Global Indigenous Law Research

Who is an Indian? This is possibly the oldest question facing Indigenous peoples across the Americas, and one with significant implications for decisions relating to resource distribution, conflicts over who gets to live where and for how long, and clashing principles of governance and law. For centuries, the dominant views on this issue have been strongly shaped by ideas of both race and place. But just as important, who is permitted to ask, and answer this question?This collection examines the changing roles of race and place in the politics of defining Indigenous identities in the Americas. Drawing on case studies of Indigenous communities across North America, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, it is a rare volume to compare Indigenous experience throughout the western hemisphere. The contributors question the vocabulary, legal mechanisms, and applications of science in constructing the identities of Indigenous populations, and consider ideas of nation, land, and tradition in moving indigeneity beyond race.

The arrival of European settlers in the Americas disrupted indigenous lifeways, and the effects of colonialism shattered Native communities. Forced migration and human trafficking created a diaspora of cultures, languages, and people. Gregory D. Smithers and Brooke N. Newman have gathered the work of leading scholars, including Bill Anthes, Duane Champagne, Daniel Cobb, Donald Fixico, and Joy Porter, among others, in examining an expansive range of Native peoples and the extent of their influences through reaggregation. These diverse and wide-ranging essays uncover indigenous understandings of self-identification, community, and culture through the speeches, cultural products, intimate relations, and political and legal practices of Native peoples. Native Diasporas explores how indigenous peoples forged a sense of identity and community amid the changes wrought by European colonialism in the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, and the mainland Americas from the seventeenth through the twentieth century. Broad in scope and groundbreaking in the topics it explores, this volume presents fresh insights from scholars devoted to understanding Native American identity in meaningful and methodologically innovative ways.

American Indian national movements, asserting a common Indian interest and identity as distinct from tribal interests and identities, have been a significant part of the American experience throughout most of this century, but one virtually unknown even to historians. Here for the first time Pan-Indian movements are examined comprehensively and comparatively. The opening chapter provides the historical background for the development of modern Pan-Indianism. The first major Pan-Indian reform organization, the Society of American Indians (SAI), was founded in 1911. Led by middle-class, educated Indians. The SAI adapted many of the reform ideas of the Progressive Era to Indian purposes. The SAI rejected the old dream of restoring tribal cultures and worked instead for an Indian future identified with the broader American society, to be realized through education and legislation. During the twenties, the SAI declined and the direction of Pan-Indian efforts shifted. Pan-Indian fraternal movements arose that were more in keeping with the spirit of the times than was reformism. Based in towns and cities, the fraternal orders and social clubs provided a means for urban Indians to retain or regain an Indian identity. In the meantime, an Indian religious movement, the peyote cult, spread far beyond its Oklahoma heartland, gaining Indian adherents in many parts of the country. Abandoning the messianic hopes of earlier Pan-Indian religions, the peyote cult developed as a religion of accommodation, a blending of elements from many tribes and from Christianity as well. In 1918 Oklahoma peyotists incorporated the first Native American Church as a defense against a campaign to outlaw the use of peyote by Indians. During the succeeding decade churches were organized in other states. The Indian New Deal, which radically changed governmental policy, provided a new context for Pan-Indianism. The author examines briefly developments since 1934. Her concluding chapter places the various Pan-Indian movements in historical perspective. The research for this study included extensive use of a wide variety of primary sources—journals published by 1he Indian groups, collections of documents and letters, governmental records, and interviews with Indians, anthropologists, and government officials.

A study of the role blood quantum played in the assimilation period between 1887 and 1934 in the United States"-- Provided by publisher.
"Blood Will Tell reveals the underlying centrality of "blood" that shaped official ideas about who was eligible to be defined as Indian by the General Allotment Act in the United States. Katherine Ellinghaus traces the idea of blood quantum and how the concept came to dominate Native identity and national status between 1887 and 1934 and how related exclusionary policies functioned to dispossess Native people of their land. The U.S. government's unspoken assumption at the time was that Natives of mixed descent were undeserving of tribal status and benefits, notwithstanding that Native Americans of mixed descent played crucial roles in the national implementation of allotment policy. Ellinghaus explores on-the-ground case studies of Anishinaabeg, Arapahos, Cherokees, Eastern Cherokees, Cheyennes, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, Lakotas, Lumbees, Ojibwes, Seminoles, and Virginia tribes. Documented in these cases, the history of blood quantum as a policy reveals assimilation's implications and legacy.The role of blood quantum is integral to understanding how Native Americans came to be one of the most disadvantaged groups in the United States, and it remains a significant part of present-day debates about Indian identity and tribal membership. Blood Will Tell is an important and timely contribution to current political and scholarly debates.

Despite significant strides over the past quarter century, Native peoples of North America face an uncertain future due to their unstable political, legal, and economic positions. Views of their predicament, however, continue to be dominated by non-Indian writers. In response, a dozen Native American writers here reclaim their rightful role as influential "voices" in the debates about Native communities at the dawn of a new millennium.

These scholars examine crucial issues of politics, law, and religion in the context of ongoing Native American resistance to the dominant culture. They particularly show how the writings of Vine Deloria, Jr., have shaped and challenged American Indian scholarship in these areas since the 1960s. Ranging across a wide array of relevant topics, they provide key insights into Deloria's thought, while introducing some of the critical issues still confronting Native nations today.

Collectively, these essays take up four important themes: indigenous societies as the embodiment of cultures of resistance, legal resistance to western oppression against indigenous nations, contemporary Native religious practices, and Native intellectual challenges to academia. Individual chapters address indigenous perspectives on topics usually treated (and often misunderstood) by non-Indians, such as the role of women in Indian society, the importance of sacred sites to American Indian religious identity, and the relationship of native language to indigenous autonomy. A closing essay by Deloria—in vintage form—brings the book full circle and reminds Native Americans of their responsibilities and obligations to one another—and to past and future generations.

Ranging from insights into Native American astronomy to critiques of federal Indian law, this book strongly argues for the renewed cultivation of a Native American Studies that is much more Indian-centered. Without the revival of that perspective, such curricula are doomed to languish as academic ephemera—missed opportunities for building a better and deeper understanding of Indian peoples and their most pressing concerns and aspirations.

American Indian Ethnic Renewal traces the growth of the American Indian population over the past forty years, when the number of Native Americans grew from fewer than one-half million in 1950 to nearly two million in 1990. This is not simply the result of rising birth rates, declining death rates, or immigration. Rather, such growth reflects an increased willingness of Americans to identify themselves as Indians. What is driving this increased ethnic identification, and where and how did it begin? Joane Nagel identifies several historical forces that have converged to create an urban Indian population base, a reservation and urban Indian organizational infrastructure, and a broad cultural climate of ethnic pride and militancy. The book offers a general theory of ethnic resurgence which stresses both structure and agency--the role of politics and the importance of collective and individual action--in understanding how ethnic groups revitalize and reinvent themselves.