American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Louise Erdrich’s novel Tracks deals with the years between 1912 and 1919, when the North Dakota Chippewa, or Anishinabe, as they call themselves, were coping with the effects of the General Allotment Act of 1887, the purpose of which was to divide tribally allotted lands among individual Indians so that these Indians could leave their nomadic, communal cultures behind and become settled as farmers. After the Indian Allotment Act of 1904, each enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa born before 1909 received one quarter section of land, with single members of the tribe receiving various lesser mounts depending on their age. This was part of the transformation of Indian land into Euro-American property; more significantly, as Mary Jane Schneider has noted in her book North Dakota Indians, allotment had the immediate effect of reducing the total acres of Indian land by 65 percent. Trucks is in part an autopsy of this process, whereby place becomes property, and an analysis of how the process affects innocent bystanders. Mixed-blood Indian people occupy a marginal position in an already marginalized culture. In the case of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa, mixed blood has its origins in the historical influence of French and English fur traders on the tribe during the mid- eighteenth century. These traders obtained furs from the Chippewa, who received trade goods in return. This contact was more than economic, however, and resulted in intermarriage between French men and Chippewa women. Contact was encouraged by the fur companies as a means of keeping their men content, although most Frenchmen returned to Canada when the fur business declined. The children of these unions were called bois brules, half breeds, mixed-bloods, or Metis.

Alcohol abuse has been the most significant ongoing health problem American Indians have experienced since the mid-seventeenth century. The social costs of Indian drinking in modern society are staggering: Deaths related to alcoholism (including cirrhosis) remain four times higher for Indians than for the general population; alcohol plays a role in perhaps 90 percent of all homicides involving Indians; inebriated Indians die while walking along roads, either hit by cars or succumbing to hypothermia; 70 percent of all treatment provided by Indian Health Service physicians is for alcohol-related disease or trauma. Alcohol abuse at times appears among Indian children by age thirteen; most seek complete intoxication. There is even one reported case of delirium tremens in a nine-year-old boy in northern New Mexico, himself the son of an alcoholic father. Maternal drinking has contributed to the growing incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome and has led also to an increased rate of other neonatal problem. So intense is the desire to become intoxicated among some Indians today, especially on reservations in the West, that they mix cleaning solvents with other fluids in order to produce what is now known as "Montana Gin," a concoction that can cause profound somatic disorders, including aspiration pneumonia and organic brain syndrome, which can lead to death. These social and clinical problems have occurred in spite of the fact that North American Indians, so far as clinicians and medical researchers can tell, are no more susceptible physiologically to abusing alcohol than other American.

This article will analyze the Choctaw living in the southeastern Oklahoma timber region, concentrated mainly in Pushmataha and McCurtain counties, to ascertain how they "make do" in the face of a history of nearly complete land alienation and profound economic challenges to their traditional strategies for maintaining a livelihood. Southeastern Oklahoma has been home to the Muskogean-speaking Choctaw since their forced removal from Mississippi and Alabama in 1829-31, known as the Trail of Tears. This region, an extension of the Arkansas and Missouri Ozark Mountains, resembles the New England countryside, with dense forests, clear mountain streams, dirt roads, and sparsely populated villages. Its uneven terrain and lack of good topsoil make it largely unfit for large-scale cultivation. The Choctaw today are a mere remnant of their former status as owners of a 6.8 million-acre tribal estate granted in 1829 in the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. Following resettlement, many full-blood Choctaw occupied small parcels of land in the Kiamitia Mountains timber region, today the Kiamichi Range (see figure l), and subsisted mainly through small-scale farming and animal husbandry, supplemented by hunting, fishing, and gathering. By the early 1980s, the Choctaw, numbering about 16,000 members by blood, constituted only about 10 percent of the original Choctaw Nation population and owned collectively only about eleven thousand acres, mostly in scattered tracts of twenty acres or less.

This article examines newspaper coverage of Indians in the Skagit Valley of northwest Washington State. Many Indian people there have expressed unease towards the local newspapers and have suggested that the papers have damaged relations between Indian and non-Indian people over a long period, but especially during a treaty-related battle over salmon fishing which led to the so called Boldt decision (U. S. D. Washington,384 F. Supp. 312,1974). Such unease is understandable: This study of local newspapers shows that the nature of contemporary reporting and the historical context of reporting are important to understanding the region's intergroup relations. A content analysis of all articles concerning local Indians in the two most significant community newspapers, the Concrete Herald and the Skagit Vulley Herald, going back to the early part of the century shows that reporting changed during and following the controversial court hearings. Specifically, the nature and volume of reporting about Indians and Indian issues changed significantly during periods of intense interethnic group competition over salmon resources. Relatedly, the volume of reporting about tribes that are not federally recognized as political units (and therefore are ineffective competitors for resources) was less than that of acknowledged tribes.

INTRODUCTION Several reviews of the contemporary literature on American Indian criminality and criminal justice outcomes during the last decade have lamented the lack of volume, theoretical clarity, and methodological rigor of research in this area of criminology. The present analysis of that literature suggests a somewhat more optimistic view. When these works are placed within the sociological framework of the Native American experience in the United States, several important contextual factors emerge that advance our understanding of crime patterns in this uniquely American racial group. This paper will review selected studies and present additional crime data from the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) that establish the significance of these contexts and discuss their implications for future research.

INTRODUCTION Despite growing awareness of early Great Plains observers’ preconceptions regarding native societies, many recent attempts to understand pre-reservation Indian women’s roles continue to reflect the misconceptions of these early observers and later ethnographers. The purpose of this paper is to explore problems inherent in the evaluation of Hidatsa and Crow women’s roles and status. This examination utilizes a widely accepted model of Great Plains women’s roles and status to facilitate that appraisal. Although aspects of this analysis pertain to Great Plains people generally, this paper will focus on the Hidatsa and Crow specifically. The first European visitors tended to see native women in light of their own European cultural heritage. To some they seemed slaves of their husbands and brothers; a few saw them as free children of nature. Very few early observers noted differences in women’s roles among tribes, and even fewer attempted to examine Native American society through the women’s eyes. Even the few early Euro-American female writers, such as Margaret Carrington, were, for cultural and personal reasons, more interested in warfare, government, clubs, and societies-organizations regarded by European and Euro-American reporters as male dominated. With occasional exceptions, such as Linderman’s Pretty-shield and small parts of Denig’s Five Indian Tribes, anthropologists and historians did not become interested in native women’s roles and status or in women’s perspectives of their own society until the 1960s.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of Native Americans living in Rapid City, South Dakota. Specifically, the research team wanted to know how Native American opinions were affected by the Rapid City economy and what Native Americans’ concerns were in regard to available educational services, housing, transportation, recreation, and employment. These data may be utilized to assess Native American needs within the Rapid City community. According to the 1990 census, there are 50,573 Indians living in South Dakota, compared to 44,968 in 1980-a 12.5 percent increase in ten years. The 1990 census indicated that there are 4,852 Native Americans living in Rapid City. The heads of 301 Native American households were interviewed concerning those programs they would most like to see in Rapid City. A head of household was defined as the principal income producer of the house. The answers given on the survey were kept confidential and no names were requested on the questionnaire. Eight pilot test surveys were administered. Members of the task force critiqued the pilots, and a final survey form incorporating their changes was developed. The task force is a combination of Indian and non-Indian committee members in charge of the development projects for the Native Americans living in Rapid City. This project was approved and funded by the Rapid City Mayor’s Task Force.

One of the joys of my life in teaching and writing about American Indian history has been the friendships I have had with Indian men and women. Linda Murray (Pima), a student, has taught me a lot about how much a circle of Indian friends and students can mean. Kenneth Eaglespeaker, a young Blackfoot Indian and one of the best dancers among any of the students I have had, once told me, after I had spoken about ”contributions” Indians had made, “We Indians were just doing our thing and did not plan to make special contributions to any white society.’’ How right he was! Johnny Flynn (Potowattomi) showed me how student activists could take on two formidable foes: the University of California, Santa Barbara Archeology Department, which was destroying age-old Indian middens (village refuse deposits) on Santa Cruz Island; and the mighty Chevron Oil Company, which was destroying Indian burial sites along the northern Santa Barbara coastline. And then there was Grandfather, Chumash Indian medicine man and spiritual leader of Redwind, an Indian commune north of San Luis Obispo. Grandfather taught me a lot about Indian humor and good luck charms that really worked. I am indebted also to Archie Fire, a Sioux medicine man (who put me in a sweat that was heated only for children because I was merely a “professor,”), as well as to Indian leaders such Dennis Banks and Oren Lyons, who have provided an education about the burden of dealing with authoritative agencies in the United States government.