American Indian Culture and Research Journal

If the condition of the Blackfeet Indians at this time is to be taken as an index of the character of trusteeship which the Government imposes upon other Indians, the w d has been a failure. The spectacle is a depressing one and calls not only for immediate relief but for an entire and permanent change in the manner of handling their affairs. --Senator Harry Lane, 1914 Give us a fair and new deal as we know ourselves the old system is no success. -Blackfeet Councilman Rides at the Door, 1933 INTRODUCTION The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), the cornerstone of the Indian New Deal, is the most important piece of legislation in twentieth-century American Indian policy-making. Earl Old Person, the great full-blooded Blackfeet leader, discussed the IRA’S role in twentieth-century Indian progress in his speech to the 1966 convention of the National Congress of American Indians. “The first breakthrough came with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. This permitted a Government policy of organization by allowing tribes to adopt constitutions which provided terms for managing their own affairs.”’ The IRA represented the start of a long-sought and much-needed dialogue between Indian leaders and federal officials, whose organizing principle under Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier rested on “the revolutionary proposition that Indians were not obstacles, but peoples.” The IRA became an attenuated version of Collier’s vision of Native political economy- a syncretic economy managed by empowered tribal governments that would adopt white business practices and, Collier hoped, encourage a renewal of Indian culture.

Don't we have enough headaches trying to unite without . . . additional headaches? Why must people be categorized as fill-bloods, mixed-bloods, etc.? Many years ago, the Bureau of Indian Affairs decided to establish blood quanta for the purpose of [tribal] enrollment. At the time, blood quantum was set at one-quarter degree, [a matter which] caused many people on the reservation to be categorized and labeled. The situation was caused solely by the BIA, with the able assistance of the Interior Department. -Tim Giago Among the most vexing issues afflicting Native North America at the dawn of the twenty-first century are the questions of who does or does not hold a legitimate right to say he or she is American Indian, and by what criteria-whose definition-this may or may not be true. Such queries, and the answers to them, hold an obvious and deeply important bearing not only upon the personal sense of identity inhering in millions of individuals scattered throughout the continent, but in terms of the degree to which some form of genuine self-determination can be exercised by indigenous nations in coming years. Conversely, they represent both an accurate gauge of the extent to which the sovereignty of North America's Native peoples has been historically eroded or usurped by the continent's two preeminent settler-states, the United States and Canada, and a preview of how the remainder stands to be eradicated altogether in the not so distant future. Defining for itself the composition of its membership (citizenry), in whatever terms and in accordance with whatever standards it freely chooses, is, of course, the very bedrock expression of self-determination by any nation or people.

Many contemporary American Indian writers are engaged in the shared project of complicating and revising the received history of the Americas. Kimberly Blaeser reminds us that survival is at stake here when she says that “the creation and interpretations of histories have . . . functioned directly as the justifications for possession or dispossession.”In “Captivity”and Blackrobe: Isaac Jogues respectively, Louise Erdrich and Maurice Kenny reread histories of captivity among the Indians recorded by the colonizers. Their revisionary agendas necessarily foreground interpretive conflicts and draw attention to cultural and linguistic dialogism. As Blaeser observes regarding Gerald Vizenor’s writings about history, these poems “force recognition of the already embattled visions all readers bring to the text[s].”l In doing so, the poems become implicitly ironic, as their Native authors turn to colonizers’ writings about Indians as sources of inspiration for their own work. As they imagine alternative readings of the European-written accounts, they both highlight the fact that written American history still belongs almost entirely to non-Natives and resist that domination. Erdrich begins with a story that is virtually a cornerstone of popular American history. Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan minister’s wife, was captured in the Narragansett attack on Lancaster, Massachusetts, on February 1, 1675-76, in what became known as King Philip’s War, after the English name of its Wampanoag leader, Metacomet. She traveled with her captors for almost twelve weeks, until she was ransomed and returned to Boston. Her account of her ordeal, first published in 1682, went through numerous editions into the middle of the nineteenth century (and has been republished several times in the twentieth). Its full title conveys Rowlandson’s intent and some of the impact her story must have had on early readers: The Sovereignty and Goodness of God Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed; Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.

American Indians are tribal people who define themselves and are defined by ritual understanding, that is, by spiritual or sacred ceremonial shapings. -Paula Gunn Allen Lame Deer Seeker of Visions, the first collaboration between John (Fire) Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes, was published in 1972 by Simon and Schuster. Since then, more than two decades have worn on and a few reprints have circulated. Yet Seeker of Visions has been largely marginalized by literary discussion. Among the few reviewers and critics, Geoff Sanborn and Kenneth Lincoln provide a retrospective evaluation of the book in terms of its formal unity and its humor. Sanborn identifies Lame Deer’s proclivity to group his stones into cycles of four. Sixteen chapters grouped by four gradually unfold religious beliefs and Lakota cultural features, creating “a meaningful structure based on Lakota understanding of numerology and discourse.” Lincoln sheds a different light, exploring Lame Deer’s humor as a comic discharge inserted into the wider discourse of Indian humor as bicultural product. Still, the book remains peripheral to scholarly attention, good only for quotation. To tell the truth, the book does not easily accommodate an overall analysis; however, Seeker of Visions does find cohesiveness in the Native ritual tradition on which Lame Deer leans. Ritual adds fresh significance to his uproarious life, informs the content, and helps disclose the sacred purpose of the book. Ritual, that is, Lame Deer’s ritual-based worldview, explains the dynamics of his life. Thematically,the interrelationship between one particular theme-the remembrance of his grandmother-and its analogues-his personal stance on food, anger, and the meaning of his father’s Lakota name-evokes the transformative power of ritual. This interconnection eventually reveals the ultimate significance of the book as an offering to the spirits for mankind’s sake.

Nontraditional use of tobacco is a major spiritual, cultural, and health concern for Aboriginal people across Canada. Community studies of Aboriginal people have shown elevated rates of smoking. Smoking is not only associated with increased health risk, but also appears to play a role in the abuse of other chemicals. The purpose of this study was to look at tobacco use and related substance abuse for clients in Aboriginal addiction centers across Canada. Addiction Treatment Centers, alarmed at the rate of smoking among its clients, requested a profile of smoking behaviors as a starting point for developing nonsmoking policies within its facilities. Two hundred and forty-six clients from fifteen Aboriginal addiction treatment centers across Canada were questioned about nicotine-related behavior. More than three quarters of respondents described themselves as smokers, and close to 12 percent claimed to be ex-smokers. Individuals also admitted to polydrug use, many starting very young. Typically, cigarettes and alcohol were the first chemicals used. Smokers and nonsmokers differed in age to initiation to alcohol; in addition, males and females differed in reasons for beginning to smoke and reasons for wanting to quit. Many clients reported that they were not aware of cultural teaching pertaining to tobacco. Implications for prevention, treatment, and policies are discussed.

INTRODUCTION The issue of Black Elk‘s Christianity has been, and continues to be, the focus of recent scholarship. His statements to different individuals at various times in his life have enabled him to be all things to all people, for depending on what source is studied one finds a Catholic dogmatist, a Lakota-Christian syncretist, or a Lakota traditionalist. Note, respectively, the following examples: In a letter to the Catholic Herald, November 2, 1911, Black Elk stated, “Perhaps you can not live lives split in two,which does not please God. Only one church, one God, one Son, and only one Holy Spirit-that way you have only one faith, you have only one body, and you have only one life and one spirit,’’and, similarly, in 1934, after the publication of Black Elk Sjmks, “Now I have converted and live in the true faith of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” In contrast, Frank Fools Crow says that Black Elk “had decided that the Sioux religious way of life was pretty much the same as that of the Christian churches, and there was no reason to change what the Sioux were doing. We could pick up some of the Christian ways and teachings, and just work them in with our own, so in the end both would be better.” And, finally, Ben Black Elk related that near the end of his father’s life their conversations were about the old ways and that Black Elk felt he may have made a mistake, that traditional religion may have been better for the people. Until Clyde Holler’s 1995 study, Black Elks Religion: Catholicism and the Lakota Sun Dunce, scholars’ interpretations of Black Elk’s religious beliefs have been divided, and their final positions have reflected their respective disciplinary or religious concerns. Raymond J. DeMallie, William K. Powers, and Julian Rice lean toward the view of Black Elk as a traditionalist who turned to Catholicism for practical purposes, as a matter of expediency in helping the people of his community; Paul Steinmetz and Michael Steltenkamp, both Jesuits, see Black Elk as making a sincere conversion, one based on the supposition that some form of Christianity is the fulfillment of the Lakota religious tradition. Holler commends Steltenkamp’s recent (1993) book, Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala, with providing a needed corrective to the one-sided, traditionalist portrayal of Black Elk that has grown out of Black Elk Speaks, but criticizes Steltenkamp for “falling prey to the very either/or he cautions against.”

INTRODUCTION My goal in this paper is to present some of the rhetorical-poetic devices employed by Samuel E. Kenoi, a Chiricahua Apache, who told eight Coyote narratives in his Native language to Harry Hoijer in the early 1930s. This paper adds to the growing body of literature analyzing Native American discourse as highly structured. Such structures include shared, culturally constituted, rhetorical-poetic devices, individual strategies, and the emergent nature of real-time narration. In Section 1, I present a brief biographical sketch of Sam Kenoi and describe his contact with Harry Hoijer. In 2, I discuss Kenoi’s use of a Chiricahua Apache narrative enclitic, -ná'a ‘so they say,’ as a line signaling device. In 3, I present examples of Kenoi’s use of an initial particle, nágo ‘then,’ as an ethnopoetic device that signals changes in actors, actions, time, and locations-thereby marking stanzas. In Section 4, I present information on various additional rhetorical-poetic devices, paying attention to quoted speech, numerical patterns centered on twos and fours, and formulaic devices that anchor these narratives to other Coyote narratives. In Section 5, I identify features of Kenoi’s narratives that have wider application to Chiricahua verbal art and I make some comparative statements regarding other Southern Athapaskan languages. In 6, I provide a set of concluding remarks where I take up the implications of this narrative as a dialogic interaction between social actors (Kenoi and Hoijer) and as a part of a larger discursive tradition in an anterior here and now (the Mescalero Reservation circa 1930).

As to our aboriginal or Indian population ... I know it seem to be agreed that they must gradually dwindle as time rolls on, and in a few generations more leave only a reminiscence, a blank. But I am not at all clear about that. As America ... develop, adapts, entwines, faithfully identifies its own - are we to see it cheerfully accepting using all the contributions of foreign lands from the whole outside globe - and then rejecting the only ones distinctively its own... ? -Walt Whitman, 1883 Increased general awareness of Iroquois precedents for democracy (and the continuing debate over them) has not kept a sizable number of people (some of them conservatives bearing household names) from dismissing the idea in a summary manner, often with no knowledge that a genuine debate has been engaged. During the last few years, with a mixture of consternation and awe, I have watched a number of very well-known conservative authors and pundits attempt to turn the idea I have researched into “canon fodder” in the SCP called “culture wars” over multicultural education. The idea of Iroquois influence (and the sharp debate over it) has spread much faster than the research and understanding of historical circumstances required to make sense of it.

There’s an old chestnut that Indians traded Manhattan for beads. Considering what Indians have since made out of beads, and the Europeans out of Manhattan-that small granitic bead, set in a silver river which civilization has so poisoned that even New Yorkers know better than to drink it-I think the Indians came out ahead, though Europeans may disagree. Indians were making and using beads (from shells, for instance) long before Peter Minuit bought Manhattan and Wall Street was built, or for that matter before Jupiter raped Europa and produced a bull market. Still, it was great to have bits of colored glass poured from Italy or Czechoslovakiainto our savage palms. Now audiences at our powwows can see some of the rainbow ideas our hands have made visible, as we move around the drum at dances and ceremonies. We can make Homeric similes with foreign beads and foreign words; but I’d like to move here the previous question of what “beads”and “money”really are-and “wampum” as well, because sometimes, when that Manhattan chestnut is once more being served up (maybe at Thanksgiving), the term wampum still burbles forth-as if it were a word for “Indian money.” Wampum, as I understand it, was not necessarily beads, nor was it “just” money; it was more a historical record, in beautiful form, of matters held sacred-but because the Europeans saw that it was given such respect, they naturally took it as “money.” The Encyclopedia Britannica tells us that wampum was originally used primarily as a record of an important agreement or treaty and as an object of tribute given by subject tribes, and came to be used as money in the Western sense only after white contact.

Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. By David Hollinger. New York Basic Books, 1995, 1996. 224 pages. $22.00 cloth; $13.00 paper. That the People Might Live: Native American Literatures and Native American Community. By Jace Weaver. New York Oxford, 1997. 256 pages. $49.95 cloth; $18.95 paper. When Nickels Were Indians: An Urban Mixed-Blood Story. By Patricia Penn Hilden. Washington: Smithsonian, 1995,1997.260 pages. $29.95 cloth; $17.95 paper. Questions of ethnic identity have become so complex today, not to mention contentious, that one may yearn for a simpler time when blacks were blacks, whites were whites, Indians were Indians, and everyone knew who was who and what was what. The problem is that there was really no such time. Today whites may be simply white, but for many years Jews were not really white, Italians were not very white, and Slavs were off-white at best. As for blacks, there were mulattos, quadroons, and octoroons, categories which disappeared in favor of the “one drop rule,” though perhaps mulatto is coming back as the designation for biracial. As for Indians, there were at least two categories, full-blood and the pejorative half-breed. The arbitrary nature of racial distinctions in regard to Indians is best demonstrated by the 1869 decision of the Supreme Court of New Mexico Territory that Pueblos were “not actually Indians, since they were ‘honest, industrious, and law-abiding citizens’. . . [who] exhibited ‘virtue, honesty, and industry to their more civilized neighbors.” That is hard to beat as a combination of liberal impulse and racist condescension, although there is no shortage of modern examples.