Mankiller is actually a good thing

Wilma Mankiller gave an excellent talk at Sonoma State University in February of 2008 on the current state of tribal governments in the United States. The talk begins with a summary of the types of tribal governments that have existed and do exist. She notes that a few governments are currently similar to their historical forms, while others have modernized considerably. One thing that many people may not understand is that tribal governments are not any less sophisticated than the US federal government. Mankiller points out that the Haudenosaunee nation was a powerful imperial force before European settlers arrived, and that modern-day tribal governments often have complex treaty agreements with the US.

Mankiller takes on the sometimes popular notion that native women held roles similar to European housewives. Contrary to that idea, native women were and are in fact powerful politicians and many native governments were run by women at the highest levels. But women were not the center of society; instead Mankiller tells us that interdependence is one of the core values of tribal societies. Even natives who have taken on jobs in the financial services sector maintain ties to their homeland and their people, because that is the basis of their culture. This hints at just how devastating it was when the US government separated tribes through relocation; they were tearing apart communities and attacking their cultural core.

We also see that many tribal governments are actually well-positioned to survive into the future. Business ventures like casinos are providing funds to take on large projects, such as a tribe taking on the provision of its own social services. The communities remain strong, and the cultures thrive. I personally think modern technology can help a lot here; the Internet has created a global community, which allows native cultures to remain connected across distances and also to disseminate information about themselves to the rest of the world. This basically guarantees they will not be forgotten. Though tribal peoples have been through a lot, it looks like they will continue to be strong for the forseeable future, just as they have been in the past.

The Native American Authors archive maintained and hosted by ipl2 is a wonderful resource for anyone trying to find published work by Native Americans. ipl2 (a stylized name in all lower-case) calls itself “the first public library of and for the Internet community,” that aims to “shape and direct the evolving role of libraries in an increasingly digital world.” It is run by a conrortium of various schools of information technology and library sciences, with Drexel University in Pennsylvania being the managing partner. The amount of information in this resource is vast, and they provide several tools to sort and filter their database to find what you’re looking for.

The Native American Authors archive is found under ipl2’s “special collections” page, alongside such other topics as “US Presidents,” “Deaf and Hard of Hearing,” and “Digital Storytelling.” The archive is an excellent resource when searching for any Native American writings; it provides alphabetical sorting by author’s last name, titles, or tribes, and upon choosing an author the user is presented with a brief biography, a list of primary online sources on the author, and a full bibliography which includes titles, publication dates, and ISBNs (where applicable). Just as an example, searching for tribes beginning with ‘O’ you can easily find a list of Onondaga authors. If you click Oren Lyons’ name, you are presented with a list of his books and a link to his author biography page at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. This is a comprehensive and reliable collection of information that will be useful to anyone trying to study Native Americans at any level.

The thing that most struck me about this archive is the enormous number of published Native American authors. Studying US history, it can seem like Native American voices were largely silenced by the European settlers. This list of hundreds of published authors, many of them still living, proves otherwise. The work ipl2 did on this archive makes it clear that many native cultures are still alive, and provides a priceless resource to those who want to study them.

US GSA is a good resource for information on US-native relations

The US General Services Administration’s page on tribal consultation is intended to offer a convenient resource to familiarize oneself with federal policy regarding relations with native peoples. The GSA is essentially the logistics arm of the government; an independent federal agency concerned with managing cost, real estate, transportation, and other administrative needs of federal employees. Land management includes a historic preservation program meant to manage historical sites in the US, and thus relations with natives are important to the GSA since many native sites may fall under their purview. The GSA page clearly states their policy (warning for those on a slow device: this is a PDF), which “[commits] to a government-to-government relationship with federally-recognized tribal governments.”

This is an excellent and relevant source for anyone studying government relations with native peoples. A unique challenge faced by the United States is how to effectively manage relations with what are essentially many small enclaves within its borders, and diplomacy can be especially fragile given past interactions between the groups at play. The very agency tasked with managing various sites which may belong to the US but still hold significance for tribal groups is thus a good primary source of information for how this issue has evolved over time. Indeed, links are provided to the text of various policy statements over the past two decades or so, providing valuable insight into how this relationship has evolved over time.

Nothing here has really challenged my ideas about native communities, but it did give me more insight into some of the cultural struggles faced by natives. For example, I learned that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was only passed in 1990. NAGPRA mandated that cultural items including human remains and funerary objects discovered on federal land after November 16, 1990 be returned to the tribes from which they originated. I was a bit taken aback that this has only been official policy for a little less than 24 years. I think government websites like this are a great resource for anyone wanting to follow the history of any sort of policy, because laws and policy statements tend to be well-documented if you can find the relevant agency. 

Thoughts on the journey of Lewis and Clark

The stories of the various Indian tribes encountered by Lewis and Clark are fascinating. The descriptions of each individual tribe and the journey as a whole give the impression that the expedition was wandering across a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland, encountering the last remains of what was a thriving continent. It appears that, though each group encountered had still managed to keep their culture intact, they had all been decreased severely in numbers. Smallpox and other diseases had swept from coast to coast in the New World, leaving devastated villages and cities in their wake.

Despite that, the remaining Indians functioned in a way that reminds me a bit of Europe. Many ethnically similar groups living in close proximity to one another had found ways to establish trade relationships with each other and eith the Eurpoeans, thus ensuring that each had access to the things they needed.

One particular example that struck me was that of the Teton Sioux and the Arikaras. The Arikaras were a group of skilled farmers, and the Teton Sioux were well aware of this. For their part, the Teton Sioux had a powerful army, but were not nearly as good at growing corn. So the two groups traded their specialties one for the other, and as a result were able to cling to their existence in the aftermath of smallpox. The truly interesting thing, though, is that the Teton Sioux were not friendly towards Lewis or Clark, even though the Arikara were.

This just shows one way in which Indian relationships must have been diplomatically complex, because these sorts of alliances could give the astute observer access to information or goods from an unfriendly culture by using a friendly one as an intermediary. It’s interesting to me how similar this seems to the challenges faced by modern diplomats.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/native/index.html