The ethics of collecting

1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
EA Sackler
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
Historical Methods

The author questions the concepts underlying ethnological collections of art and artifacts in the context of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Alternatives to traditional Western anthropological and art historical methods of collection and display of sacred Native American material are found in traditional Native American philosophy and practice. The contemporary fashion among curators for contextualization of displayed objects from Indigenous cultures is critiqued in the light of broader ethical concerns regarding the appropriateness of collecting sacred objects from living Indigenous Peoples.

Challenging the “Love of Possessions”: Repatriation of Sacred Objects in the United States and Canada

Collections ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L Dekker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
United Nations ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
United Nations Declaration

In 1990, the United States passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), requiring the repatriation of ancestral remains, funerary, and sacred objects from museums to source communities. Since then, hundreds of thousands of repatriations have occurred, allowing for respectful treatment of ancestors and reconnections to spiritual, communal practice, and ceremony. In Canada, repatriation has been recommended by the Assembly of First Nations, the Canadian Museum Association, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but there is no federal law. Does Canada have a functioning alternative? This examination provides a comparison of how repatriation differs in the two countries, demonstrating that case-by-case negotiations in Canada currently allow for more flexibility and customization to the needs of different Indigenous communities but that the transparency, coordination, and funding associated with NAGPRA would be a significant benefit to claimants in Canada.

Wiwanyag Wachipi

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
Fritz Detwiler
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Religious Ritual ◽  
Pine Ridge ◽  
Ontological Categories ◽  
Ritual Process ◽  
Pine Ridge Reservation

Graham Harvey’s reconceptualisation of religion emphasises the relational world of indigenous peoples. His suggestion that religion revolves around negotiating with ‘our neighbours’ is particularly relevant to Native American ritual processes insofar as he extends ‘neighbours’ to other-species persons. Further, by emphasising ‘lived religion’, Harvey turns our attention to the significance of embodied religion as it expresses itself in ceremonial performances. Harvey’s approach is enriched by Ronald L. Grimes’ notion of the way in which indigenous rituals take us into the deep world of other-species communities through a gift exchange economy that promotes the wellbeing of everyone in the neighbourhood. The present discussion demonstrates the applicability of both Harvey’s and Grimes’ approaches to indigenous religious ritual processes by focusing on James R. Walker’s account of Oglala Sun Dancing. Walker constructs a fourstage ritual process from information he gathered while working as a physician on the Pine Ridge Reservation from 1896 to 1914. The entire process, from the declaration of the first candidates who announce their intention to make bodily sacrifices to the culmination of the ritual process in the last four days where the flesh sacrifices are made many months later, centres on re-establishing and promoting harmonious relations among the Oglala and between the Oglala and their other-species neighbours within the Sacred Hoop. The indigenous methodological approach interprets the process through Oglala cosmological and ontological categories and establishes the significance of Harvey’s approach to religion and Grimes’ approach to ritual in understanding embodied and lived religion.

A Study on the works of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn with reference to Indian Genocide

IJOHMN ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 31-43
Author(s):  
V. Padmanaban
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Native American Studies ◽  
American Government ◽  
White American ◽  
Political Status ◽  
The People ◽  
Indigenous Lands ◽  
Westward Movement ◽  
Wounded Knee

This work is a study on the works of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn who is proficient scholar and hails from South Dakotas and Sioux nations and their turmoil, anguish and lamentation to retrieve their lands and preserve their culture and race. Many a aboriginals were killed in the post colonization. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn grieves and her lamentation for the people of Dakotas yields sympathy towards the survived at Wounded Knee massacre and the great exploitation of the livelihood of the indigenous people and the cruelty of American Federal government. Treaty conserved indigenous lands had been lost due to the title of Sioux Nation and many Dakotas and Dakotas had been forced off from their homelands due to the anti-Indian legislation, poverty and federal Indian – white American policy. The whites had no more regard for or perceiving the native’s peoples’ culture and political status as considered by Jefferson’s epoch. And to collect bones and Indian words, delayed justice all these issues tempt her to write. The authors accuses that America was in ignorance and racism and imperialism which was prevalent in the westward movement. The natives want to recall their struggles, and their futures filled with uncertainty by the reality and losses by the white and Indian life in America which had undergone deliberate diminishment by the American government sparks the writer to back for the indigenous peoples. This multifaceted study links American study with Native American studies. This research brings to highlight the unchangeable scenario of the Native American who is in the bonds of as American further this research scrutinizes Elizabeth’s diplomacy and legalized decolonization theory which reflects in her literature career and her works but defies to her own doctrines.

Indigenous Planning: From Forced Assimilation to Self-determination

2021 ◽  
pp. 088541222110266
Author(s):  
Michael Hibbard
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Indigenous Planning ◽  
Indigenous Land Rights ◽  
Indigenous Land

Interest in Indigenous planning has blossomed in recent years, particularly as it relates to the Indigenous response to settler colonialism. Driven by land and resource hunger, settler states strove to extinguish Indigenous land rights and ultimately to destroy Indigenous cultures. However, Indigenous peoples have persisted. This article draws on the literature to examine the resistance of Indigenous peoples to settler colonialism, their resilience, and the resurgence of Indigenous planning as a vehicle for Indigenous peoples to determine their own fate and to enact their own conceptions of self-determination and self-governance.

Indigenous Studies in the United States and Canada

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aubrey Jean Hanson ◽  
Sam McKegney
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Indigenous Voices

Indigenous literary studies, as a field, is as diverse as Indigenous Peoples. Comprising study of texts by Indigenous authors, as well as literary study using Indigenous interpretive methods, Indigenous literary studies is centered on the significance of stories within Indigenous communities. Embodying continuity with traditional oral stories, expanding rapidly with growth in publishing, and traversing a wild range of generic innovation, Indigenous voices ring out powerfully across the literary landscape. Having always had a central place within Indigenous communities, where they are interwoven with the significance of people’s lives, Indigenous stories also gained more attention among non-Indigenous readers in the United States and Canada as the 20th century rolled into the 21st. As relationships between Indigenous Peoples (Native American, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) and non-Indigenous people continue to be a social, political, and cultural focus in these two nation-states, and as Indigenous Peoples continue to work for self-determination amid colonial systems and structures, literary art plays an important role in representing Indigenous realities and inspiring continuity and change. An educational dimension also exists for Indigenous literatures, in that they offer opportunities for non-Indigenous readerships—and, indeed, for readers from within Indigenous nations—to learn about Indigenous people and perspectives. Texts are crucially tied to contexts; therefore, engaging with Indigenous literatures requires readers to pursue and step into that beauty and complexity. Indigenous literatures are also impressive in their artistry; in conveying the brilliance of Indigenous Peoples; in expressing Indigenous voices and stories; in connecting pasts, presents, and futures; and in imagining better ways to enact relationality with other people and with other-than-human relatives. Indigenous literatures span diverse nations across vast territories and materialize in every genre. While critics new to the field may find it an adjustment to step into the responsibility—for instance, to land, community, and Peoplehood—that these literatures call for, the returns are great, as engaging with Indigenous literatures opens up space for relationship, self-reflexivity, and appreciation for exceptional literary artistry. Indigenous literatures invite readers and critics to center in Indigeneity, to build good relations, to engage beyond the text, and to attend to Indigenous storyways—ways of knowing, being, and doing through story.

Cultural and Collective Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Venezuela

2015 ◽  
pp. 110-134
Author(s):  
Soledad Torrecuadrada García-Lozano ◽  
Vladimir Aguilar Castro ◽  
Carlos Grimaldo Lorente
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Collective Rights ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Positive Assessment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indigenous Perspective

In this chapter, the authors attempt to demonstrate that respect for cultural identity of all human groups should be seen as a fundamental right. Ignoring Collective rights of indigenous peoples, those related to their cultural traditions, generally causes the lack of respect. Thus, knowledge of the cultural manifestations and their origin and meaning (as part of the history of the territories they inhabit) can conquer this respect on a par with its defense. This obviously with comprehensive training aimed to sensitize the general population in the positive assessment it deserves it different. The actions of nation-states governments with strong indigenous population has been characterized, until recently, by a remarkable disregard for indigenous cultures, having as a result the result of which such attitude, today from the non - indigenous perspective indigenous cultural manifestations are reduced to colorful folklore shows, when not seen as backward and primitive traditions. This chapter delves deeply into the legal framework for the protection of collective and cultural rights of indigenous peoples. The authors also attempt to show the weaknesses of the law and how states should act to strengthen them. Proposed article does emphasis on indigenous traditional knowledge and not in a wider debate on the topic of knowledge in general.

Intolerance toward Native American Religions

2020 ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
John Corrigan ◽  
Lynn S. Neal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Native American Religions

Settler colonialism was imbued with intolerance towards Indigenous peoples. In colonial North America brutal military force was applied to the subjection and conversion of Native Americans to Christianity. In the United States, that offense continued, joined with condemnations of Indian religious practice as savagery, or as no religion at all. The violence was legitimated by appeals to Christian scripture in which genocide was commanded by God. Forced conversion to Christianity and the outlawing of Native religious practices were central aspects of white intolerance.

History, Postmodernism, and Louise Erdrich's Tracks

PMLA ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 109 (5) ◽  
pp. 982-994 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
American History ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Native American History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Historical Accounts

The deconstruction of history by poststructuralists and some philosophers of history has occurred at the moment when women and indigenous peoples have begun to write their own historical accounts. Louise Erdrich's historical novel, Tracks, brings into focus the necessity and the difficulties of writing Native American history in a postmodern epoch. The novel addresses two crucial issues: the referential value of history (If it is impossible to know the past fully, is it impossible to know the past at all?) and the status of history as narrative (If history is just a story, how is it possible to discriminate between one story and another?). Erdrich's novel suggests the need for indigenous histories to counter the dominant narrative, in which the settling of America is “progress,” but also works toward a new historicity that is neither a simple return to historical realism nor a passive acceptance of postmodern historical fictionality.

Contact between the Norse Vikings and the Dorset culture in Arctic Canada

Antiquity ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 82 (315) ◽  
pp. 189-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Park
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Arctic Canada ◽  
The North

Instances of cultural interaction between Norse and native American have long been accepted. But current archaeological research recognises that the indigenous peoples of the north were themselves diverse and had diverse histories. Here the author shows that the culture of one of them, the Dorset people, owed nothing to the Norse and probably had no contact with them.

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