Insiders and Outsiders: The Case for Alaska Reclaiming Its Cultural Property

Because of the historically troubling treatment of American Indians by the United States government, the nation’s native populations have been largely unable to control their cultural identities. Cultural property laws provide a framework for transferring stolen art and cultural objects to their native owners in an attempt to return cultural sovereignty to native communities. Despite Alaska’s large and thriving native population, Alaska Natives have trailed behind other states’ native populations in asserting their cultural property rights. This Note considers the current cultural property framework and its evolution in an effort to understand why Alaska Natives are not seeking return of their cultural objects to the same extent as other native groups

Economic and Psychic Exploitation of American Indians

Two general points can be made about Euroamerican exploitation of American Indians: first, whatever level of exploitation they have experienced by the motion picture industry, it is part of a long tradition which dates back to the earliest contacts between white Europeans and Indians; and second, that the exploitation has taken on two forms-economic and psychic. Just how Indians have been taken advantage of economically is relatively clear. Euroamerican history texts happily record the ways in which the native inhabitants of the American shores were bilked, with the $24 worth of beads, for Manhatten [Manhattan] Island and with equally inequitable arrangements for the rest of their lands. Perhaps less obvious, and more damaging is just how these same people have been exploited for emotional and psychological reasons

[Review of] Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., and James W. Parins. American Indian and Alaska Native Newspapers and Periodicals, 1826-1924

American Indian and Alaska Native Newspapers and Periodicals, 1826-1924 is a timely and useful book, particularly with growing interest in ethnicity. The work is a directory listing more than 200 titles of American Indian and Alaska Native newspapers and periodicals . The names of the newspapers and journals are listed alphabetically as well as cross-referenced by tribal affiliation, location, and chronology. Following each title is a brief description listing the publications owner(s) and dates of publication. An index is included. The book describes the earliest newspapers up to 1924, when the Pueblo Lands Board Act was passed, giving citizenship to all Indians and legal standing to tribes

[Review of] Margaret Connell Szasz. Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607-1783

In this ethnohistory of American Indian education, Margaret Szasz broadly interprets education to mean the transmission of culture over time. Within the arena of contact, prominent Indians who helped mediate the relations between Euro -- and Native Americans are identified. Szasz calls these individuals cultural brokers, and her analysis of their roles in the history of colonial education is an important contribution to scholarship

The Pocahontas Exception: American Indians and Exceptionalism in Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924

Most scholarship on Loving v. Virginia (1967) briefly mentions the “Pocahontas Exception,” a subsection of Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 which counted persons of limited American Indian ancestry as white. However, few of these works raise the issue outside of a footnote. This article addresses the treatment of Native American ancestry as a curious exception to the threat of racial impurity. Virginia’s antimiscegenation statute sought to eradicate stealth intrusions of tainted blood into the white race, which proponents believed to be threatened “by the quagmire of mongrelization.” Exempted from this racial policing regime were those influential whites, the “First Families of Virginia,” who proudly claimed Native American ancestry from Pocahontas. Why would Native American ancestry, as opposed to others, pass as acceptable nonwhite blood and good law? This exception translates into contemporary social practice, as increasing numbers of Americans freely and lately claim Native ancestry. This openness escapes the triumvirate of resistance, shame, and secrecy that regularly accompanies findings of partial African ancestry. This paper contends that antimiscegenation laws such as the Racial Integrity Act relegate Indians to existence only in a distant past, creating a temporal disjuncture to free Indians from a contemporary discourse of racial politics. I argue that such exemptions assess Indians as abstractions rather than practicalities, which facilitates the miscegenistic exceptionalism as demonstrated in Virginia’s antimiscegenation statute

Differences in Prenatal Tobacco Exposure Patterns among 13 Race/Ethnic Groups in California.

Prenatal tobacco exposure is a significant, preventable cause of childhood morbidity, yet little is known about exposure risks for many race/ethnic subpopulations. We studied active smoking and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure in a population-based cohort of 13 racially/ethnically diverse pregnant women: white, African American, Hispanic, Native American, including nine Asian/Pacific Islander subgroups: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laotian, Samoan, and Asian Indians (N = 3329). Using the major nicotine metabolite, cotinine, as an objective biomarker, we analyzed mid-pregnancy serum from prenatal screening banked in 1999⁻2002 from Southern California in an effort to understand differences in tobacco exposure patterns by race/ethnicity, as well as provide a baseline for future work to assess secular changes and longer-term health outcomes. Prevalence of active smoking (based on age- and race-specific cotinine cutpoints) was highest among African American, Samoan, Native Americans and whites (6.8⁻14.1%); and lowest among Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese and Asian Indians (0.3⁻1.0%). ETS exposure among non-smokers was highest among African Americans and Samoans, followed by Cambodians, Native Americans, Vietnamese and Koreans, and lowest among Filipinos, Japanese, whites, and Chinese. At least 75% of women had detectable cotinine. While for most groups, levels of active smoking corresponded with levels of ETS, divergent patterns were also found. For example, smoking prevalence among white women was among the highest, but the group's ETS exposure was low among non-smokers; while Vietnamese women were unlikely to be active smokers, they experienced relatively high ETS exposure. Knowledge of race/ethnic differences may be useful in assessing disparities in health outcomes and creating successful tobacco interventions

Notes on Contemporary Indian Identity.

This essay offers a survey of Native American positions in the American patchwork. Taking as a starting point contemporary American politics and the possibility of multiracial identification in the U.S. Census, it surveys the contemporary discussion by Native American writers and scholars on “Men made of words,” “postindians,” “paracolonialism,” invented Indians, real Indians, and Indians as “signatures of assent,” foregrounding the complex negotiations involved in definitions and self-definitions of Indian identity

The American Indian and Alaskan Native Development Index: The Progress of and Prospects for Indian Country

Over the past century, the public consciousness has created a stereotype of the modern Native American as a poor, hopeless person sustained only by the charity of others. While it is certainly true that American Indians are generally poor compared to the rest of the United States, some Native American populations have grown quite wealthy as this project will demonstrate. This problem is the classic question of development that has vexed economists for years: why did some tribes become rich, when the rest did not

Critical Voices: Reinterpreting American History at the Eiteljorg Museum

The complexity of the relationship between Native Americans and Western Americans is reflected in the visual culture of both societies, and in how it is displayed within the context of museums. The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art is unique because it contains collections from both of these societies. It can be argued that displaying art from both societies in the same space only contributes to the colonial mindset because the voices of the Native Americans will be drowned out by the more dominant voices of the white settlers. I argue that the way that the Eiteljorg Museum presents their galleries and utilizes educational programming is beneficial in teaching all of the diverse perspectives of the American West. These diverse perspectives are too often excluded from history teaching requirements, which is why the Eiteljorg Museum serves as an excellent tool to teach the true stories of the American West through art and hands on learning. --Provided by the author

[Review of] Peter C. Rollins and John E. O\u27Connor, eds. Hollywood\u27s Indians: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film

Hollywood inherited conflicting myths of Native Americans: barbaric savages or Noble Savage. Influenced by the latter romantic view, James Fenimore Cooper in print and George Catlin and Edward Curtis in art conveyed to an American public a portrait of a noble but vanishing race of America\u27s first people. The dime store novels and Wild West shows of the late 1800s played with the dueling idea of a noble yet menacing Red Man, and Hollywood picked up this created myth of American Indians which, while ostensibly sympathetic, actually perpetuated stereotypes of a depraved and primitive race. Hollywood then packaged these images, made them her own, and secured for generations of people the predominant image today held of Native Americans. Since, as Hannu Salmi theorizes, movies are the myth by which Americans understand Western history, this is an alarming state of affairs