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

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

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

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

Discrimination in Metropolitan Housing Markets: Phase 3 - Native Americans

This paper documents the results of a pilot paired testing program to examine the treatment of Native Americans by real estate agents in rental housing markets in three states and owner-occupied housing markets in one state. The study finds that the level of discrimination experienced by Native Americans in rental markets exceed those experienced by Hispanics, Blacks, and Asian-Americans.

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

Strategies for Improving the Diversity of the Health Professions

Evaluates programs and strategies that were designed to increase the number of underrepresented African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos in the health professions in California. Includes recommendations

[Review of] Elizabeth Weatherford, ed. with Emelia Seubert, Native Americans on Film and Video

This is an extraordinarily impressive and thorough compilation of primarily documentary films made by and about Native Americans. The Museum of the American Indian, the Heye Foundation and Elizabeth Weatherford and Emelia Seubert are to be commended for their effort and industry. Native Americans on Film and Video grew out of a major exhibition, The Ancestors: Native Artisans of the Americas, where more than one hundred and twenty-five films and video tapes were shown by the museum