American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Native Americans have been underrepresented in previous studies of biomedical research participants. This paper reports a qualitative interview study of Native Americans' perspectives on biomedical research. In-depth interviews were conducted with 53 members of a Southwest tribal community. Many interviewees viewed biomedical research studies as a necessary source of health care, particularly for chronic disease prevention and management. While interviewees viewed biomedical research on diabetes as critical for ensuring their community's future survival, they also mistrusted both research and health care. Community members' complex perceptions of research were rooted in painful historical events, such as forced sterilization of Native women.

This essay - a combination of authorial narrative and scholarly critique - examines a grassroots organization's (Friends of Historic Northport) campaign to preserve a site in west Alabama where a pivotal Choctaw-Upper Creek battle took place in 1785. The organization has faced opposition from city planners and business leaders intent on developing the site. I argue herein that these institutional agents have maneuvered within colonial contexts and neocolonial ideologies to mute the voices of indigenist-centered preservation efforts, mostly by occluding a key Native-centered narrative that affirms the battle's location. In the process, Native memories and indigenous "space" have been ignored, and a presentation of these memories has been left out of the "place" of the site. Here, Native memories are made illegitimate by the trumping of oral stories with paid-for physical evidence deemed authoritative as a part of municipal "governing rules." In addition to demystifying the institutional agents' colonial and neocolonial renderings, this essay offers an interventionist charge through prescriptive decolonial tactics to remedy this particular moment of neocolonization. These more local decolonial prescriptives are then extended to general struggles involving Native memory and "space."

Hopi Brian Honyouti's "clown" sculptures stem from his personal and political views and comment on commercialism, big business, greed, over indulgence, and irresponsible and sexual behavior. This essay explores the meaning of these carvings to Honyouti, to Hopiit, and to the buying public, as well as their relationship to tithu the carved representations of Katsinam. Working in the contact zone and in the realm of transculturation, Honyouti's carvings emphasize his perceptions of the confluence of the Hopi world and that of dominant America in an attempt to discern commonalities in how all people express certain human traits.

What is the relationship between Indigenous peoples and violent reactions to contemporary states? This research explores differing, culturally informed notions of attachment to land or place territory. Mechanistic ties and organic ties to land are linked to a key distinction between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples. Utilizing the Minorities at Risk (MAR) data set, a subset relationship is explored addressing propensity for Indigenous peoples to rebel against state encroachment of their lands. The results of this research must be considered with the serious limitations of MAR in mind. Within the marginalized groups in the Americas, 28 have an attachment to a place territory. Of these 28 groups, 22 are Indigenous and of the 22 groups, 13 have exhibited some form of rebellious behavior between 1945 and 2003. The power of attachment to place territory, specifically the organic attachment most often displayed by Indigenous peoples of the Americas, is a strong tie surviving 500 years of European encroachment. The findings are indicative of an attachment that Indigenous peoples retain to their specific homelands. The findings suggest a plethora of future research questions.

In north central Virginia there is a local tale - The Legend of Jump Mountain, which purports to explain the origins of the Hayes Creek Indian Burial Mound. A highly romantic legend, it immortalizes post colonial intertribal warfare during the early nineteenth century while ignoring the antiquity of the mound and the local descendants of its aboriginal creators. It is not at all uncommon to find such romantic tales in Indian country where the Native people have become invisible and there remain significant tribal artifacts common to the landscape. However, the standing claim to authenticity remains a matter of significant concern. In this essay, the author considers the tale's effectiveness assessing Indian origins, local history and tribal heritages, as well as the implicit stereotypes and the romantic illusion that it may generate in the popular imagination.

This paper considers the coercive sterilization of Aboriginal women in legislated and non-legislated form in Canada. I provide an historical and materialist critique of coercive sterilization. I argue for coercive sterilization to be understood as one of many policies employed to undermine Aboriginal women, to separate Aboriginal peoples from their lands and resources, and to reduce the numbers of those to whom the federal government has obligations. I show how the effects of the sterilization of Aboriginal women, whether intended or not, are in line with past Indian policy and serve the political and economic interests of Canada.