American Indian Culture and Research Journal

INTRODUCTION Historically the association of Christianity and empire has most often been a phenomenon that relates to either a Christendom model of church and state relationships or what might be best characterized as the “colonial” experience of European Christians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For example, Luis Rivera Pagan’s work A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious Conquest of the Americas develops the idea that the conquest of the Americas is the beginning not only of ”European world hegemony,” which spreads across the face of the globe, but the interrelationship between European expansion and Christianity as an ”imperial ideology.”’ Furthermore, while Catholic Christianity, in the case of Spain, is perhaps an ”obvious” instance of imperial ideology, with direct links between church and state, Nonconformist British evangelical Christianity in South Africa, without the trappings of official Christendom, readily served the interest of empire building. John and Jean Comaroff have argued that ”Nonconformist missionaries were the van ard of the British presence in.. .the South African interior; they were also the most ambitious ideological and cultural agents of Empire, bearing with them the explicit aim of reconstructing the Native world in the name of God and Great Britain.” The contradiction at the heart of the South African example of British Nonconformist missionaries is that they seriously believed they were only converting the ”other” to Christianity, whereas the evangelical enterprise in practice was a story “of the reconstruction of a living culture by the infusion of alien signs and commodities into every domain of Tswana life.”

In basketball, we find enough reasons to believe in God ... -Sherman Alexie Since his critically acclaimed early novels, Winter in the Blood (1974) and The Death of Jim Loney (1979) James Welch has firmly established himself as a major fiction writer with, among other titles, his 1990 novel The Indian Lawyer. Sherman Alexie, on the other hand, has only recently broken onto the national literary scene with his two works of fiction, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993) and Reservation Blues (1995). While Alexie’s fiction is characterized by bittersweet humor and detours into the fantastical, Welch continues to write with the assured hand of a master realist. Even though these two authors’ fiction represents the diversity of writing styles in contemporary Native American literature, their recent works share an important theme: the powerful role of basketball in the lives of Indians growing up on reservations.

The main battle in imperialism is over land, of course; but when it came to who owned the land, who had the right to settle and work it, who kept it going, who won it back, and who now plans its future-these issues were reflected, contested, and even for a time decided in narrative. The expansive region of the American Great Basin and its indigenous peoples hardly appear in most renditions of American history. Representing only a tiny fraction of the continent’s populace, the histories of the lands and peoples of this vast region remain largely excluded from the broader narratives of North American history. Unlike historians, anthropologists for the past century have maintained considerable interest in the Indians of the Great Basin. This paper examines the representations of Great Basin Indians by Julian Steward-the preeminent anthropologist of the region. Developing theories of cultural change that have influenced generations of anthropologists, Steward pioneered both the study of the Great Basin Indians as well as American anthropology with his ethnographic research of the 1930s.

INTRODUCTION The judicial function is no stranger to Native Americans. Prior to their contact with Europeans, American Indian tribes had various procedures for settling conflict among members. The aggrieved could seek dispute resolution directly or be assisted by an elder, a war chief, or a member of the tribal council. With the passage of time and altered circumstances, the judicial function became more formalized-for example, as an adjunct of the federal Indian agent or as a sovereign activity proceeding directly or indirectly from a constitution adopted by the tribe. The power of emerging tribal courts has always been problematic, especially when the court was created by the tribal council pursuant to an authorization in an Indian Reorganization Act constitution. Particularly troubling has been the question whether such a "legislative" tribal court has jurisdiction to hear cases involving the legality of tribal council actions. Lacking an explicit judicial-review authorization in the court’s enabling ordinance, a follow-up issue has been whether the court could legitimately claim for itself an inherent power of judicial review.

Anyone up for a big fight need only mention to an Iroquois the dates offered by Western scholars for the founding of the Rotinonshon:ni (Haudenosaunee) League. In the main, Western historians posit two possible inception times: one post- and one precontact. The postcontact "date" has been vague, falling somewhere in the mid-sixteenth century until quite recently, when Dean Snow ably associated it with a 1536 eclipse. The precontact date is barely so, occurring only a generation before contact in the year 1451, also as fixed by an eclipse. In 1982, historian Bruce Johansen nudged discussion back another four hundred years, citing Haudenosaunee "Keepers," or oral historians, who have always maintained the absolute antiquity of the League. Based on both Western and Native sources, the authors will show that the Keepers have been correct all along: the Haudenosaunee League was founded on the pleasant afternoon of August 31, 1142. THE MID-SIXTEENTH CENTURY CLAIM Since the mid-sixteenth century is favored by conservative scholars who have mainly guided discussion to date, an examination of the mid-sixteenth century claim is necessary. Except for Snow’s rather precise 1536 eclipse which will be taken up separately in our eclipse discussion below, the evidence for dating the League to the mid-sixteenth century is all fairly speculative, relating especially to pottery (which is never mentioned in tradition) or to the palisades (which are mentioned in tradition).

As video technology becomes more accessible to individuals and communities, people are exploiting its communication potential. Native Americans, for instance, are pursuing the cultural, informational, political, economic, and entertainment potentials of video and film through a new subgenre of documentary: indigenous documentary. An indigenous documentary is one made by members of an indigenous community or in close interaction with the community; it is a video produced or coproduced by members of the group that it is about. Communities can document, preserve, or even revitalize local practices through media. Showing the programs outside of the local area communicates cultural beliefs seen as important by community members; practices shown in the videos identify the group for the wider public. But indigenous films and videos also communicate within a group and increase group affiliation. They both reserve knowledge for future generations and communicate the group's identity to the wider public. Native Americans explain that their own awareness of the power of visual imagery lies deep in the past. Pueblo petroglyphs of spiritual significance that date from 18,000 years ago reveal this deep belief in the power, even sacredness, of visual imagery. Since the early twentieth century, many Indian people, including those in the most traditional and conservative households, have used photographs to evoke memories and narratives of the past? Visual imagery has played and continues to play a central role in many Native American communities.

THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM Diabetes mellitus among American Indians is not only a major health problem and a challenge to physicians and epidemiologists but represents an opportunity for anthropologists and population geneticists to help in understanding why such a detrimental disease has persisted in human populations and increased its incidence dramatically during the past fifty years. For a variety of reasons, susceptibility appears to be uniquely high among selected North American Indian groups, despite the fact that early in this century diabetes was virtually unknown among these populations. At the same time, other Indians exhibit rates of diabetes that are lower than the average rates for Caucasians. These variations lead to questions concerning both the factors that contribute to the onset of diabetes as well as to more fundamental issues involving Indian origins and their adaptations to different environments. The purpose of this paper is to examine what is known about the problem and suggest general directions for further inquiry.

INTRODUCTION It has been argued that the media holds some responsibility for determining the public’s notions about who commits crime and what crimes are committed. Increasingly the media reports on and portrays minority men in stereotyped criminal roles, and research projects show an interest in identifying circumstances when racially biased culpability assignment will occur, particularly for African Americans and Hispanics in comparison to European American. There is a dearth of research on criminal culpability assignment for Native Americans however, if educational programs are to dispel stereotypes of Native Americans, the identification of circumstances contributing to biases should be examined. Consequently the purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of alcohol use and stereotyped crime commission on perceptions of culpability for Native American and European American males.