Native American Oral History Project Transcripts - Accession 542

The Native American Oral History Project Transcripts were the result of an oral history project conducted by the History Department of St. Louis Community College, Missouri in 1978 titled, Listening to Indians. The project was conducted through a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to interview members of various American Indians and record their stories and histories. The Catawba Indian tribe were formerly members of the Sioux Tribe. (See Finding Aid for list of Native American tribes represented in the oral history project).https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/manuscriptcollection_findingaids/2246/thumbnail.jp

A Legacy of Bravery: The Indian Home Guards in the Civil War

Many may not realize that Native Americans played a part in the Civil War, just as they did in many previous American wars. Some Native Americans enlisted with regular infantry units, alongside white Americans. These Native Americans believed they could achieve better treatment by the government and keep their land if they enlisted. They also got paid and fed regularly in the army. They did face discrimination by white soldiers, who believed that these Native Americans exemplified the stereotype of the lazy, drunk Indian. However, such stereotypes were often proved wrong. The most notable example of this is Company K of the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters, made up mostly of Native Americans, who showed their courage and strength in the Battle of the Wilderness and the Battle of Petersburg, among others. In the South and West, most Native Americans tended to fight as separate auxiliaries. It was in this part of the country that most Native Americans had been forcibly relocated to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma as part of Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830. Foremost among these Native Americans were the five “civilized” tribes, called so because they, for the most part, attempted to integrate into American society to gain respect and stop encroachment on their land. These tribes were the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee or Creek, and the Seminole, and they would come to play the biggest role in the Civil War among Native Americans, mostly because they could not escape it. [excerpt

Foundation Funding for Native American Issues and Peoples

Over the past decade, U.S. foundation support benefiting Native Americans declined from 0.5 percent to 0.3 percent of total foundation giving. According to Foundation Funding for Native American Issues and Peoples, total grant dollars targeting Native Americans dropped 30.8 percent in the latest year, compared to a 14.1 percent overall downturn in foundation giving. This report was prepared by the Foundation Center with Native Americans in Philanthropy

Native Americans Explore Heritage

Five Native American students, all with ties to Montana, are working to share their culture through the Native American Student Association

The Desired Effect : Pontiac\u27s Rebellion and the Native American Struggle to Survive in Britain\u27s North American Conquest

Ravaged by war and in debt after its victory in the French and Indian War, Britain was not only recuperating, but rejoicing over the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763. This treaty officially ended the fighting and gave Britain all of the land east of the Mississippi River, formerly owned by the French. The ink on the treaty was barely dry when a new insurgence arose in British occupied North America. Native Americans, dissatisfied after the war with their position as conquered people and not as allies, rebelled collectively against British colonists and forts along the frontier. Before the war had started, the French had traded and lived among the Native Americans, but perhaps most importantly, they had given them presents to show respect and diplomacy. The Native Americans had grown accustomed to this act of friendliness and when Britain, in debt after the war, wanted to considerably reduce the number of gifts given, there were severe consequences. In 1763, the Native Americans led an insurgence, commonly called Pontiac’s Rebellion because of Pontiac, the Ottawa leader. This insurgence would culminate in the first extensive multi-tribal resistance to European colonization in America. In response to Britain’s new policies, the Native Americans took ten of their forts, which led not only to excess in conflict, but to the British exposing smallpox blankets onto the Native Americans

Native Americans and Athletic Scholarships

This research examines the potential effects of collegiate athletic scholarships on Native American athlete’s lives and the lives of the people in their communities. The main focus of this study is to investigate whether it is more likely that Native American students on athletic scholarships will graduate from college and how it affects their reservation communities. Furthermore, it seeks to discover if Native communities look more favorably on their students pursuing higher education when achieved through athletic talent and why this might be the case. This research is important because there is a cycle of alcoholism, drug abuse, poverty, and poor family dynamics, prevalent among Native American reservations. If athletic scholarships can produce a ripple effect that leads to restoring these communities, it is crucial that school administrators, coaches, educators, and parents prioritize the accessibility and awareness of these scholarships. This research could have a large effect on Native American communities by spreading awareness of the opportunity and change collegiate athletic scholarships can bring to Native Americans

Text and Context: Teaching Native American Literature

Silence is a major value in Native American culture, for silence is the token of acceptance, the symbol of peace and serenity, and the outward expression of harmony between the human and natural worlds. The result of this tradition of silence, however, is a limited written record, a limited number of texts produced by Native Americans themselves. This situation allowed the Anglo to step into the void and speak for Native Americans themselves, or more accurately, to claim to speak as their interpreters. The implication that white culture drew from the lack of a written language in any of the Native American tribes was that these people had nothing of value to say to themselves or to others. It was not until the past twenty years that Native Americans have begun to produce their own literary works written in English with an eye toward communicating with the American population as a whole. Until the publication of Scott Momaday\u27s House Made of Dawn (1968), the general population had not heard actual Native Americans speak in their own voices-the white culture had been speaking for them. During the past twenty years, however, there has been a veritable explosion of texts coming from the Native American community, and we now have a substantial corpus to use in teaching contemporary Native American literature

Southeastern Indian Guide Project Records - Accession 403

This Southeastern Indian Guide Project Records include surveys, questionnaires, correspondence, research notes, and reference materials for a book-length collaboration authored by Dr. Arnold Shankman and Ronald J. Chepesiuk concerning research materials on Indians of the Southeast. The book was published by Greenwood Press in 1982 and is entitled American Indian Archival Material: A Guide to Holdings in the Southeast.https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/manuscriptcollection_findingaids/1438/thumbnail.jp

Culture matters: America’s African Diaspora and labor market outcomes

This paper contrasts the explanatory power of the mono-cultural and diversity models of racial disparity. The mono-cultural model ignores nativity and ethnic differences among African Americans. The diversity model assumes that culture affects both intra- and interracial labor market disparity. The diversity model seeks to enhance our ability to understand the relative merits of culture versus market discrimination as determinants of racial inequality in labor market outcomes. Our results are consistent with the diversity model of racial inequality. Specifically, racial disparity consists of the following outcomes: 1) persistent racial wage and employment effects between both native and immigrant African Americans and whites, 2) limited ethnicity effects among African Americans, 3) diverse employment and wage effects among native and immigrant African Americans, 4) intra-racial wage penalties (premiums) for immigrant (native) African Americans, and 5) evidence of relatively higher unobserved productivity-linked attributes among Caribbean-English immigrants. There are regional and intertemporal variations in these inequalities

Native Americans / Asian Americans

This issue brief compares Asian Americans and Native Americans. The brief explores the similarities and differences in the two ethnoracial groups, and discusses how these similarities and differences effect their political participation