2018 Fall SUNY First Peoples of North America

The presentation of Wilma Mankiller: Challenges Facing 21 st . Century Indigenous People presented by ASU Libraries is very appropriate for the Indigenous People of North America course, especially Module Five because it addresses the resilience of indigenous people despite attempts to eradicate their culture.   Wilma Mankiller is a Cherokee person who served as the first woman Chief of the Cherokee Nation for ten years. Among her accolades is the fact that she holds eighteen honorary Doctorate degrees and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.    Despite the immense diversity of indigenous people, Mankiller states, they have much in common. One commonality is that their lives are part of and inseparable from the natural world.   She mentions a very important prophecy: the world will end when the people are no longer capable of protecting or restoring its balance.   Considering climate change this prophecy is a concern not only to indigenous people bu...

I reviewed the website of the United South and Eastern Tribes Inc. . The website was created by this group (USET) to help communicate their mission effectively and to larger audience, while providing resources for tribal people whom interests are represented by the group as well as the greater public. USET is a not for profit. Inter-tribal organization that was founded in 1969. The groups aim is to represent the interests of tribal people from tribes located in the American south and eastern regions. It is advocacy group that focuses primarily on protecting the sovereignty of Native American tribes in the regions that it’s member tribes come from. The group represents 27 distinct tribal nations and in addition to representing their issues in a larger space also helps to navigate issues between it’s member tribes and their relations with tribes from other regions of the United States. The website provides a wealth of information on the group including their history, current mission a...

I reviewed the website for the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA). Something I found interesting about NAJA is that they focus on supporting both native media sources and native journalists working in mainstream media. I think it is meant to convey a communal perspective about what is best for native journalists and media, and what challenges they face, as well as how those interests can support native culture (NAJA). I think this web resource was selected because the course is moving towards covering contemporary native life, and media depictions (or merely the amount of media coverage) of native people, culture, and movements play a role in how history will continue to be written. I don’t think this site is a quality academic website, but I believe that’s because the intention of the site isn’t to be academic but to serve as a landing page for members of the organization. Indeed, it offers memberships and provides information about awards. Something t...

The source I reviewed from the online resources posted in Module 3 was as essay written by Carolyn j. Marr from the University of Washington’s Digital collection (Found here http://content.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/marr.html). The essay titled “Assimilation Through Education: Indian Boarding Schools in the Pacific Northwest” is meant to convey a historical, non-bias perspective on the history of Indian Boarding schools in the Pacific Northwest. Carolyn J. Marr is an anthropologist and photographer at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, Washington and has worked with tribes on projects relating to photographs and oral history as well as other material culture like the production of baskets and textiles (Marr). This resource was selected because it provides an in depth look at the complete history of Indian Boarding schools and the author has utilized photography and the oral interpretations of people who attended these schools as children. She also sheds some light on th...

            The web source I chose to review is called American Indians and the United States Constitution by Robert J Miller. I think the perspective and viewpoint that Robert Miller conveys represents the argument that Indigenous tribes have always had sovereignty, pre and post contact. I enjoyed the way he laid out his argument, starting with Christopher Columbus and moving through to the Native role in the constitution.                         I have never examined the impact of the Constitution on the Native population. I took an American history class in college that studied in dept the impact on the African American population and slavery but we did not touch on Native Americans. I’m just realizing now that we probably should have. I think this web source was included in this course because this isn’t a topi...

Native American Film Festival We all agree that Native Americans voices have to be heard. Therefore, they are heard but unfortunately they are not always listened to. The 43rd Annual American Indian Festival in San Francisco is one of the ways to express the issues that Indians have to face in and outside their communities and also to show the importance of cultivating their traditions, culture, and language. The Film Festival started in 1975 in Seattle and then two years later was relocated to San Francisco. It became the world's oldest and most recognized international film exposition that is dedicated to Native Americans. This year the movies selection focuses on the environmental problems as well as preserving the cultures that are slowly vanishing. There were also the movies that touched the topic that we recently studied, the boarding schools. I found very interesting the production by Jaiden Mitchell "Cornhusk". From its description I learned that this ...