American Indian Culture and Research Journal

INTRODUCTION In 1992, mainstream Euro-America demonstrated the short, selective, and sanitized character of both the national memory and the official history that sustains it by celebrating an anniversary: the Columbus Quincentenary, the ”discovery”of the ”New World.” The vast majority of activities generated by this event were festive and culturally self-congratulatory. Yet there were powerful subcurrents of protest, indigenous and otherwise, in wide evidence, contesting the sharply edited, profoundly revisionist nature of the commemoration. They drove home the moral and methodological implications of the fact that history is not only written from a particular standpoint, but that that standpoint has been of the colonizers, not the colonized. The response of Native America was also a determined assertion of presence and continuity, pointedly captured by the defiant counter spilling over with t-shirts, posters and bumper stickers: “Still Here! Celebrating 49,500 years . . . before Columbus.” Partly as a result of these cultural dynamics, the writing of history has become more problematic within the general public’s awareness. Some began openly to question longstanding practices, notably the racist dimensions of the continued stereotyping of Indian people by Hollywood, the media, and the sporting world. Yet many deeply disturbing aspects of contemporary Western/indigenous cultural relations were left largely unexamined and unquestioned. One of these is a particularly virulent form of cultural imperialism-the marketing of Native America and, most tellingly, of native spirituality.

Historian Michael McGerr wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education that, during the past two hundred years, American corporations failed to “remake” either workers or culture. The exceptional nature of the United States may be ”the persisting sense of human agency” rather than the power of corporations, he said, adding, ”We need to explain why.”’ As the end of the twentieth century approaches, Native American societies remain isolates at the periphery of the more powerful, statebound social and economic entities. Their existence at the margins is arguably self-imposed and maintained in part as one act of resistance against complete assimilation. Embedded within these acts of resistance, however, are threads of change spun from the frayed edges of cultural contact. This essay addresses such contact between nineteenth-century people of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico and the mechanized embodiment of United States westward expansion, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. The investigation narrowly focuses on the processes by which the Laguna participants played out the results of that railroad contact later, in Richmond, California, a setting far removed from their home pueblo. The central theme considered here is cultural persistence and the maintenance of tribal being in an urban labor camp, and the consequent effect on identity.

I have often been told that a pregnant Squaw will turn aside & deliver herself, & take up the Infant and wash it in a Brook, & walk off. They do not lye by the Month; but make little more about Pregnancy and Lying in than Cows. -Ezra Stiles I still often hear of the stereotyped Indian mother who has her child alone, out in somerfield, and then comes back home and continues her work as if nothing happened. If there were Indians who did this, they were sure not my grandmothers. As soon as my grandmothers of the past knew that they were pregnant, they slowed down their work and began a disciplined period during which they were forbidden to do many things. -Beverly Hungry Wolf Childbirth narratives appear frequently in the literature by and about American Indian women. Many ethnographers have written about Indian women and childbirth. Similarly, many American Indian women have written about childbirth experiences in their autobiographies. These two modes of discourse have different foundations for representations of childbirth practices, yet both hold value for scholars concerned with the lives of American Indian women.

It seems natural to Whites, to look on lands in the possession of Indians with an aching heart, and never to rest ’till they have planned them out of them. -Joseph Brant Benjamin West’s William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians portrays Penn and his associates dispensing gifts to Indians (figure 1). Dominated by a benevolent gesture, this painting disguises political and economic power as the workings of a highly developed moral sensibility and conquest as an act of magnanimity. West‘s painting has assumed legendary status in American popular culture, making its way into high school history textbooks as an example of the nobility of Penn and his power to effect peaceful relations between Europeans and Indians. West’s presentation of Penn’s ”justice and benevolence” toward the Indians is a masterpiece, not only aesthetically as an engaging painting but politically as a powerful piece of propaganda that continues to work its magic on viewers today. West’s masterpiece functions on two narrative levels. The first level is the one of the story depicted-William Penn’s mythical treaty with the Indians; the second narrative, not represented explicitly but lying buried beneath the surface, is the story of Thomas Penn, William Penn’s son, and his effort to negotiate several other and equally ambitious land deals with Indians. Commissioned by Thomas Penn and painted in 1771 and 1772, William Pan‘s Treaty with the Indians celebrates simultaneously both Penns’ successful acquisition of enormous tracts of Indian land. This essay will examine West’s painting in the context of the land speculations of William and Thomas Penn. More attention will be given to Thomas Penn’s efforts, since his speculation in Indian land can help to explain why he commissioned the painting and why he felt the need to have his family’s relations with the Indians depicted in such an amicable light.

The historical portrayal of Iroquois women is of importance to all women’s history but especially to the history of Indian women. If historians have ”lost” Iroquois women, widely recognized to hold positions of power in their society, how can we hope to find other Indian women, with less obviously powerful roles, in the histories of their people? We find two important questions here. The first concerns the extent to which historians have actually ignored, misrepresented, or marginalized Iroquois women. The second question pertains to the methods and basis of such misrepresentation and neglect. In this paper I cannot possibly examine all of the literature or explore these questions in depth. It is, rather, my intention to present certain aspects of the problem of Indian women’s invisibility that the study of Iroquois women illuminates. Ethnologists have long recognized the relatively powerful position held by women in Iroquois society. With the possible exception of the Pueblo people and the Mandan, no other Indian women are so widely recognized as enjoying a comparably influential role within their society. If Iroquois women are lost from the historical record, the methods and circumstances by which this loss was possible should be easier to discover in their case than in histories of people for whom women played a less prominent role or for which the documentation of women’s roles and position is absent.

An important issue facing leaders of elective Indian Reorganization Act tribal governments is how to establish efficacy and create legitimacy in the minds of community members by building the values and ethos of earlier periods into the operation of tribal government and courts. More specifically, DeLoria and Lytle have argued that the “[e]xtensive development of tribal customs as the basis for a tribal court’s decision will enable these institutions to draw even closer to the people.” This paper considers how governments have integrated folk law into the contemporary tribal codes developed over the last two decades by eight Coast Salish tribes of western Washington State. This study does not concern the manner in which colonial, national, or regional governments interpret folk law for use in mainstream courts or for tribal courts operated by the mainstream society. Rather, the focus is on how Indian people themselves approach the incorporation of folk law. The analysis presented here concerns code developed under the authority of tribal governments for use in tribal courts that hold significant, although not complete, jurisdiction. The term folk law is used instead of customary law in order to refer to uncodified, lived law in use or previously in use at the local level. Customary law, on the other hand, is sometimes used to refer to elements of indigenous law codified by a colonial administration for its own benefit and purpose.

INTRODUCTION Cigarette smoke is an equal opportunity killer. Although health data on American Indian populations are less comprehensive than desirable, it is clear that smoking-related diseases are a major cause of mortality. Because norms in the social environment are crucial in determining behaviors that lead to health or to illness, this paper reports data on policies that Indian agencies have implemented to regulate the personal use of tobacco products within their sites. Also reported are observations at Indian sites showing how policies are expressed.

Tokalakiya wounspe yuha unyanpi kte. (“Into the future we must go with education.”) -From a poster by Michael Lee Willcuts for the Black Hills Special Services Cooperative Regardless of the specifics they might emphasize, commentators seem to agree that basic skills are the key to individual and community success. Basic skills, such as reading and mathematics, are the foundation for learning other skills and for effective functioning. Unfortunately, many students in the American educational system are not mastering the types of skills they and their communities need. A major aspect of this problem is school dropout, and nowhere is this a bigger issue than among Native American (American Indian) groups. Native American youth have historically had the highest elementary, secondary, and college dropout rates of any major racial group, and this continues to be true today: although these rates vary across tribes: Native females may also now be dropping out before graduating from high school at higher rates than Indian males. Although more native females than native males graduate from college, they are less likely than native males to receive training in the highest status and best paying types of skills. Clearly, improved educational success is needed to ensure the survival, the economic and social opportunity, and the success of native individuals and tribes.

While working on a dictionary of the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka or Aht) language in 1992, I spent some time in Port Albemi, B.C., consulting with an old man named Charlie Watts. He told me that he was born in 1917 and added, ”My father, Sayaachapas,worked with Dr. Sapir. I was here in the 1940s when Morris Swadesh came out with his two little girls and his wife Frances. They lived in that cabin right over there. Besides working with the Old People, he used to have sessions at the community hall in the evening when he would teach us how to write our language. Lots of people came. Swadesh was a good teacher.” Then he said, ”Oh, I have something you’d be interested in!” Rummaging under his bed, he pulled out a faded envelope that contained two typed pages, foxed with age. It was a letter protesting the nonrenewal of Morris Swadesh’s contract by the City College of New York in 1949, an outcome apparently related to Swadesh’s indictment by the McCarthy Commission earlier that year. This letter was signed by Captain Jack, a now long-dead chieftain of the Mowachat band, with a shaky X.