Bent, or Lifted Out by Its Roots: Daves’ Broken Arrow and Drum Beat as Narratives of Conditional Sympathy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Józef Jaskulski
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Federal Indian Policy

Józef Jaskulski examines Broken Arrow and Drum Beat, considering the perspective that the latter perpetuates the very Native American stereotypes that the former attempted to amend. He links these two narratives through a contrastive analysis of their respective Native American protagonists: firstly, the noble, articulate Cochise and the obstinate, inarticulate Modoc, Captain Jack; secondly, the female characters of Sonseeahray and Toby. Though it is easy to discard Drum Beat as an essentialist step back in Hollywood’s century-long struggle with the so-called ‘Indian problem’, Jaskulski suggests that Drum Beat serves as a latent supplement to Broken Arrow, which can be read as an important document of Hollywood’s conflicted sentiments toward Native Americans in the late-Truman/early-Eisenhower eras. In particular, reflecting a critique of the major about-face in Federal Indian Policy during the 1940s.

Comments: Native Americans and Indian Policy in the Progressive Era

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherry Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Native People ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Hemispheric Dominance ◽  
Native American History ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
National Narratives

For years, scholars of Native American history have urged U. S. historians to integrate Indians into national narratives, explaining that Indians' experiences are central to the collective story rather than peripheral to it. They have achieved some successes in penetrating and reworking traditional European-American dominated accounts. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the field of colonial history. In fact, for several decades now colonialists have placed Native Americans at the center, seeing them as integral to imperial processes and as forces that simply can no longer be ignored. To omit them would be to leave out not only crucial participants but important themes. Native people occupied and owned the property European nations coveted. They consequently suffered great losses as imperialists bent on control of land, resources, cultures, and even souls applied their demographic and technological advantages. But conquest did not occur overnight. It took several centuries for Spain, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Great Britain, and eventually the United States to achieve continental and hemispheric dominance. Nor was it ever totally achieved. That 564 officially recognized tribes exist in the early 2000s in the United States demonstrates that complete conquest was never realized.

4. From artifact to intellectual

2018 ◽  
pp. 51-67
Author(s):  
Sean Teuton
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Indian Removal ◽  
Verbal Art ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Indian Wars ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Indigenous Lands

‘From artifact to intellectual’ describes the nineteenth-century Indian Wars and the numerous Native American autobiographies that provide a glimpse into indigenous patterns of living, ways of knowing, and verbal art. These autobiographies also deliver a powerful counter-narrative of US entitlement to indigenous lands during Indian removal. In an era of reform, from around 1890 to 1934, Native and non-Native activists sought legislation to “uplift” the Indian, though reformers’ goals often conflicted. Natives and whites actively collaborated through the Society of American Indians (SAI) to influence federal Indian policy. The SAI helped save Native American writers for the twentieth century, scattering the cultural seeds for later Native literary flourishing.

Consumption as Assimilation: New York Times Reporting on Native American Art and Commodities, 1950–1970

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 972-996
Author(s):  
REETTA HUMALAJOKI
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Native American ◽  
New York Times ◽  
American Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Native American Art ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Art Collectors

The appropriation of Indigenous cultures has sparked multiple controversies in the United States over the past decade. This phenomenon is not new, however. This article examines New York Times reporting on Native American art and commodities to demonstrate how trends in consuming “Indian” products contributed to the assimilationist federal Indian policy of termination, between 1950 and 1970. In this period the consumption of items perceived as “Indian” shifted from an elite art collectors’ activity to a widespread fashion trend. Nevertheless, Times reporting shows that throughout this era shopping for “Indian” items subsumed Indigenous cultures into the imagined unity of a national American identity.

From Backlash to Bingo: Ronald Reagan and Federal Indian Policy

2008 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean J. Kotlowski
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Budget Cuts ◽  
Indian Reservations ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Land Disputes ◽  
Trust Responsibility

Ronald Reagan's contribution to federal Indian policy proved mixed. Remarks by members of his administration recalled the heyday of termination, and Reagan's budget cuts fell hard on Native Americans. Reagan also played to non-Indian backlash by supporting legislation that restricted tribal rights to file claims on land disputes. Still, the administration continued the policy of tribal self-determination, begun under Richard M. Nixon. Reagan signed legislation to restore the Klamaths to federal trust responsibility, to help tribes ““contract out”” to run many federal services themselves, and to recognize and regulate gaming on Indian reservations. Most importantly, Reagan affirmed ““government to government”” relationships between the federal government, states, and tribes. Federal Indian policy mirrored other aspects of U.S. politics in the 1980s, including reductions in domestic spending, white reaction against minority civil rights gains, and the extolling of entrepreneurship. But the administration's ability, and even its willingness, to reverse the trend toward tribal self-determination proved limited.

A Necessary Evil: Framing an American Indian Legal Identity

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 115-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dwanna Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Indian Identity ◽  
Native Identity ◽  
The Us ◽  
Legal Identity ◽  
Necessary Evil ◽  
Indian Blood

This study examines the emergence and application of what I conceptualize as an American Indian Legal Identity (AILI). AILI is an individual identity created by structural forces. Most importantly, a person can have an AILI without having either racial identity or ethnic identity. It stands on its own as proof of Indianness even though it was created in the discourse of federal Indian policy. The tribal reification of this federally defined authenticity birthed a racialized collective Indian identity. Furthermore, it has resulted in the internalized racialization of Native identity. AILI relies upon the verification of a degree of Indian blood as documented in the form of a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) card issued by the US Department of the Interior and through membership within a federally recognized tribe. By focusing on historical social construction of AILI and its current implications within Native populations about who qualifies to be Indian, I analyze semi-structured, in-depth interviews of thirty Native American participants, all of whom ethnically identify as indigenous but only half of whom possess a legal identity. I find participants frame and rationalize AILI's existence by justifying that it is needed to preserve tribal sovereignty.

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