The White Earth Nation: Ratification of a Native Democratic Constitution

Review of: "The White Earth Nation: Ratification of a Native Democratic Constitution," by Gerald Vizenor and Jill Doerfler

The First Constitutional Government of the Minnesota Anishinaabeg

In this paper I trace the development of Native American constitutionalism in the early twentieth century. Specifically, I focus on the first constitutional government of the White Earth Nation, located in northwestern Minnesota, which in the period from 1913 to 1927 was part of a larger confederative arrangement, called the General Council of the Chippewa. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of this inter-reservation government for the preservation of White Earth Anishinaabe cultural continuity from which revitalization efforts of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century grew. Using archival resources, I pay attention to Anishinaabe governing practices and their ethical dimension that can be understood in the light of Anishinaabe philosophy which was an integral part of everyday life. My findings suggest that the course of institutional development set by the creation of the General Council in 1913 influenced the path of White Earth governance for the rest of the century

A Digital Partnership: Penn Museum and Ojibwe Tribal Historians

In January 2007, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded a grant to the Penn Museum in collaboration with tribal historians and language teachers from the White Earth, Leech Lake, and Fond du Lac bands of the Ojibwe Nation in northern Minnesota. This partnership—entitled Gi Bugadin-a-maa Goom (Ojibwe: “To Sanction, to Give Authority, to Bring to Life”)—offers an exciting glimpse into how digital technology can be utilized to benefit the Museum and Ojibwe communities on equal terms

The White Earth Constitution, Cosmopolitan Nationhood, and the Fruitful Ironies of Relational Sovereignty

When informed by the work of indigenous writers and intellectuals, efforts to reimagine structures and processes of political organization and affiliation might foster reconfigured, enhanced, and expanded recognitions of Native sovereignties while also facilitating the deliberation and pursuit of justice in various contexts and on various scales. This essay explores this possibility by focusing first on some of the ways in which Native writing is currently studied within the academy and second on a particularly noteworthy piece of Native writing: the Constitution of the White Earth Nation. The essay suggests that in its narration of tribal sovereignty as both inherent and federated the Constitution of the White Earth Nation regards indigenous nationhood as a cosmopolitan endeavor

Reframing Sympathy for Indigenous Captives in \u3cem\u3eAvatar: The Last Airbender\u3c/em\u3e

The animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender plays as a response to the broader tradition of American captivity narratives, a genre in which one “captive” character or group is emotionally or physically constrained by a “captor.” Captivity narratives have historical roots in American colonial accounts, especially those by white women, of being captured by mostly male, or at least masculine-coded, American Indians. Avatar: The Last Airbender, commonly referred to as ATLA, takes place in a world of four nations: the Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads, which are based on Inuit, Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan cultures respectively. It details the journey of a young nomad named Aang and his friends to end a century-long war with the technologically advanced Fire Nation. As the series progresses, it most noticeably incorporates the captor-captive dynamic into its protagonists Aang, Katara, and Sokka, who are fleeing and, at times, captured by Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. It is worth noting that Zuko fills both roles, hoping to convince his father to reverse his banishment from the Fire Nation by trying to capture Aan

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology and Spirituality as Decolonial Protest in Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing this transethnic struggle co-opt postmodern narrative structures to translate indigenous and non-Eurocentric knowledges and methodologies both for each-other and for a broader audience including the descendants of the white settler colonial state

Barren Lands and Barren Bodies In Navajo Nation: Indian Women WARN about Uranium, Genetics, and Sterilization

Founded by Native American women in 1974, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) insisted that the ongoing Indian public health crisis could not be properly understood exclusively within the context of the exploitation and pollution of the physical environment. It required as well an understanding of the larger context of Indian health issues evolving out of past and present cultural and political changes. This article focuses on selected health, threats affecting the Dine, or the People, as Navajo Indians call themselves, living in Dine Bikeyah (Navajo Nation) during the mid to late 20th century. Navajo history is marked by a series of catastrophes befalling the health of its people and lands, and reactions by both the Dine and the federal government. The 20th century Navajo story combines the concurrent tragedies of forced Indian sterilizations with the calamitous health consequences of uranium exploitation that continue into the 21st century. This context must not be ignored when assessing the difficulties involved in establishing a trusting relationship between the Navajo people and outside researchers and health care providers

Transnationalism as a decolonizing strategy? ‘Trans-indigenism’ and Native American food sovereignty

The aim of this paper is to analyze how Indigenous communities in the United States have been engaging in trans-Indigenous cooperation in their struggle for food sovereignty. I will look at inter-tribal conferences regarding food sovereignty and farming, and specifically at the discourse of the Indigenous Farming Conference held in Maplelag at the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. I will show how it: (1) creates a space for Indigenous knowledge production and validation, using Indigenous methods (e.g., storytelling), without the need to adhere to Western scientific paradigms; (2) recovers pre-colonial maps and routes distorted by the formation of nation states; and (3) fosters novel sites for trans-indigenous cooperation and approaches to law, helping create a common front in the fight with neoliberal agribusiness and government. In my analysis, I will use Chadwick Allen’s (2014) concept of ‘trans-indigenism’ to demonstrate how decolonizing strategies are used by the Native American food sovereignty movement to achieve their goals

Native American Student Achievement in Minnesota

This report includes information about Native American students' graduation rates in Minnesota schools, legislative gains that are helping Native Americans to succeed, profiles of successful schools, and professional development training activities to help teachers work more effectively with Native American parents and students