American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Ethnologists in the early twentieth century were the first to publish photographs of the Alabama-Coushatta people of Texas and the Coushatta (often written as “Koasati”) of Louisiana. Since then, authors have shaped the photographic and textual representations according to their own notions of culture and identity. In this case, Mark Raymond Harrington and John Reed Swanton went to Texas and Louisiana looking, like other salvage anthropologists, for remnants of Native cultures that were uncontaminated by European influence. These authors used photographs to authenticate “old industries” that represented, to them, an Indian past. Yet Native peoples all over the Southeast had already been subjected to considerable outside pressures to change their beliefs and practices. Early ethnologists neglected the processes of cultural hybridization and creativity in which Native peoples engaged to deal with these pressures. In spite of these weaknesses, early ethnologists pointed out elements of cultural preservation that many later authors ignored. Other writers supported the assimilation of the Alabama-Coushatta into Euro-American culture and Christianity. Through their text and photographs, such authors highlighted cultural change through tribal members’ participation in church, school, and vocational education. Yet some of these authors lamented Native culture loss at the same time that they praised the adoption of Christianity. Their difficulty in reconciling coexistent elements of cultural continuity and change surfaced in their use of photographs. As a result, certain Alabama and Coushatta practices, such as river-cane or pine-needle basket making and the preparation and cooking of the corn soup sof-ke became emblematic of tribal culture.

INTRODUCTION In 1999, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released a benchmark study about crime and victimization in the American Indian community. The study examined five years (1992–97) of American Indian criminal justice concerns, with a particular focus on violent crime victimization and criminal activity. Although it is widely read and cited, this research may not have captured the full picture suggested by its name, “American Indians and Crime.” According to the BJS report, approximately 150,000 American Indians are victimized each year, amounting to 1.4 percent of violent victimizations per year in the United States. The 2000 census indicated that American Indians constitute 0.9 percent of the population, amounting to a 50 percent overrepresentation of crime victimization according to the BJS study. Further, the BJS research maintains that American Indians have a higher per capita rate of violent crime victimization than the other racial minorities studied. Although the study did not attempt to explain these disparities, the overrepresentation and comparative per capita victimization rates give cause for further, more comprehensive inquiry.

When From the Deep Woods to Civilization appeared in 1916, the Dakota writer and activist Charles Alexander Eastman (also known by his Dakota name, Ohiyesa) told of a rather unusual journey across northern Minnesota and Ontario, Canada. The purpose of the venture, which took place during the summer of 1910, was to “purchase rare curios and ethnological specimens for one of the most important collections in the country.” In typical Eastman fashion, he is elusive with respect to naming the collection, let alone his benefactor. What was really going on here? It may at first appear to be inconsequential to ask for whom Eastman worked or the whereabouts of the items procured; however, viewed from an Ojibwe perspective, the answers become immediately more important. What Eastman “purchased,” as he put it, were pieces of Ojibwe culture and history, which, even in an age of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, may be forever lost to them. Only by recounting this story and filling in the details that Eastman omitted will there be an adequate accounting of what was subsumed into the American museum system, not to mention what stands to be regained if the items are ever returned. Just as important, we must consider what the story of the 1910 expedition does to Eastman’s legacy as a prominent American Indian intellectual. By 1910, Eastman had already become a renowned author, having published three books: Indian Boyhood (1902), Red Hunters and the Animal People (1904), and Wigwam Evenings (1909). Contemporary critics, however, have long criticized Eastman in particular for promoting assimilation as an option for Indian people fed up with the reservation system and for being enamored with the 1887 Dawes Act (albeit, as it was written, not as it was implemented). At the same time, he was a strong advocate for preserving the ethical and spiritual values of American Indians, as exemplified by The Soul of the Indian (1911), in which he gave a systematic and eloquent demonstration of “the Indian’s” way of thinking on a variety of philosophical topics, from the ultimate nature of reality to the practical ethics formed through kinship relations, as well as a vision of community founded on an indigenous concept of making peace.

INTRODUCTION The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) has fundamentally changed the relationship between museums and tribal peoples. Since 1990, thousands of human remains and funerary objects and hundreds of sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony have been repatriated to tribes. Human remains and funerary objects have been reburied, and sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony have been returned to tribal centers and/or reincorporated into traditional ceremonies. Tribes and museums have also made significant organizational and cultural adjustments in order to incorporate the repatriation law into their activities, including integrating extensive consultation efforts and comprehensive reviews of documentation into their operations. After seventeen years of NAGPRA, many in the museum and tribal worlds have become proficient in the “nuts and bolts” of the law and embraced the positive changes it has brought about. Many museum and tribal staff have learned to live with the law’s ambiguities, inadequacies, or as yet undeveloped sections; although others, mainly in the tribal world, are more critical of NAGPRA’s ambiguities and frustrated with the length of the repatriation process. In many ways, the tribal and museum experience of implementing NAGPRA has also highlighted an often unrecognized commonality between these two communities: tribes and museums are constantly changing in terms of leadership, membership, funding, and institutional and programmatic priorities.

Images of kachinas and clowns are found throughout books, journals, and magazines that celebrate the arts of American Indian peoples, including the Hopi. As familiar as we are with these visual images, for the most part they are one-dimensional and suggest little of their meaningful contexts in Hopi thought and ritual. There are other more subtle contexts that contribute to the meaning of tsukulalwa (clowning), including the plaza in which the ceremony is performed and the events the clowns address through their humor. This article provides an introduction to the narrative and ritual contexts of the clown ceremony and considers the changing historical circumstances of clowning. Here in the spring and early summer the katsinas (katsinam) come to the Hopi villages as “messengers” to receive the prayers and prayer offerings of the Hopi people in complex two-day ritual performances called katsina dances (katsintithu) and to reciprocate with food and assurances that their prayers have been heard. These masked figures are the spirits of the ancestors and the spiritual essence of all things and beings within the Hopi world. As intermediaries, they not only carry human prayers to the gods, but also they return as rain for the corn plants that sustain Hopi life. The katsinam are spoken of as “beautiful beings” for they are the embodiment of the Hopi way (hopi): “Katsina soosok qatsit yuwsi’ta, katsinas wear all things of life.” Clowns (tsukskut) participate in a ritual drama called tsukulalwa during these katsina ceremonies. In their being and behavior the tsukskut are the opposite of the katsinas. The katsinam embody the colors of the cardinal directions and the six varieties of Hopi corn—a form of “chromatic prayer,” while the tsukskut are “earth-colored” and wear strips of cast-off clothing and corn husks in their hair. More importantly, the clowns “depict life as it should not be,” that is, behavior that is qahopi (bad, misbehaving, nonconforming). Although they are clowns, these tsukskut are also priests whose role is sacred and serious.

One confronts many difficulties when conducting policy-relevant criminal justice research that focuses on American Indian interests. Foremost among these difficulties is the great variation in relevant contexts that apply to this area of research. From the urban context of large American cities, where American Indians constitute a slim minority that is prone to victimization by members of other racial and ethnic groups, to the solidly rural context within northern Plains reservation communities where American Indians constitute strong majorities and violent crime is likely to be intraracial, there are challenges when it comes to understanding and addressing the dynamics of criminal behavior and its impact on American Indians. These two extremes, and the contexts that lie between, are difficult to compare because of the tremendous variation in interests, behaviors, and legal structures associated with them. The observation that such a continuum exists at all necessitates that we more carefully examine the source of crime and potential remedies in specific contexts and reject “one-size-fits-all” research approaches and policy responses. The challenges of doing reliable research in this area produces a demand on researchers, policy makers, advocates, and journalists to be disciplined in not presenting incomplete information as fact when arguing for legal or social change.

It would be easy to write about Paula Gunn Allen as a scholar, but that information is everywhere, from books and interviews to student graduate dissertations. Even with her many accomplishments, such as her defining book The Sacred Hoop and her often humorous and dead-serious book Pocahontas, I love Paula’s poem about Grandmother Spider the most. That’s what Paula was, a weaver of connections between the world, between people, between word and word. From the work that follows, it seems more important to write about her as a human being. Poet, scholar, teacher, writer, her warm heart seems to be, finally, what people love this strong story-woman for the most, at least until her words reach future readers and scholars. I first met Paula when I had written my first book and knew nothing about the world of writing, books, or educated Indian women. Paula took me into her web. Before I knew it I was on a talk show and in over my head. Fortunately, Paula was articulate enough to cover for me. Then I gave a reading at a salon she took me to in New York, a first reading for me, a young writer. First, she took me to her home and fed me eggs and salsa. Hot salsa! How could I not adore her? We shared our growing worlds, relationships, poetry, then also our losses: children, loves, work. She was a real human being, a kind and beloved woman. She, in many ways, represented the meaning of her book, which will be out in January from West End Press, American the Beautiful. I will always think of her as a spider woman, weaving, reweaving, leaving filaments of silk for us to follow. One friend of hers, Charlotte Gullick, was with her before she changed worlds and describes Paula, “I come back to find her eyes closed, but her left hand is in the air, and she’s shaking it as if she holds a rattle. Her lips dance out silent words and I watch for a few minutes before she opens her eyes. . . . I wish I had enough knowledge of her tribal connections to know what kind of rattle would be the right one.