Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American Culture and History

by Colleen E. Boyd (Editor), Coll Thrush (Editor), Colleen E. Boyd (Introduction), Coll Thrush (Introduction)

Overview

The imagined ghosts of Native Americans have been an important element of colonial fantasy in North America ever since European settlements were established in the seventeenth century. Native burial grounds and Native ghosts have long played a role in both regional and local folklore and in the national literature of the United States and Canada, as settlers struggled to create a new identity for themselves that melded their European heritage with their new, North American frontier surroundings. In this interdisciplinary volume, Colleen E. Boyd and Coll Thrush bring together scholars from a variety of fields to discuss this North American fascination with “the phantom Native American.” 

 
Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence explores the importance of ancestral spirits and historic places in Indigenous and settler communities as they relate to territory and history—in particular cultural, political, social, historical, and environmental contexts. From examinations of how individuals reacted to historical cases of “hauntings,” to how Native phantoms have functioned in the literature of North Americans, to interdisciplinary studies of how such beliefs and narratives allowed European settlers and Indigenous people to make sense of the legacies of colonialism and conquest, these essays show how the past and the present are intertwined through these stories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803211377
Publisher:	Nebraska Paperback
Publication date:	06/01/2011
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Colleen E. Boyd is an associate professor of anthropology at Ball State University. Her articles have appeared in Ethnohistory, Journal of Northwest Anthropology, and in edited volumes. Coll Thrush is an associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place.
 
Contributors: Colleen E. Boyd, Michelle Burnham, Victoria Freeman, Geneva M. Gano, C. Jill Grady, Sarah Schneider Kavanagh, Cynthia Landrum, Allan K. McDougall, Coll Thrush, Lisa Philips Valentine, and Adam John Waterman.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vi

List of Tables vi

Introduction: Bringing Ghosts to Ground Colleen Boyd Coll Thrush vii

Part 1 Methodologies

1 Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer as Indigenous Gothic Michelle Burnham 3

2 Violence on the Home Front in Robinson Jeffers's "Tamar" Geneva M. Gano 26

3 Hauntings as Histories: Indigenous Ghosts and the Urban Past in Seattle Coll Thrush 54

Part 2 Historical Encounters

4 The Anatomy of a Haunting: Black Hawk's Body and the Fabric of History Adam John Waterman 85

5 The Baldoon Mysteries Lisa Philips Allan K. McDougall 117

6 Haunting Remains: Educating a New American Citizenry at Indian Hill Cemetery Sarah Schneider Kavanagh 151

Part 3 The Past in the Present

7 "We Are Standing in My Ancestor's Longhouse": Learning the Language of Spirits and Ghosts Colleen E. Boyd 181

8 Indigenous Hauntings in Settler-Colonial Spaces: The Activism of Indigenous Ancestors in the City of Toronto Victoria Freeman 209

9 Shape-shifters, Ghosts, and Residual Power: An Examination of Northern Plains Spiritual Beliefs, Location, Objects, and Spiritual Colonialism Cynthia Landrum 255

10 Ancestors, Ethnohistorical Practice, and the Authentication of Native Place and Past C. Jill Grady 280

Acknowledgments 301

List of Contributors 303

Index 305

Illustrations

1 Portion of "Map of the Province of Upper Canada" 119

2 Neil T. McDonald's Belledoon Mysteries 127

3 Reprint of Neil T. McDonald's version 128

Table

1 Chart of Perpetrators 143