American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Native communities, in managing their health, education, land, and community development, must constantly interact with mainstream government agencies, academic institutions, and other entities. Cultural worldviews influence such interactions, as do memories of the negative historical encounters Native communities have had with non-Native society. To help foster collaboration between mainstream scientists and Native people toward sustainability, a technique of having them cooperatively develop pictorial visions (i.e. Vision Maps) of Native community sustainability was employed. This paper describes the development of a method of analyzing the resulting pictures and the conclusions that were drawn from collaborative sustainability visions.

Domestic violence is a serious social problem in contemporary American Indian communities and research is critical to create and evaluate prevention and intervention strategies. This small qualitative study sought to discover the ways in which men from a single reservation community with histories of domestic violence define and perceive domestic violence within the cultural context. The narratives held themes of intergenerational family violence and dysfunction, alcoholism, racism, isolation, deep grief, and remorse. Each of the narratives also revealed themes of healing and hope through connecting with elders, learning spiritual traditions and strengthening cultural identity as a means for achieving sobriety and lives of nonviolence.

Recent scholarship argues that American Indian political activities are increasingly being understood in the context of gaming and that a growing "rich Indian racism" portrays American Indian nations as rich, greedy, and inauthentic. This article analyzes newspaper coverage on American Indian land claims to test the proposition of rich Indian racism. Data on national coverage show that language that references gaming has characterized much of the reporting on land claims. An analysis of newspaper coverage of land claims in central New York reveals a tendency to describe and characterize American Indian nations and their claims negatively, as greedy, threatening, or unfair.

In this article, I discuss how indigenous understandings of time can contribute to broader studies of human societies, civilizations, and world history. Colonial paradigms have extended into the realm of world history and assumptions of human behavior have been unfairly applied to all human societies and labeled humans as aggressors against nature and each other. This is unjust especially to the populations that remain victims of colonialism and imperialism. I have developed or, put more appropriately, revealed an indigenous historical paradigm that can be applied to the study of human societies, but my primary goal is to provide a model that links indigenous histories in comparative studies of humans and human societies. To provide an adequate discussion of this model, I use examples from two indigenous societies (Maya and Hopi) to develop my thesis, and two other indigenous societies (Haudenosaunee and Cheyenne) for evaluation under this thesis. I conclude with a final discussion of Christian societies and their place in an indigenous view of world history.

This study examines the emergence and application of what I conceptualize as an American Indian Legal Identity (AILI). AILI is an individual identity created by structural forces. Most importantly, a person can have an AILI without having either racial identity or ethnic identity. It stands on its own as proof of Indianness even though it was created in the discourse of federal Indian policy. The tribal reification of this federally defined authenticity birthed a racialized collective Indian identity. Furthermore, it has resulted in the internalized racialization of Native identity. AILI relies upon the verification of a degree of Indian blood as documented in the form of a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) card issued by the US Department of the Interior and through membership within a federally recognized tribe. By focusing on historical social construction of AILI and its current implications within Native populations about who qualifies to be Indian, I analyze semi-structured, in-depth interviews of thirty Native American participants, all of whom ethnically identify as indigenous but only half of whom possess a legal identity. I find participants frame and rationalize AILI's existence by justifying that it is needed to preserve tribal sovereignty.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a momentous step both for indigenous peoples and the nations in which they reside. For the first time, the global community recognizes the unique rights of indigenous peoples and aspires to protect those rights. The new declaration is shaped by the historical trends of international law, and it will be implemented within the context of local and national law. To provide a better understanding of the declaration and to prepare citizens for its implementation, this essay examines how the international legal approach to rights will affect its implementation. Additionally, this article assesses issues of interpretation that may occur when the declaration is implemented. An examination of the application of the declaration in the context of American law provides an example of potential conflicts that may arise between national law and the declaration. Other legal sources of indigenous rights are described to provide a fuller picture of the ways in which indigenous peoples can protect their rights. Overall, this essay aims to give scholars and the general public grounding in the legal context of the declaration for future research on and observation of the declaration as it is implemented globally.