American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Over the past two decades, ethnohistorians have expended considerable time and effort examining various facets of cultural change among many Native American communities. Much of this investigation focuses upon the process of forced acculturation: cultural change championed by the federal government and impressed upon the tribes through the implementation of federal Indian policy. The Indian response to these programs has been as diverse as the broad spectrum of tribal groups to whom the programs have been applied. Some tribes have adamantly opposed the government’s programs, even resorting to armed conflict when other avenues of resistance have seemed unfeasible. Others have adopted certain tenets of the federal programs, but have skillfully interwoven these new cultural patterns with time-honored tribal traditions to create a model of acculturation that incorporates their own goals and aspirations. In contrast, several tribal groups have, upon occasion, welcomed change and have embraced the government’s policies, at least for relatively short periods. And yet even members of those tribal communities who have subscribed to the government’s programs have found that the programs often have been so plagued with intra-agency quarrels and mismanagement that they have produced a bureaucratic quagmire.

World-system theory has provided a vehicle for the global analysis of politico-economic change. However, as formulated, the theory has focused on the historical process of European incorporation of non-European societies at the macro-level in a fashion that obscures the emergence of new social categories and processes at the micro-level. This article analyzes the relationship between ethnicity and gender in two peripheral contexts-among Basotho women of Lesotho and Navajo women of the American Southwest. In the British social anthropological tradition, anthropologists have attempted cross-cultural comparisons between and among cultures at similar stages of sociocultural integration in order to formulate general laws of society. In the 1970s, when American anthropologists began to work in urban contexts, they often referred to research on different ethnic/racial groups in the same context as well as the same ethnic/racial group in different context. Having abandoned ahistoricism, they began to consider the period during which their research was conducted. Here I have chosen to compare two groups of women on the basis of their place in the world-system. Both groups occupy peripheral areas, engage in sheep- and goat-herding and in tapestry weaving. In examining the history of incorporation of each society, I have discerned parallels and divergences. Of primary concern is how these societies compare contemporaneously.

Look, I'm a man. I exist. Take notice of my existence! -Lame Deer In the eighteen years since the publication of John (Fire) Lame Deer's autobiography, Lame Deer Seeker of Visions, very few critics of Indian literature have responded to the old Lakota's plea. Of these critics, only Kenneth Lincoln, who discusses Lame Deer at length in an essay on Indian humor, has used the book for anything more than a passing reference or brief excerpt. This prolonged silence says a great deal about the conventional perception of the text. Lame Deer is a widely available and highly entertaining book; it has not been ignored because scholars do not know it exists or because it is incapable of producing a response. Most likely, it has received short shrift in the study of Indian literature because it has been considered insufficiently "literary" or insufficiently "Indian." Perhaps because academics have been unsure if Lame Deer is a serious artistic work or because its genre has been confused by the participation of a white coauthor, Richard Erdoes, the book has been treated as if it were the scholarly equivalent of a junkyard car-good for spare parts, but incapable of running on its own. The best way of responding to the dismissal implicit in such a minimal critical history is to offer a reading that demonstrates that the book does run on its own, that both formally and thematically it is a serious work of literary autobiography. Formally, however chaotic it might seem to readers raised on Western literature, Lame Deer has a meaningful structure, based on Lakota understandings of numerology and discourse. Thematically, the book consistently explores the conflict between white and Indian conceptions of history, identity, and property; it does so not just to increase cross-cultural awareness, but to help bring on an apocalyptic triumph of the Indian way of life. Lame Deer imagines the struggle between whites and Indians as a battle between spiritual forces which, to use the language of nuclear physics, could be called fission and fusion. The white’s power has derived from division, privatization, and accumulation, Lame Deer thinks, while the Indian’s power depends on connection, community, and gift-giving. By repeatedly invoking the image of the fence, which whites have used in both actual and metaphorical ways to subdue the Indians, Lame Deer identifies the problem; by presenting us with Indian forms of spiritual fusion, particularly in his treatment of the Lakota pipe ceremony, he offers a solution.

American Indian Societies: Strategies and Conditions of Political and Cultural Survival. By Duane Champagne. Cambridge, MA: Cultural Survival (Volume 32 in Cultural Survival’s Report Series), 1989. $19.95 Cloth. $10.00 Paper. American Indian Societies is a significantly enlarged version of Cultural Survival Report 21 issued in December 1985 under the current subtitle. I note this because the casual scanner of titles might mistake it for a simple repackaging of an earlier publication. This expanded and reorganized publication requires a four-pronged review strategy. First, Champagne’s analysis must be located in current controversies in sociology. Second, the intellectual growth of the author and, more importantly, his contribution to bridging controversies need to be highlighted. Third, an assessment is needed of the work as it is. Finally, the preceding three approaches indicate the value of a positive critique that points the way to future revisions, emendations, and expansions of research on Indian cultural and political survival. The first two are, I hope, useful to readers of the American Indian Culture and Research Journal because of their disciplinary diversity and, I presume, because of an interest in the intellectual qualities of the journal’s editor. The third prong is a standard review. The fourth approach is implied by the previous three and is justified by the importance of the topic. Let me anticipate my punchline. This is a work well worth the time spent reading it. I find it sound, yet provocative, and have decided to use it in my course "Native Peoples of North America."