Indian Country

Gail Guthrie Valaskakis

Description

Since first contact, Natives and newcomers have been involved in an increasingly complex struggle over power and identity. Modern “Indian wars” are fought over land and treaty rights, artistic appropriation, and academic analysis, while Native communities struggle among themselves over membership, money, and cultural meaning. In cultural and political arenas across North America, Natives enact and newcomers protest issues of traditionalism, sovereignty, and self-determination. In these struggles over domination and resistance, over different ideologies and Indian identities, neither Natives nor other North Americans recognize the significance of being rooted together in history and culture, or how representations of “Indianness” set them in opposition to each other.

In Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native Culture, Gail Guthrie Valaskakis uses a cultural studies approach to offer a unique perspective on Native political struggle and cultural conflict in both Canada and the United States. She reflects on treaty rights and traditionalism, media warriors, Indian princesses, powwow, museums, art, and nationhood. According to Valaskakis, Native and non-Native people construct both who they are and their relations with each other in narratives that circulate through art, anthropological method, cultural appropriation, and Native reappropriation. For Native peoples and Others, untangling the past—personal, political, and cultural—can help to make sense of current struggles over power and identity that define the Native experience today.

Grounded in theory and threaded with Native voices and evocative descriptions of “Indian” experience (including the author’s), the essays interweave historical and political process, personal narrative, and cultural critique. This book is an important contribution to Native studies that will appeal to anyone interested in First Nations’ experience and popular culture.

Sujets

• Cultural Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 03 août 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781554588107
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Indian Country Essays on Contemporary Native Culture
Indian Country
Essays on Contemporary Native Culture
Gail Guthrie Valaskakis
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation s Ontario Book Initiative.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Valaskakis, Gail Guthrie Indian country: essays on contemporary Native culture / Gail Guthrie Valaskakis
(Aboriginal studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 0-88920-479-9
1. Indians of North America-Canada. 2. Indians of North America. I . Title. II . Series: Aboriginal studies series (Waterloo, Ont.)
E 77.2. V 34 2005 305.897 071 C 2005-902019-9
2005 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N 2 L 3 C 5 www.wlupress.wlu.ca
Cover photograph: Margaret Gauthier in the ceremonial dress she gave to the Smithsonian Museum in the late 1920s. Photograph courtesy of the author. Cover and text design by P.J. Woodland.
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.

Printed in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Table of Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION Approaching Indian Country
1 L IVING THE H ERITAGE OF L AC DU F LAMBEAU Traditionalism and Treaty Rights
2 R IGHTS AND W ARRIORS Media Memories and Oka
3 P OSTCARDS OF M Y P AST Indians and Artifacts
4 I NDIAN C OUNTRY Claiming Land in Native America
5 S ACAJAWEA AND H ER S ISTERS Images and Native Women
6 D ANCE M E I NSIDE Pow Wow and Being Indian

7 D RUMMING THE P AST Researching Indian Objects
8 B LOOD B ORDERS Being Indian and Belonging
9 C ONCLUSION All My Relations
R EFERENCES
I NDEX
List of Illustrations
1 Big George Skye with Ben Guthrie (age six), standing in front of the trading post built by Ben and Margaret Gauthier on the Lac du Flambeau reservation, 1914. p. 17
2 Margaret Gauthier in the ceremonial dress she gave to the Smithsonian Museum in the late 1920s. p. 21
3 Indians from Lac du Flambeau marching in the Fourth of July parade, carrying Indian Joe flags, 1991. p. 31
4 Mohawk Warrior surrounded by reporters, Oka, 1990. p. 40
5 A postcard photograph of Mrs. Chen-Gu-Os-No-Qua on the Lac du Flambeau reservation, 1910 to 1920. p. 75
6 Sacajawea, or Bird Woman, spearing fish with a bow and arrow from a birchbark canoe, 1920s. p. 126
7 1920s print of an Indian princess wearing a war bonnet. p. 139
8 Minnie Cloud, Lac du Flambeau reservation, 1910 to 1920. p. 142
9 Marcus Guthrie dancing at a winter pow wow, Lac du Flambeau, 1975. p. 156
10 Pow Wow at Bear River, in the Old Village on the Lac du Flambeau reservation, 1938. p. 165
11 Mid wiwin member with drum in a Mid wigan, or Mid wiwin Lodge. p. 197
Acknowledgments
I thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a publications grant in support of this book; Concordia University for the Administrative Research Grants that allowed me to present conference papers and publish articles during the years in which I was vice-dean and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science; and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation for the privilege of serving as Director of Research. I am grateful, too, to Jacqueline Larson, Carroll Klein, Beth McAuley, and the staff of Wilfrid Laurier University Press for their support, insight, and skill throughout the processes of editing and publishing this collection of essays.
I am also indebted to the distant teachers, whose writing weaves through these essays; and to the close companions, whose generosity, curiosity, and knowledge are woven into my daily life: Stan Cudek, Gregg Guthrie, Ion and Paris Valaskakis, Lorna Roth, Miriam Van Buskirk Guthrie, and, most of all, my father, Ben Guthrie.
The essays in this book have been written or rewritten during a decade of cultural struggle between Natives and newcomers and Native people themselves. In these years, my reflections on contemporary Native culture have been reworked and updated. Essays that draw upon the material in this collection were originally published in the following:
The Chippewa and the Other: Living the Heritage of Lac du Flambeau. Cultural Studies 2, 3 (1988): 267-93.
Partners in Heritage: Living the Tradition of Spring Spearing. Journal of Communication Inquiry 13, 2 (1989): 12-17.
Rights and Warriors: First Nations, Media and Identity. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 25, 1 (1994): 60 -72. Courtesy of the Board of Governors, University of Calgary.

Rights and Warriors: First Nations, Media and Identity. In The Mass Media and Canadian Diversity , ed. Stephen E. Nancoo and Robert S. Nancoo. Mississauga, ON: Canadian Educator s Press, 1996. 110-23.
Postcards of My Past: The Indian as Artefact. In Relocating Cultural Studies: Developments in Theory and Research , ed. Valda Blundell, John Shepherd, and Ian Taylor. London: Routledge, 1993. 155-70.
Postcards of My Past: Indians and Academics. In Between Views and Points of View . Banff, AB: Walter Phillips Gallery and the Banff International Curatorial Institute, 1991. 31-35.
Indian Country: Negotiating the Meaning of Land in Native America. In Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies , ed. Cary Nelson and Dilip Parameshwar Goankar. London: Routledge, 1996. 149- 69. Reproduced by permission of Routledge/Taylor and Francis Books, Inc.
Sacajawea and Her Sisters: Images and Native Women. Canadian Journal of Native Education 23, 1 (1999): 117-35. Reprinted with permission.
Sacajawea and Her Sisters: Images and Native Women. In Civic Discourse and Cultural Politics in Canada: A Cacaphony of Voices , ed. Sherry Devereaux Ferguson and Leslie Regan Shade. Westport, CT: Green-wood, 2002. 275 -94. Reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, CT.
Sacajawea and Her Sisters: Images and Native Women. In Marilyn Burgess and Gail Guthrie Valaskakis, Indian Princesses and Cowgirls: Stereotypes from the Frontier. Montreal: Oboro Gallery, 1995. 83 pp.
Sexual Difference on the Frontier: Cowgirls and Indian Princesses, by Gail Guthrie Valaskakis and Marilyn Burgess. C Magazine: Contemporary Art Quarterly 36 (1993): 11-16.
Dance Me Inside: Pow Wow and Being Indian. Fuse Magazine , Special Issue on Cultural Appropriation 16, 5-6 (1993): 39-44.
Blood Borders: Being Indian and Belonging. In Without Guarantees: In Honour of Stuart Hall , ed. Paul Gilroy, Laurence Grossberg, and Angela McRobbie. London, UK: Verso, 2001. 388-94.
Parallel Voices: Indians and Others-Narratives of Cultural Struggle. Guest Editor s Introduction. Canadian Journal of Communication 18, 3 (1999): 283-94.
Introduction: Approaching Indian Country
Duke Redbird (Hughes 1967) tells a story about a non-Indian who is driving through a maze of unmarked reservation roads, searching for the road to the Duck Lake pow wow. He sees an old Indian piling wood. He rolls down his car window and calls out, Where s the road to the Duck Lake pow wow? Without looking up, the old man answers, Don t know. The man in the car rolls up his window, muttering, Dumb Indian. The old man looks at the stranger and says, I might be dumb, but I m not lost.
For five hundred years, the social imaginaries of the dumb Indian and the lost white man have travelled together on distinct historical journeys. The trip has been arduous and eventful, and the destination is still uncertain. Shackled to one another in cultural conflict and political struggle, Natives and other North Americans have lived different social realities. The chain of histories and heritages, of images and experiences that divides Natives and newcomers is linked to the popular culture and political protests that mark the social landscape of this continent. This is Indian Country, land that was occupied by ancient Indians and colonized by the ancestors of other North Americans. The encounters between Indians and Others are etched into the cultures of Canada and the United States, where they express narratives of struggle that nurture friction between each other and conflict among themselves.
Today, Natives and newcomers are engaged in conflicts over land and treaties, stories and stereotypes, resources and policies, all interrelated issues that arise in collapsed time and continuing discord. The threads of this discord are formed from dissimilar memories, images and meanings, each strand knotted in contention and contradiction, each string entangled in struggles over territory, history, and ideology.
Indian Country has always been absorbed in encumbered discourse. Indians and colonists met as unequal companions, adversaries who frightened and fascinated one another. For five centuries, Indian c