American Indian Culture and Research Journal

A Tribe Called Red (ACTR) is an Ottawa-based DJ collective known for “powwow step,” a blend of powwow music and dubstep. ATCR’s Electric Pow Wow is an intertribal space to negotiate and assert a twenty-first-century urbanbased Aboriginal identity. As the pounding beat resonates, participants both listen through the body and listen to the body in shared kinaesthetic listening, celebrating their physicality and rejecting historical regulation of the Aboriginal body. This article addresses tensions between the “traditional” and “modern” and analyzes three musical examples to demonstrate how ATCR musically encodes a modern, urban-based indigeneity.

This article explores American Indians’ attitudes about further tobacco regulation. Many American Indian tribes rely upon the selling of inexpensive tobacco to generate government revenue and employment for communities that, typically, are economically disadvantaged. Although tobacco sales create significant revenue for those tribes that sell tobacco products, tobacco use also causes 40 percent of American Indian deaths. Mounting evidence suggests that the inexpensive tobacco is partially responsible for high smoking prevalence. To better understand American Indian support for tobacco regulation in its existing context on reservations, we surveyed members of a federally recognized tribe involved in both the sale and manufacturing of tobacco products in rural Washington State. Our results showed participants followed their individual self-interest, though approximately 30 percent of participants supported reduction of tobacco use in the face of substantial costs. Participants were most accepting of tobacco regulation when associated economic costs were framed vaguely. Participants were least supportive if the costs were framed as the loss of jobs and direct cash payments. Smokers and tribal employees were overall least supportive of regulating tobacco sales. These results suggest that efforts to reform tobacco-based development strategies should emphasize the individual-level costs associated with collective higher use among American Indians.

This article examines the ideology and laws that are grounded in the fifteenth-century “doctrine of discovery,” documenting both its influences over time on the ancestors of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and its continuing negative long-term effects. The doctrine became institutionalized over time and codified into international and nationalist laws and policies. For US Native peoples, for example, 1823 and 1831 Supreme Court decisions that were based on the discovery concept lie at the root of federal Indian law today. European expansion also began the world capitalist system and its unending acquisition of Native lands and resources. With many struggling to get by today, the discovery doctrine’s power still plays a role in this impact, including the legacy of multinational corporations, international institutions, and state governments desecrating Native burial and sacred sites. The socioeconomic conditions of American Indian groups warrant a greater understanding and awareness of this issue.

This article reviews the scientific body of knowledge available on child sexual abuse (CSA) in indigenous communities. We found that there are four main areas of interest related to this issue: (1) rates of CSA among indigenous communities; (2) risk factors correlated with CSA; (3) the circumstances leading to low rates of disclosure of CSA, and (4) the long term consequences and repercussions associated with being a victim of CSA. The review concludes by discussing how important research and evidence-based practice are for improving the conditions of victims of CSA in indigenous communities.

Of the Native cultural objects presently in personal and public collections, only a small percentage will be shared with descendants of the original creators or the general public. The majority of these objects will stay in storage until they disintegrate, but creating photographic representations provides ways of giving them new life. This article focuses on photographic representations of Native cultural objects as its own contemporary artistic practice. For tribes wishing to archive and advance their material culture, still life photographs are an easily distributable medium. We posit that this practice can complement the archiving and preserving needs of museums by facilitating continued knowledge preservation within Native communities.

The Lenape of the lower Delaware Valley were the most reliable Native carriers of mail among the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The principal period of Lenape mail-carrying activity coincided with the Dutch period (ca. 1623–1664). This well-paid service provided the Lenape with access to desired European goods. The English colonizers of this region also availed themselves of the skills of those traditionalist Lenape who had not yet gone into the western pelt trade but had remained in the Delaware Valley. The evidence reveals that members of several other Native tribes also carried letters, but that Lenape carriers were reliable even during periods of conflict, when their forest skills and individual abilities made these able runners an important part of colonial networking. These skills also made them preferred guides and explorers. English control of these colonies led to the slow development of expanding services that ultimately evolved into the United States Postal Service.