American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Reprint. Originally appeared in Perspectives on History, vol. 61, no. 8
(November 2023).

Land and land access is returning to Indigenous peoples across the world. This article theorizes ways that two California tribal organizations, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and Amah Mutsun Land Trust, are revitalizing cultural practices through renewed access to land. Defying narratives of “extinction” as nonrecognized California tribes, the work of these organizations is not simply about cultural or political resurgence, however, but also about the creative restoration of sacred practices that situate the communities in a robust web of relations, both seen and unseen. Building on Cutcha Risling Baldy’s theory of “(re)riteing,” this article examines how ceremony is a central part of land-based resurgence for these organizations. The author shows that returning to land after multiple waves of colonization and dispossession means “(re)riteing” the land through ceremonies, songs, and prayers. These practices root tribal members in ancestral ways of relating to their territory. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper argues that this “(re)riteing” is a vital example of what Laura Harjo describes as “Indigenous futurity praxis.” Taken together, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and Amah Mutsun Land Trust suggest that Indigenous land-based resurgence is both political and cultural, epistemological and cosmological, part of global movements toward dynamic Indigenous futures.

This article brings together diverse fields, research methods, and sources to define suburban American Indians in relation to place, identity, and homeownership. With Minnesota and the suburbs of the Twin Cities as a focal point and case study, the author centers the rich, scholarly field of Native American and Indigenous studies to draw attention to suburban Indians as a growing and unique subgroup of American Indians. Though inherently humanistic in nature and drawing on auto-ethnography and oral history, this work draws on select quantitative sources to better understand suburban Indians, particularly in terms of homeownership. In doing so, this article adds to and advances scholarship on off-reservation Indians and highlights the role of homeownership as a draw to more suburban areas. This article sets the stage for a new line of inquiry that centers contemporary American Indian people in suburbs by offering a lens through which to analyze American Indian people who do not fit into the neat, yet dated, categories of on- and off-reservation Indians.

The paper examines three late nineteenth–early twentieth century Pacific Northwest coast objects—a Nuu-chah-nulth kuxmin (bird rattle), a Haida sGaaga (medicine man) figure, and a Kwakwaka’wakw or Wuikinuxv wooden model of a totem pole—from the collections of the Ehlers museum in Haderslev, Denmark. Drawing on multiple sources and epistemologies and structuring the study as a weaving of different narratives and perspectives, we investigate the identity of the objects, the materials and pigments used in their making, their function and value in the Indigenous contexts, as well as their significance as collectors’ objects. The article draws attention to the Native American collections at Danish museums, which have not attracted much scholarly attention, and illustrates a need and fruitfulness of a multi-epistemological approach in their studies.

In this article, the author places Marxist scholarship in conversation with critical Indigenous theory, outlining Marx's insights and tracing recent development within Marxist-feminist literature before critiquing this scholarship from the perspective of critical Indigenous theory. The author argues that the failure to attend to Indigenous sovereignties is a critical limitation undermining attempts to theorize multiple systems of oppression, demonstrating that critical Indigenous theory, with its more expansive understanding of relationality, not only addresses this limitation but also extends the theorization beyond the logic of capital. 

Dual taxation in Indian Country happens when a state assesses taxes on private, nontribal activities or transactions on tribal land in addition to taxes assessed by a tribe. This paper analyzes the economic consequences of dual taxation. The paper sketches the evolution of dual taxation in case law, presents a conceptual economic model for analyzing how tribal tax revenues can affect economic welfare, and suggests a systematic way to undertake a balancing analysis that would promote a more consistent approach to balancing tribal and state interests. This conceptual approach can be applied in future research.

While the #LandBack movement has captured popular imagination, it remains unconvincing to many settlers who are the primary landowners in settler states. This article seeks to expand Indigenous studies understandings of the LandBack movement by looking at the strategic relations the Osage Nation used to get back 43,000 acres of land in 2016. Such strategic relations are mired in colonial and capitalist systems, but they are also how many Native nations, such as the Osage, are rebuilding their homelands. This article thus seeks to tell fuller stories of Indigenous strategies for survival and, ultimately, relationality.

This article assesses the benefits and alleged costs of ballot collection on Indian reservations. Using the conceptual frame of the “cost of voting,” the research analyzes the impact of ballot collection by examining trends in vote-by-mail programs, socioeconomic variables, distance to polls and mail locations, and US Postal Service delivery on Indian reservations. It then uses a statistical analysis to test the claim that ballot collection leads to voter fraud. Our analysis reveals that ballot collection offers significant opportunities to reduce inequality in voter costs for Native American voters but finds no support for the hypothesis that ballot collection leads to fraud. These findings have significant implications for the voting rights of Native Americans, who tend to rely on ballot collection more than other voters. This research also offers a modification to the concept of voter costs.