a look at the agenda of the resent meeting; 1954), Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (take a look at all the programs; 1977)

  • The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978 and 1994 amendments)  and Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protection Association (1988)

  • Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (plenary powers at work; 1988)

  • Reiteration and Review of Emerging Values of Americanism and Tribal Sovereignty (on the difficulty in defining Tribal Sovereignty) 

• Video:

  • Ishi: The Last Yahi  (57 min., a 1992 Pamela Roberts film.  In the early 1900s, Ishi, the last of the Yahi Indian tribe, is discovered nearly 20 years after the Yahi tribe was thought to be wiped out. The Alfred Kroeber agrees to look after him, hoping to learn more about his him, his tribe, and their beliefs, and to teach him to survive in the modern world.  It is a story of friendship, and of cultural destruction.)

  • Rebecca Tsosie (51 min., from her 2000 U of I Distinguished American Indian Speaker's Series talk, "Rethinking the Tribal Sovereignty Doctrine: Cultural Sovereignty and the Collective Future of Indian Nations."  Tsosie is Navajo and Professor of Law and the Executive Director of the Indian Legal Program at Arizona State University)

  • Our Land, Our Life (26 min., this 2007 film tells of the struggles of two Western Shoshone sisters, Carrie and Mary Dann, as they seek to retain their treaty rights to their lands in north central Nevada. They graze their animals on the open range outside their ranch - a range that was recognized as Western Shoshone land by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. In 1974 the U.S. sued the sisters for trespassing on U.S. Public Land. That set off a dispute between the Danns and the United States that raged to the Supreme Court and beyond. The United States has also confiscated over a thousand of their livestock in five terrifying round-ups. After trying to plead their case to various U.S. courts and governmental agencies, they ultimately take their case to the United Nations.   Map and Timeline of the Shoshone lands dispute.)

  • Our Spirits Don't Speak English: Indian Boarding School (80 min., a 2008  Rich-Heape Film.  Told from a Native American perspective, this documentary gives a the history of the U.S. Government policy, and the experiences of Indian children.  By the 1960s, more than 100,000 Indian children had been forced to attend Indian Boarding Schools)

• Web links: 

  • on Tocqueville's America of 1831

  • Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protection Association (additional background) 

  • Meaning of Thanksgiving  

  • We Shall Remain series (PBS American Experience 2009)

Along with the user ID and password provided in class, you will need a reliable high-speed Internet connection (suggested 10 Mbps, as clips are streamed at 450 Kbps) and a RealPlayer to access class videos.   Remember, videos can be enlarged by dragging your mouse on the bottom right corner.    For a free version, .  

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