American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is in need of several thousand houses to alleviate overcrowding and improve living conditions. The United States government has failed to provide appropriate or sufficient housing and other individuals and organizations that have attempted to build homes for the Lakota have met with widely varying results. This paper documents community-based housing activities of fifteen Pine Ridge residents who attempted to implement a variety of construction techniques. The biggest challenges were obtaining and paying for resources and finding competent, reliable labor. The interviewees used local and salvaged materials extensively and worked within the local, informal economy to meet these challenges and address their dissatisfaction with government cluster housing. Findings suggest that local, community-based construction may provide a successful and culturally sustainable strategy for residential construction because it equips builders with a means to earn a living, develops construction skills, establishes a sense of ownership, and provides appropriate housing that enriches lives and builds pride.

This article seeks to explain the nature of the arguments the Iroquois presented to the US government in trying to prevent their removal. In the letters they wrote to the federal government from the 1830s to the 1850s they emphasized their own law as well as that of the United States. They drew on whatever perception of law they deemed was best suited to address the problems they were facing. The process by which they composed these letters, the discussions surrounding them, and the compromises they reached over their content can also explain why the Iroquois appealed to several kinds of law.

How recognition may empower or restrain Native American mobilization has not received sufficient scholarly attention and remains largely unexplored and under-theorized. This paper contributes a partial remedy to this oversight by explicitly theorizing how political recognition can mediate Native American collective action and lead to differential mobilizational outcomes. In this paper I build on and add nuances to the models of indigenous mobilization offered by Joane Nagel and Stephen Cornell and contribute to the broader literature on tribal acknowledgement by theorizing tribal status as a factor in Native American mobilization.

The 1772 execution of the Mohegan sailor Moses Paul served as the occasion for Samson Occom's popular Sermon, reprinted in numerous editions. Recent work by Ava Chamberlain seeks to recover Paul's version of events from contemporary court records. This article argues that Paul's "firsthand" account of the case and autobiographical narrative submitted in his appeal illustrate the importance of approaching confessional texts such as Paul's as fundamentally coauthored documents. I argue that both Occom's Sermon and Paul's Petition, which was cowritten with his attorney William Samuel Johnson, construct mediated, communal definitions of "Indianness" and provide an unintentional space for individual narrative autonomy.

This article draws upon ethnographic fieldwork within a Navajo community to illustrate how weaving knowledge and practices shape contemporary notions of community identity and belonging. The ongoing exchange of Navajo weaving taboos and the careful management of weaving teachings offers community members various opportunities to share and keep certain kinds of information in and out of circulation. The flow of such knowledge provides a productive context for community members to voice their ideas and opinions about a range of topics, including concepts of inalienable patrimony, reciprocity, qualities of personhood and prized personal characteristics, and the exchange of knowledge more generally.

This exploratory case study examines the participation of Native American students in study abroad and institutional policies and practices that either impede or enhance participation. The study surveys all Native students enrolled at the American university that produces the most Native graduates with bachelor's degrees. Although Native students value the benefits of study abroad, the study finds that they face a unique confluence of factors that limit participation. The role of Native students' social networks (family, tribal members, friends, Native advisors) is found to be prominent in deliberations about participation. Social capital theory is employed for analysis of the findings.