Native Diasporas: Indigenous Identities and Settler Colonialism in the Americas

by Gregory D. Smithers (Editor), Brooke N. Newman (Editor)

Overview

The arrival of European settlers in the Americas disrupted indigenous lifeways, and the effects of colonialism shattered Native communities. Forced migration and human trafficking created a diaspora of cultures, languages, and people. Gregory D. Smithers and Brooke N. Newman have gathered the work of leading scholars, including Bill Anthes, Duane Champagne, Daniel Cobb, Donald Fixico, and Joy Porter, among others, in examining an expansive range of Native peoples and the extent of their influences through reaggregation. These diverse and wide-ranging essays uncover indigenous understandings of self-identification, community, and culture through the speeches, cultural products, intimate relations, and political and legal practices of Native peoples.

Native Diasporas explores how indigenous peoples forged a sense of identity and community amid the changes wrought by European colonialism in the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, and the mainland Americas from the seventeenth through the twentieth century. Broad in scope and groundbreaking in the topics it explores, this volume presents fresh insights from scholars devoted to understanding Native American identity in meaningful and methodologically innovative ways.

Gregory D. Smithers teaches history at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of three books, including Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780s-1890s. Brooke N. Newman is an assistant professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her articles have appeared in Gender and History and Slavery and Abolition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803233638
Publisher:	Nebraska Paperback
Publication date:	06/01/2014
Series:	Borderlands and Transcultural Studies
Pages:	524
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Gregory D. Smithers teaches history at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of three books, including Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780s–1890s. Brooke N. Newman is an assistant professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her articles have appeared in Gender and History and Slavery and Abolition.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Preface Gregory D. Smithers Brooke N. Newman ix

Introduction: "What Is an Indian?"-The Enduring Question of American Indian Identity Gregory D. Smithers 1

Part 1 Adapting Indigenous Identities for the Colonial Diaspora

1 Indigenous Identities in Mesoamerica after the Spanish Conquest Rebecca Horn 31

2 Rethinking the Middle Ground: French Colonialism and Indigenous Identities in the Pays d'en Haut Michael A. McDonnell 79

3 Identity Articulated: British Settlers, Black Caribs, and the Politics of Indigeneity on St. Vincent, 1763-1797 Brooke N. Newman 109

4 Religion, Race, and the Formation of Pan-Indian Identities in the Brothertown Movement, 1700-1800 Linford D. Fisher 151

5 "Decoying Them Within": Creek Gender Identities and the Subversion of Civilization Felicity Donohoe 187

Part 2 Asserting Native Identities through Politics, Work, and Migration

6 Mastering Language: Liberty, Slavery, and Native Resistance in the Early Nineteenth-Century South James Taylor Carson 209

7 Resistance and Removal: Yaqui and Navajo Identities in the Southwest Borderlands Claudia B. Haake 235

8 Progressivism and Native American Self-Expression in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Joy Porter 273

9 Mixed-Descent Indian Identity and Assimilation Policy Katherine Ellinghaus 297

10 "All Go to the Hop Fields": The Role of Migratory and Wage Labor in the Preservation of Indigenous Pacific Northwest Culture Vera Parham 317

Part 3 Twentieth-Century Reflections on Indigenous and Pan-Indian Identities

11 Tribal Institution Building in the Twentieth Century Duane Champagne 349

12 Disease and the "Other": The Role of Medical Imperialism in Oceania Kerri A. Inglis 385

13 "Why Injun Artist Me": Acee Blue Eagle's Diasporic Performative Bill Anthes 411

14 Asserting a Global Indigenous Identity: Native Activism Before and After the Cold War Daniel M. Cobb 443

15 From Tribal to Indian: American Indian Identity in the Twentieth Century Donald L. Fixico 473

Contributors 497

Index 503

Editorial Reviews

“The essays in Native Diasporas address a tremendously important and complicated subject—Indigenous identity.”—Barbara Krauthamer, author of Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South

Barbara Krauthamer

“In a powerful and timely way, Native Diasporas moves away from the ‘frontier’ as finite and from the ‘middle ground’ as an endpoint. Its essays pay attention to women’s agency, gender issues, economic and political dynamics, the history of changing policies, and to Indigenous responses and engagements with settler colonialism.”—Ann McGrath, director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at Australian National University and coauthor of How to Write History that People Want to Read

Ann McGrath

"The essays in Native Diasporas offer fascinating case studies that simultaneously value local nuance and transnational/global contexualization across more than three centuries of history. They also offer fresh insights in the study of indigenous identities."—Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, Western Historical Quarterly

Western Historical Quarterly - Joseph Genetin-Pilawa

"This text is not only a timely addition to the Native American/American Indian studies discourse, but it also introduces a fresh way of discussing indigeneity and the complicated experience of those communities impacted by settler colonialism."—Clementine Bordeaux, American Indian Culture and Research Journal

American Indian Culture and Research Journal - Clementine Bordeaux

"This work will become a seminal text for people studying in the field."—Paul Moon, Te Kaharoa

Te Kaharoa - Paul Moon