American Indian Culture and Research Journal

During the 1965 debates over the Voting Rights Act, there are only two brief mentions of Native Americans. During the Act's 1975 renewal, Native Americans were mentioned only with respect to their inclusion under the minority language provisions. At no point did the applicability of Section 5's pre-clearance provisions to political jurisdictions with histories of discrimination against Native Americans generate discussion. They also were ignored in the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, where Section 4(b) that established the criteria for establishing Section 5 covered jurisdictions was found to be unconstitutional. In this paper, we examine struggles over Section 5 pre-clearance in South Dakota, as well as the challenges of legal attempts to establish “covered jurisdictions” using the more stringent standard required in Section 2. We focus on South Dakota because it is a state with a long, troubled history of discrimination towards Native peoples. It also is the state with the highest number of voting rights cases involving Native Americans. Although a state that has been labeled “the Mississippi of the North” is an extreme case, we argue that it is precisely those settings that make pre-clearance so critical.

Sacred site law within the United States often fails to meaningfully protect indigenous cultural landscapes. One reason for this failure is ambiguous language within legislation which courts interpret in accordance with hegemonic understandings of land, thus marginalizing indigenous ontologies. Drawing on research involving ski resort expansion on the San Francisco Peaks, I demonstrate instances in which sacred site law was construed so narrowly as to a priori preclude indigenous ways of knowing, particularly in regards to the nature of land, use of sacred objects, and pollution. These examples highlight how ontological bias significantly limits the possibilities for sacred land protection.

Under the banner of indigenous and collaborative archaeologies, heritage professionals and indigenous peoples have developed new forms of scholarly practice. This work has begun to rectify the discipline's historical marginalization of indigenous groups but remains skewed toward academic projects. Less attention has been paid to the hundreds of Tribal Historic Preservation Offices within tribal nations. This article argues that tribal historic preservation provides needed insight to heritage managers of all stripes. Using the Grand Ronde Land Tenure Project as a case study, I discuss how tribally-driven archival research fosters new accounts of Native history and enhances tribes' capacity to care for cultural resources.

This article provides new information that will oblige scholars to reassess the legacy of Black Elk (1863–1950), including excerpts from recently discovered unpublished letters written by Joseph Epes Brown while he was living with the Lakota holy man (1947–49). The author provides insights into Brown's personal philosophy and a clearer context for the editorial role he played in recording The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. Brown's letters also help to illuminate Black Elk's role in attempting to restore the sacred “religion of the Pipe” among the Sioux and to clarify controversies that include Black Elk's dual participation in Catholicism.

I examine Rey Chow's assertion that the process of racialization parallels the challenge of coming to terms with language. In 2011, Anthony Webster coedited the American Indian Culture and Research Journal special issue “American Indian Languages in Unexpected Places” and called for an extension of his work on Blackhorse Mitchell's novel Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navajo Boy. My argument looks at writing as a matter of choices the writer makes (following William L. Leap's work in American Indian English) and the requirements expected of readers. Moving away from the error analyses and ethnographic readings that afflict racialized readings, I place Webster's work on Navajo poetics and intimate grammars into conversation with postcolonial theory and language revitalization work concerned with similar questions: what does it mean to write, and what does it mean to write in English? I argue that Mitchell resists the subjugation required of a colonial education through his refusal to write like a native speaker. He figures writing as a place to dream as one pleases; writing is the miracle on Miracle Hill. Readers can locate his choices throughout the text, particularly in his poem, “The Drifting Lonely Seed,” his chapter on creative writing, and his speech at his grandmother's graveside.

President Donald Trump's admiration of President Andrew Jackson evokes a discussion of parallels between their ideologies, including a reluctance to repudiate white supremacy and a disregard for the rule of law. These attitudes are reflected both in Jackson's authorship of the Indian Removal Act (1830) and his refusal to acknowledge a judgment by the US Supreme Court in favor of the Cherokee Nation that might have averted the Trail of Tears. Jackson's advocacy of American exceptionalism (“America first” to Trump) also provokes an analysis of what later was cast in popular discourse as Manifest Destiny. United States history--its “race law” in particular--is described here through the admiring eyes of Adolph Hitler, who likened Germany's expansion before and during World War II to United States “westward movement” during the nineteenth century.