American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Laughter has the remarkable power of making an object come up close, of drawing it into a zone of crude contact where one can finger it familiarly on all sides, turn it upside down, inside out, peer at it from above and below, break open its external shell, look into its center, doubt it, take it apart, dismember it, lay it bare and expose it, examine it freely and experiment with it. If Bakhtin is right, laughter might be the perfect instrument of imperialism. Yet, at least from our twentieth-century vantage point, America’s early imperialists - the Puritans - seem like the most humorless of folk. Indeed, most of the moments of laughter left in the colonial records are jokes made by Algonquians and other Indians. It would seem that humor was the perfect tool for cracking the shell of the Puritan ”white-backs,” a way of turning upside down those human beings Paula Gunn Allen has called ”America’s first boat people.” In colonial texts, Algonquian humor disrupts the colonists’ attempts at distance and superiority, forcing the settlers into an uncomfortable familiarity.

Auf den Brettern, die die Welt bedeuten. -Schiller The Huxwhukw’s voice is heard all over the world. Assemble at your places dancers! at the edge of the world. -Kwakwaka’wakw Song INTRODUCTION This paper is a preliminary investigation into the semiotics of space used in the theater formulation of the Kwak’wala-speaking Kwakwaka’wakw of the Pacific Northwest as seen by Franz Boas at the end of the nineteenth century. For these people, the potlatch and its affiliated exhibitions functioned as both theatrical venue and core of artistic expression. It is in the performances that masks and other artistic statements of social prerogative are displayed and validated. Through the structure, space, location, and decoration of their theaters, the Kwakwaka’wakw made culturally significant statements concerning individuals, family, and community. By means of the ”stage,” these people both defined and influenced their social identity and position. Semiotics provides a mechanism by which we can elucidate the formulations utilized in the theatrical communication of these messages.

Theresa, Danieala, Richard, and Diana live in southwestern Oklahoma. In what many here call ”our Indian world,” Kiowa, Comanche, Kiowa-Apache, Wichita, Caddo, Delaware, and Chirichaua Apache peoples and their traditions converge, creating a dynamic and diverse community. Traditions such as language, worldview, religion, and community narrative help to demarcate this Indian world. Several dance and song traditions are among the most heralded. The conversation above is about one of these: the Gourd Dance. Ethnographers and other scholars have recently written much about this dance. They have discussed its form and choreography, history, and significance to Oklahoma communities, especially the Kiowas. This scholarly interest is not surprising, especially since the dance’s popularity has become so widespread after its revival in the 1950s. Since then, it has nearly replaced the War Dance’s prominence in some Oklahoma communities. In southwestern Oklahoma, while many weekends pass without a War Dance, no weekend passes without one or more community organizations hosting an eight- to ten hour Gourd Dance. Indeed, the dance is now one of southwestern Oklahoma’s most visible aesthetic forms.

At the same time that the genteelly raised Pauline Johnson explored mixed-blood identity in wide-ranging performance tours of Canada and Europe, the less privileged writer Mourning Dove, in her novel Cogewea, The Half-Blood, did the same more locally from the inland Northwest. A member of the first generation of Colvilles to be raised on a reservation, Mourning Dove had determined to write a book “for her people, for herself, and for the Euro-Americans who understood so little about those they had conquered.” She completed the first draft of Cogewea in 1914. Set on a ranch in the frontier of turn-of-the-century Montana-a site of contestation between Native Americans, ranchers, and homesteaders-the novel tells the tale of its half-white, half-Okanogan heroine Cogewea, wooed for her money by the white easterner Densmore. Now best known as the first female Native American novelist, with the publication of Cogewea in 1927. Mourning Dove “announced explicitly what was to become the dominant theme in novels by Indian authors: the dilemma of the mixed blood, the liminal ’breed’ seemingly trapped between Indian and white world."

During World War II, the United States Army Signal Corps enlisted the aid of Navajo and other native-speaking tribal members to use their native tongue in radio messages so that enemy forces could not understand or break the ”code” being used. The Navajo language was found to be so complex and so little known that it was ideal for use as a code. A ready supply of Navajos still spoke their native language and answered the nation’s call despite the educational system’s efforts to deny the importance of native language. This article explores the extent of English and non-English language use, ability, and understanding among American Indians and Alaska Natives as children and as adults adapting to a mono-English education system and the impacts of these factors on literacy levels and educational outcomes. Implications are drawn for bilingual educational programs and cultural transmission among Indian Americans. Specifically, early (primary school level) bilingual (English and traditional language) instruction is argued to be crucial for successful linguistic and cultural transition. Data collected as part of the first and only national survey of Indian adult education and literacy show that although one out of four adult Indians normally speak a non-English language to carry out their daily activities, only about 5 percent were able to use that non-English language in school. Currently, few teachers are capable of teaching in the traditional tongue. Nearly half of Indian Americans reported that as children they did not speak English, yet they were educated in schools that provided education solely in English. Regional differences in educational attainment and proficiency are described and compared among groups as graded by English language proficiency. These comparisons show conclusively that the failure of the educational system to provide primary-level bilingual education is a major barrier to educational success among American Indians and Alaska Natives, particularly those in the West. Viewed as countercultural and the result of intercultural paternalism, monolingual education delivered in English in the long term is shown to constitute a deprivation of culture due to the loss of the basic element of cultural transmission once so vital to these Americans, their languages and language skills. The article concludes with a discussion of the lack of funding for the 1990 Native American Languages Act and the need to develop, test, and implement appropriate programs at the local level that will provide effective education for American Indians who have been left behind solely because of the educational system’s failure to teach in their native tongue.

The time has come for the individual to begin his true adult education, to discover who he is and what life is all about. What is the secret of the "I" with which he has been on such intimate terms all these years yet which remains a stranger? ... What lurks behind the worlds facade, animating it, ordering it-to what end? -Huston Smith The foreman at the door factory where I was employed during the summer stopped by my workstation and informed me that I was to be moved to a new site. The foreman was someone I knew because we attended the same church. As we silently walked through the factory, he suddenly directed a needlelike question to me. He asked, "What are you?" The question came as a surprise, but it didn't need qualification since I knew its intent. I had felt the sting of such inquiries, spoken and unspoken, numerous times in my growing up years in a town located adjacent to an Indian reservation. Since the factory was Dutch-owned and nearly all of the workers were of a similar ethnic background, this gave some explanation for the question. The question was a way of determining if consideration should be given to my placement with certain worker groups. I had experienced this kind of antipathy before, especially with social groups where there was a strong ethnic affiliation. Being a mixed-blood, I found it was often easier to attain structural inclusion in situations where reduced ethnic or racial polarization existed among group members. My answer to the foreman was simply, "I am a human being."

INTRODUCTION Peter Garcia, Kwa-Phade (Passing Rain) was born in Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo), one of twelve brothers. From an early age he learned music from his father, Jose Antonio Garcia, Kaa-Tse (White Leaf) and participated in the ceremonial life of his community. He is a member of the Sawipingeh, the group of lead singers and religious elders at San Juan Pueblo responsible for the performance of traditional Tewa ceremonial dances. With the Garcia Brothers, leaders in the Pueblo cultural revival since 1950, he has made many recordings on labels such as Indian House, New World Records, Tribal Music International, and Music of the World. His compositions have been performed at many institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution; the Pueblo Indian Cultural Center in Albuquerque; the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe; Colorado College; the University of California, Los Angeles; and also in Spain and Canada.

Though much has been written about the growth of Indian activism in the sixties, academic studies of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and other Native American activist organizations that have advocated confrontational tactics have been somewhat varied in their topics and approaches. Many works in the popular press have covered a broad range of Indian issues, while other works have focused attention on particular personalities and particular incidents involving AIM. This essay will provide an overview of the written material available for the use of scholars choosing materials for teaching purposes or for pursuing further research.