American Indian Culture and Research Journal

This essay focuses on the Senecas of western New York and their transformation, resilience, and resistance in the early nineteenth century. Rooted in a hybrid economy and environmental practice, among the postcolonial threats they faced in the context of white territorial expansion, republican and capitalist ideology, was an emerging new instrumental view of property, a radically changing economy, and embryonic ideas about “conservation.” Colonial expansion in the early American republic came at the expense of the Senecas and other Indians—or least that was the design. This expropriation has often been less visible because its story mostly is told from the perspective of (white) nationalism, democracy, and expanding opportunity embedded in the promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In addition, such colonialism in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth has often been masked by another emerging, “greenish” ideology, that of conservationism. Native (residual) rights, autonomy, and sovereignty could be ignored or overwhelmed by the supposedly objective, universal, scientific, and progressive demands that land and resources be conserved, not only from outsiders, but from Native people themselves. Thus, occurring at the expense of American Indians and environmental justice, conservation could be as exploitive and unjust as development.

The French/Ojibwa lawyer, activist, and Office of Indian Affairs employee, Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin (1863–1952), often receives mention in scholarly works on the Society of American Indians (SAI). Very few, however, have examined her contributions in detail. Only one article focusing exclusively on Baldwin has ever been published. Cathleen D. Cahill’s flattering portrait depicts Baldwin as a devoted suffragette and leading SAI figure who, in her roles as cofounder and treasurer, promoted the cause of Indian rights and her own Ojibwa values concerning women’s equality. Cahill explains Baldwin’s sudden exit from the SAI as a result of attacks by male, anti-Indian Office “radicals” who condemned her as disloyal for holding a government post, such as Carlos Montezuma (Yavapai) and Philip Gordon (Ojibwa). Closer inspection of the SAI’s conference proceedings and epistolary record reveals a very different story. In providing the first full account of Baldwin’s involvement in intertribal activism, this essay counters Cahill’s inaccurate interpretation of Baldwin’s withdrawal from the society, and, more importantly, examines Baldwin’s underreported, yet openly racist campaign among key SAI members to ban African Americans from the Indian Service. Baldwin’s incendiary statements on race offers a point of departure for further study of how the Society of American Indians viewed African Americans during the Progressive era’s intense segregation and prevailing social Darwinist theories of race.

The first quarter of the twentieth century saw Anglo entrepreneurs rapidly develop how-to books, instructional kits, and models for the manufacture of American Indian-style baskets. Purveyors appropriated styles, stitches, and tribal names, and zealously marketed such creations as more affordable than the purchase of an Indigenous basket. Books, imported materials such as raffia and rattan, and stitching methods were disseminated not only across the country and internationally, but to American Indian boarding schools, where instruction not only resulted in appropriation, but also in deculturing the Indigenous basket and Native peoples.

Increasingly, a discourse of indigenizing is being articulated in United States higher education. This article contributes to the limited existing research that examines how indigenization processes, well underway in Canada, are able to transform post-secondary institutions and/or how transformation is resisted and contained. With attention to institutional dynamics, Native studies’ centering of community accountability, and patterns of settler-colonial power, the study centers the perspectives and experiences at one university of Indigenous students, faculty, staff, and community partners. Interviews reveal four tensions or challenges of indigenization. “Hidden contributions” are the result of Indigenous people bearing the burden of rectifying the institution’s default colonial practices. Many individuals attempt to satisfy a challenging “dual accountability” to both First Nations and the university. Contradictions and uneven advances across the university create starkly varying experiences and reveal both promising change and disappointment. Finally, participants envision going beyond indigenization and decolonization by centering Indigenous intellectual autonomy and increasing accountability to First Nations. Interpreting these experiences and perceptions through logics of inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonization, the study suggests strategic approaches to address these tensions in future efforts in Canada and the United States.

Non-Indians have long used Indian reservations as dumping grounds for environmental toxics. My preliminary research suggests an urgent need for further study of the impact of the US-government-owned McAlester Army Ammunitions Plant in the Choctaw Nation on the health of my people and homeland. The plant detonates 45,000 pounds of explosives daily, and tests of the soil, water, and air reveal high levels of cancer-causing toxics. Indians in the area experience numerous health problems, including elevated rates of cancer. Additional research would open the door for environmental remediation and prevention of further harm to tribal members and the environment.

In this commentary, we engage and summarize existing practices for recruiting and retaining American Indian and Alaska Native students in postsecondary institutions in California. This commentary is the output of a two-day symposium, “Lighting a Path Forward: UC Land Grants, Public Memory, and Tovaangar,” held at the University of California, Los Angeles in October of 2019. The symposium brought together campus and community leaders from across California to discuss the past, present and future of American Indian and Alaska Native student and community concerns, and provide intervening policy and practice recommendations. Participants included both American Indian and Alaska Native and non-Native individuals with a wealth of professional experience and employment in American Indian and Alaska Native education, from the California Community College, California State University and University of California systems. We jointly created a table of critical interventions in education, the justification for this, and potential strategies for implementation. Here, we summarize the discussion of participants from the American Indian and Alaska Native student retention and recruitment workshop to document recommends interventions for campus practitioners and leaders to serve as a guiding document for system and campus advocacy.