Service Alert
Website maintenance April 24 10pm ET
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
Showing 1021 - 1040 of 1572 items
By Robert R Janes, John W Ives, Jerry Potts, Herman Yellow Old Woman, Gerald T Conaty, Frank Weasel Head, Chris Mchugh, Allan Pard. 2015
In 1990, Gerald Conaty was hired as senior curator of ethnology at the Glenbow Museum, with the particular mandate of…
improving the museum’s relationship with Aboriginal communities. That same year, the Glenbow had taken its first tentative steps toward repatriation by returning sacred objects to First Nations’ peoples. These efforts drew harsh criticism from members of the provincial government. Was it not the museum’s primary legal, ethical, and fiduciary responsibility to ensure the physical preservation of its collections? Would the return of a sacred bundle to ceremonial use not alter and diminish its historical worth and its value to the larger society? Undaunted by such criticism, Conaty oversaw the return of more than fifty medicine bundles to Blackfoot and Cree communities between the years of 1990 and 2000, at which time the First Nations Sacred Ceremonial Objects Repatriation Act (FNSCORA)—still the only repatriation legislation in Canada—was passed. “Repatriation,” he wrote, “is a vital component in the creation of an equitable, diverse, and respectful society.” We Are Coming Home is the story of the highly complex process of repatriation as described by those intimately involved in the work, notably the Piikuni, Siksika, and Kainai elders who provided essential oversight and guidance. We also hear from the Glenbow Museum’s president and CEO at the time and from an archaeologist then employed at the Provincial Museum of Alberta who provides an insider’s view of the drafting of FNSCORA. These accounts are framed by Conaty’s reflections on the impact of museums on First Nations, on the history and culture of the Niitsitapi, or Blackfoot, and on the path forward. With Conaty’s passing in August of 2013, this book is also a tribute to his enduring relationships with the Blackfoot, to his rich and exemplary career, and to his commitment to innovation and mindful museum practice.By Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, William Munoz. 2012
The image of a Native American on horseback has become ingrained in the American consciousness. But the Plains Indians and…
the horse were not always inseparable. Once, Native Americans used dogs to help carry their goods, and even after the Spaniards introduced the horse to the Americas, horses were considered so valuable that the Spanish would not allow the Indians to have them. But soon horses escaped from Spanish settlements, and Native Americans quickly learned how valuable the horse could be as a hunting mount, beast of burden, and military steed. Follow the story of this transformative partnership, starting in the early sixteenth century and continuing today.By Jane Yolen, Heidi E. Y. Stemple. 2003
John White was chosen to lead a new colony at Roanoke off the Atlantic coast. White went back to England…
to gather supplies, returned after three years, and found that all had vanished.By Janet Klausner, Duane King. 1993
By Caterina Pizzigoni. 2012
The Life Withinprovides a social and cultural history of the indigenous people of a region of central Mexico in the…
later colonial periodas told through documents in Nahuatl and Spanish. It views the indigenous world from the inside out, focusing first on the householdbuildings, lots, household saintsand expanding outward toward the householders and the greater community. The internal focus of this book provides a comprehensive picture of indigenous society, exploring the categories by which people are identified, their interactions, their activities, and the aspects of the local corporations that manifest themselves in household life. Pizzigoni brings indigenous-language social history into the later colonial period, whereas the emphasis until now has fallen heavily on the earlier phase. The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries emerge as a dynamic time that saw, along with cultural persistence, many new adaptations and creations. Covering a period of over a century and a half, this study goes beyond a monolithic treatment of the region to introduce for the first time a systematic analysis of subregional variation in vocabulary and real-life phenomena, showing how, within larger regional trends, each tiniest community of the Toluca Valley retained markers of its individuality.By David J. Meltzer. 2009
More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that…
was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology. This dazzling, cutting-edge synthesis, written for a wide audience by an archaeologist who has long been at the center of these debates, tells the scientific story of the first Americans: where they came from, when they arrived, and how they met the challenges of moving across the vast, unknown landscapes of Ice Age North America. David J. Meltzer pulls together the latest ideas from archaeology, geology, linguistics, skeletal biology, genetics, and other fields to trace the breakthroughs that have revolutionized our understanding in recent years. Among many other topics, he explores disputes over the hemisphere's oldest and most controversial sites and considers how the first Americans coped with changing global climates. He also confronts some radical claims: that the Americas were colonized from Ice Age Europe or that a crashing comet obliterated the Pleistocene megafauna and nearly wiped out people as well. Full of entertaining descriptions of on-site encounters, personalities, and controversies, this is a compelling behind-the-scenes account of how science is illuminating our past.By Robert Lee. 1991
Fort Meade was the home of the famous Seventh Cavalry after its ignominious defeat in the Battle of the Little…
Bighorn. Troops from Fort Meade played a pivotal role in the events that led to the tragedy at Wounded Knee in 1890. It was the scene of imprisonment of Ute Indians who made the mistake of interpreting their new citizenship status as freedom from government control. The fort survived the mechanization of the horse cavalry, aided the record-breaking Stratosphere Balloon flight of 1935, and became a training site for the nation's first airborne troops. Fort Meade existed for sixty-six years, from 1878 to 1944. Robert Lee examines the strategic importance of its location on the northern edge of the Black Hills and the role it played in the settlement of the region, as well as the role played by the citizens of Sturgis in keeping it alive. One of the chief delights of Fort Meade and the Black Hills is a gallery of characters including the unfortunate Major Marcus Reno, the beautiful and fatal Ella Sturgis, and the cigar-smoking Poker Alice Tubbs. They, and events scaled to their larger-than-life size, are part of this long overdue story of Fort Meade. Robert Lee has published several books and many articles on South Dakota's history. Inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 1987, he was named its writer of the year in 1992.By Tom Lea. 2002
Originally published in 1952, Tom Lea’s The Wonderful Country opens as mejicano pistolero Martín Bredi is returning to El Puerto…
(El Paso) after a fourteen-year absence. Bredi carries a gun for the Chihuahuan warlord Cipriano Castro and is on Castro’s business in Texas. Fourteen years earlier—shortly after the end of the Civil War—when he was the boy Martin Brady, he killed the man who murdered his father and fled to Mexico where he became Martín Bredi.Back in Texas Brady breaks a leg; then he falls in love with a married woman while recuperating; and, finally, to right another wrong, he kills a man. When Brady/Bredi returns to Mexico, the Castros distrust him as an American. He becomes a man without a country.The Wonderful Country clearly depicts life along the Texas-Mexico border of a century-and-a-half ago, when Texas and Mexico were being settled and tamed.By Charles Freuhling Springwood, C. King. 2001
A growing controversy in recent years has arisen around the use and abuse of Native American team mascots. The Cleveland…
Indians, Atlanta Braves, Washington Redskins, Kansas City Chiefs, Florida State Seminoles, and so forth--these are just a few of the images and names popularly associated with Native Americans that are still used as mascots by professional sports teams, dozens of universities, and countless high schools. This practice, a troubling legacy of Native-Euro-American relations in the United States, has sparked heated debates and intense protests that continue to escalate. Team Spirits is the first comprehensive look at the Native American mascots controversy. In this work activists and academics explore the origins of Native American mascots, the messages they convey, and the reasons for their persistence into the twenty-first century. The essays examine hotly contested uses of mascots, including the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians, and the University of Illinois's Chief Illiniwek, as well as equally problematic but more complicated examples such as the Florida State Seminoles and the multitude of Native mascots at Marquette University. Also showcased are examples of successful opposition, including an end to Native American mascots at Springfield College and in Los Angeles public schools. C. Richard King is an assistant professor of anthropology at Drake University, and Charles Fruehling Springwood is an assistant professor of anthropology at Illinois Wesleyan University. King and Springwood are coauthors of the forthcoming book Beyond the Cheers: Race As Spectacle in College Sport.By James Lincoln Collier. 2004
Tecumseh was fearless in battle. And like many, he was determined to save his land and his people from the…
American settlers. But Tecumseh, more than any of the others, worked out a realistic plan for keeping the settlers out of Indian lands, and he came closer to doing it than any other.By David J. Silverman. 2016
David Silverman argues against the notion that Indians prized flintlock muskets more for their pyrotechnics than for their efficiency as…
tools of war. Native peoples fully recognized the potential of firearms to assist them in their struggles against colonial forces, and mostly against one another, as arms races erupted across North America.By E. Barrie Kavasch. 1999
American Indian Healing Arts is a magical blend of plant lore, history, and living tradition that draws on a lifetime…
of study with native healers by herbalist and ethnobotanist E. Barrie Kavasch. Here are the time-honored tribal rituals performed to promote good health, heal illness, and bring mind and spirit into harmony with nature. Here also are dozens of safe, effective earth remedies--many of which are now being confirmed by modern research. Each chapter introduces a new stage in the life cycle, from the delightful Navajo First Smile Ceremony (welcoming a new baby) to the Apache Sunrise Ceremony (celebrating puberty) to the Seminole Old People's Dance. At the heart of the book are more than sixty easy-to-use herbal remedies--including soothing rubs for baby, a yucca face mask for troubled skin, relaxing teas, massage oils, natural insect repellents, and fragrant smudge sticks. There are also guidelines for assembling a basic American Indian medicine chest.By Andrew Santella. 2003
By Arnold Krupat. 2002
Arnold Krupat, one of the most original and respected critics working in Native American studies today, offers a clear and…
compelling set of reasons why red--Native American culture, history, and literature--should matter to Americans more than it has to date. Although there exists a growing body of criticism demonstrating the importance of Native American literature in its own right and in relation to other ethnic and minority literatures, Native materials still have not been accorded the full attention they require. Krupat argues that it is simply not possible to understand the ethical and intellectual heritage of the West without engaging America's treatment of its indigenous peoples and their extraordinary and resilient responses. Criticism of Native literature in its current development, Krupat suggests, operates from one of three critical perspectives against colonialism that he calls nationalism, indigenism, and cosmopolitanism. Nationalist critics are foremost concerned with tribal sovereignty, indigenist critics focus on non-Western modes of knowledge, and cosmopolitan critics wish to look elsewhere for comparative possibilities. Krupat persuasively contends that all three critical perspectives can work in a complementary rather than an oppositional fashion. A work marked by theoretical sophistication, wide learning, and social passion, Red Matters is a major contribution to the imperative effort of understanding the indigenous presence on the American continents.By C. M. Oehler. 1987
In August 1862 the Sioux of Minnesota rose up against their white neighbors in the bloodiest massacre in the history…
of the West, with four times the fatalities of the Battle of Little Big Horn. The Sioux had been viewed by white settlers as a friendly tribe, but in reality they were deeply resentful over the loss of lands, the disappearance of the buffalo, broken treaties, the government's delayed annuity payments, and the refusal of traders to release food to starving Indians. During their week-long rampage the Sioux killed some 800 settlers, took scores of women and children captive, sent tens of thousands of refugees fleeing eastward, and marked the outbreak of a series of wars between whites and Indians over the Great Plains that did not end until nearly thirty years later at a place called Wounded Knee. This book is a gripping but even-handed reconstruction of the lives and deaths of settlers, Indians, traders, agents, and soldiers as they unknowingly created an epic chapter of frontier history.By Catherine Gourley. 2002
Born in 1925, Maria Tallchief spent part of her childhood on an Osage reservation in Oklahoma. With the support of…
her family and world-renowned choreographer George Balanchine, she rose to the top of her art form to become America's first prima ballerina.By Kent Nerburn. 1999
The teachings of the Native Americans provide a connection with the land, the environment, and the simple beauties of life.…
This collection of writings from revered Native Americans offers timeless, meaningful lessons on living and learning. Taken from writings, orations, and recorded observations of life, this book selects the best of Native American wisdom and distills it to its essence in short, digestible quotes -- perhaps even more timely now than when they were first written. In addition to the short passages, this edition includes the complete Soul of an Indian, as well as other writings by Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman), one of the great interpreters of American Indian thought, and three great speeches by Chiefs Joseph, Seattle, and Red Jacket.By Kent Nerburn, Louise Mengelkoch. 1991
Joseph, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Black Elk, Ohiyesa, and many others share their insights on Native American ways of living,…
learning, and dying. There is something archetypal about the philosophy of the original Americans, especially to the sensibilities of modern European Americans. We recognize it as coming from the earth we walk on, from those who preceded us. As we read the wisdom of these peoples, it is possible to feel a reconnection with our land and ourselves. Taken from orations, recorded observations of life and social affairs, and other first-person testimonies, this book selects the best of Native American wisdom and distills it to its essence in short, digestible quotes that are meaningful and timeless -- perhaps even more timely now than when they were written.By J. R. Miller. 2017
Since the 1980s successive Canadian institutions, including the federal government and Christian churches, have attempted to grapple with the malignant…
legacy of residential schooling, including official apologies, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In Residential Schools and Reconciliation, award winning author J. R. Miller tackles and explains these institutional responses to Canada’s residential school legacy. Analysing archival material and interviews with former students, politicians, bureaucrats, church officials, and the Chief Commissioner of the TRC, Miller reveals a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation – the inability of Canadians at large to overcome their flawed, overly positive understanding of their country’s history. This unique, timely, and provocative work asks Canadians to accept that the root of the problem was Canadians like them in the past who acquiesced to aggressively assimilative policies.By Stefanie Takacs. 2003