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This chapter examines how Native Americana, perceived as a source of profound ecological and spiritual wisdom, has contributed to the formation of the neo-shamanism community in the West. The controversy that sprang up from the use of Native American symbolism by American and European spiritual practitioners is discussed, along with attempts by members of the neo-shamanism community in the West to move away from the Native American dreamlands and toward their own European indigenous spirituality. The manner in which Carl Jung handled non-Western spirituality offers guidelines which many current spiritual seekers interested in the retrieval of pre-Christian European traditions find useful. Jung implied that Europeans concerned about their roots should look into their own indigenous spirituality and mythology; the alien tradition can be helpful to situate one's spiritual experiences, but the materials should be indigenous.

Chapter Two examines colonizing U.S. governmental discourse surrounding the Indian Removal Act of 1830 by positioning it in the crucible of Jacksonian era ideologies. Specifically, the chapter contends that as the executive, legislative and judicial branches codified the removal policy they overcame disagreements regarding Native policies and American Indian identities. The Indian removal debate significantly reduced such uncertainties for U.S. leaders and constructed American Indians as perpetual wards of a paternal government. These colonizing identity dynamics would remain intact until the dawning of the allotment era in the 1880s. The government’s removal era rhetoric punctuated the colonized identities of itself and Native communities by fomenting a cultural hierarchy.

This chapter provides background information on tribal governments and on the book's methods of analysis. The book examines tribal governments in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and the Upper Plains from the 1980s into the 2000s. The book combines quantitative and qualitative analyses, using previously unexplored records of tribal, federal, state, and local governments. Also, the chapter examines the development of American Indian leaders’ strategies from the late 19^th century to present. This chapter provides a context for understanding how Indian leaders discovered and refined tactics for political resilience. Over time, a militarily subjugated people pushed slowly to redefine their relationship with powerholders.

This chapter documents tribal-state interactions: in particular, the role of expertise in tribal successes in state politics. Also, the chapter examines the broader social and political environments in which tribal governments are situated and traces the consequences that those contexts bring for state politics. This chapter shows when tribal governments have more help from the federal government for cultivating skills in a given policy area or for governance structures, they do better in state interactions. Furthermore, American Indian state legislators serve tribal interests in ways that are based on accumulating expertise. But in states where the potential for Indian-white conflict is high, tribal advocates cannot completely undo a marked neglect of their concerns.

This chapter focuses on the under-examined corpus of Carlisle poetry, viewing it as a vital archive for theorizing the role of the American Indian intellectual tradition in negotiating Americanization discourses at the turn of the twentieth century. Materials published in newspapers and magazines at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania (1879–1918) include “Carlisle poetry,” which encompasses original poetry by Native American students, reprints of poems by Indian authors, poems by school personnel, and poems by well-known American authors. This poetry, along with the letters and articles published in Carlisle newspapers and magazines, is complicit with the ideological underpinnings of the institution’s ambitious goals of “making” Indian students into Americans, even as elements of this literature critique the Americanization that Carlisle boarding school demanded of its students.

After successfully defending the Northern Cheyenne and Crow Reservations from non-Indian mining, American Indians launched a national campaign to prepare similarly situated energy tribes for the coming onslaught in energy demand. This chapter details those efforts that began with Northern Cheyenne and Crow leaders helping to organize a regional coalition of tribes to fight federally planned development on the Northern Plains. From this defensive alliance, energy tribes then turned to exploring options to mine their own minerals. They worked with federal agencies charged with expanding domestic energy production in the wake of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and consulted energy experts familiar with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Ultimately, tribes nationwide formed the Council of Energy Resource Tribes to provide a unified Indian voice to federal energy policymakers, lobby for federal aid in developing tribal resources, and share information about energy development. After much confusion as to CERT’s primary purpose – including whether it was a cartel-like “Native American OPEC” – the organization evolved into a professional consulting firm that both worked with individual tribes to pursue specific mining projects and lobbied the federal government for beneficial grants and policies.

A personal account is given of the treatment of Canadian Aborigines (North American Indians) and Aboriginal land. Despite some achievements in the recognition and affirmation of Aboriginal rights, indigenous citizenship with the land is becoming increasingly tenuous. The author advocates Aboriginal control of Canadian affairs (as well as Aboriginal affairs), in the light of the increasing participation of Aboriginals at all levels in Canadian society. He does not advocate assimilation, but argues that citizenship under Aboriginal influence may generate a greater attentiveness to the land uses and cultural practices that are preferred by Aborigines.

This chapter examines the ways that American Indian tribal governments confront and change federal Indian policy—specifically, how tribes have discovered and buttressed institutional niches. The chapter explores both short-term and long-term components of tribes’ strategies. Chapter 3 also identifies forces that can alter prospects for utilizing institutional niches. Tribes sought support from institutional niches because those niches allowed them to understand specific problems and solutions; to understand outside interests and to access them; and to access new organizational repertoires. Tribes secured this assistance over time because they gained political insiders’ insights; they won recognition as important collaborators; and they nudged forward regulations that were more favorable, flexible, and simple.

This chapter examines the history and contemporary experience of Native American Indians, and the contribution of Native philosophies and religious practices to the question of population growth. It discusses reproductive rites, such as puberty ceremonies, and reproductive wrongs, such as the banning of religious practices in the Indian country. It emphasizes the importance of Native perspectives to dialogues on global issues and the validity of indigenous practices and philosophies in the study of religion. It also examines the rights and responsibilities of the American Indians, including the right to freedom of religion and indigenous women's reproductive freedom. The Native Women for Reproductive Rights Coalition, for instance, has created an “Agenda for Reproductive Rights” that reflects traditional Native religious values and articulates the rights of Native women to family planning, contraception, and abortion.

This chapter considers tribal-local relations and illustrates the importance of expertise for tribes' victories in local politics. The chapter also exposes the interplay of race, land, and power in tribes’ external relations. These findings illustrate important limitations: in certain contexts with pronounced racial hostility, other actors may wage high-cost fights than undermine—but do not entirely erase—expertise-based strategies. To evaluate expertise's effects in local politics, the chapter examines tribes with varying governments and with varying economies that improve capacities to house, sustain, and reproduce expertise. The chapter finds that tribes’ political strategies hinge on expert calculations: they are extremely selective about county relations and they pick the winning issues.

They call themselves Ojibway, but in the written history books they are called Chippewa. The Dine' people are called Navajo; the Tis-Tsis-Tsas are called Cheyenne; recently the Winnebago returned to their name of Ho-Chunk Nation; and the Papago are recognized by their original name of Tohono O'Odham. Many changes have been thrust on the American Indian and only in recent years have they begun returning to their roots. This chapter on American Indians presents a brief overview of the history of the first Americans and discusses the diversity of American Indians. Sections on family roles and relationships, language, education, health, and values are presented to help the reader understand American Indians. However, in order to understand the American Indian today, one must recognize the trauma and oppression.

This chapter focuses on the impact of legislative efforts to protect the landed estate of Indians. Members of Congress trying to protect the remaining landed estate of Indians followed a twisted path, replete with compromises and maneuverings that added great complexity and ambiguity to the administration of Indian affairs. This was especially true for the Five Civilized Tribes whose success in mirroring the ways of the Euro-Americans proved to be a legal liability in the post-allotment era.

The United American Indian Involvement, Inc. (UAII) was founded in 1973, with the assistance of the National Institute for Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, to serve the Indian community of Los Angeles. They provide a myriad of social services, including hot meals, showers, beds, referrals, and emergency medical care to American Indians who walked in off the street. This chapter discusses the rise of grassroots Indian activism and how the shifts in U.S. Indian policy and American Indian activism, particularly the public protests of the Red Power Movement, influenced the efforts of UAII to serve urban Indian populations.

This chapter presents two studies: the first examined the influence of anti-American Indian attitudes on culpability decisions for domestic violence when the man's and woman's race (American Indian/European American) and alcohol use (intoxicated or not) were varied; the second examined what constitutes domestic violence for both American Indian and European American women from the same geographic region. The research has implications for a number of issues in the fight to end domestic violence. For example, biases in culpability decision making when American Indian women are involved in domestic abuse have implications for federal intervention and prosecution of non-Indian abusers on reservations and for urban cases as well.