BiblioVault - Books about Native America

Criminal Justice in Native America

Edited by Marianne O. Nielsen and Robert A. Silverman

University of Arizona Press, 2009

Native Americans are disproportionately represented as offenders in the U.S. criminal justice system, particularly in the southwestern and north-central regions. However, until recently there was little investigation into the reasons for their over-representation. Furthermore, there has been little acknowledgment of the positive contributions of Native Americans to the criminal justice system—in rehabilitating offenders, aiding victims, and supporting service providers. This book offers a valuable and contemporary overview of how the American criminal justice system impacts Native Americans on both sides of the law.

Each of the fourteen chapters of Criminal Justice in Native America was commissioned specifically for this volume. Contributors—many of whom are Native Americans—rank among the top scholars in their fields. Some of the chapters treat broad subjects, including crime, police, courts, victimization, corrections, and jurisdiction. Others delve into more specific topics, including hate crimes against Native Americans, state-corporate crimes against Native Americans, tribal peacemaking, and cultural stresses of police officers. Separate chapters are devoted to women and juveniles.

The well-known scholar Marianne Nielsen provides a context-setting introduction, in which she addresses the history of the legal treatment of Native Americans in the United States as well as a provocative conclusion that details important issues for current and future research in Native American criminal justice studies. Intended to introduce students to the substantive concerns of a range of disciplines that contribute to Native American Studies—among them, criminal justice and criminology, law, sociology, and anthropology—Criminal Justice in Native America will interest all readers who are concerned about relationships between Native peoples and prevailing criminal justice systems.

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Enduring Motives

The Archaeology of Tradition and Religion in Native America

Linea Sundstrom

University of Alabama Press, 2012

Enduring Motives examines tradition and religious beliefs as they are expressed in landscape, the built environment, visual symbols, stories, and ritual.

Bringing together archaeologists and Native American experts, this volume focuses on long-lived religious traditions of the native peoples of the Americas and how religion codifies, justifies, and reinforces these traditions by placing a high value on continuity of beliefs and practice.

Using clues from the archaeological record to piece together the oldest religions of the Americas, Enduring Motives is organized into four parts. Part 1 creates continuity through structure, iconography, and sacred stories that correspond to culture-specific symbolic representations of the universe. Part 2 explores the encoding of tradition in place and object, or how people use objects to enliven tradition and pass it on to future generations. Part 3 examines stability and change and shows how traditions can evolve over time without losing their core cultural significance. The final part recognizes deep-time traditions through the evidence of ancient cosmology and religious tradition.

Spanning cultures as diverse as the Aztec, Plains Indians, Hopi, Mississippian, and Southwest Pueblo, Enduring Motives brings to light new insights on ancient religious beliefs, practices, methods, and techniques, which allow otherwise intangible facets of culture to be productively explored.

Contributors
Wesley Bernardini / James S. Brown Jr. / Cheryl Claassen / John E. Clark / ArleneColman / Warren DeBoer /

Robert L. Hall /Kelley Hays-Gilpin / Alice Beck Kehoe /John E. Kelly / Stephen H. Lekson / ColinMcEwan /

John Norder / Jeffrey Quilter /Amy Roe / Peter G. Roe / Linea Sundstrom

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Invisible No More

Voices from Native America

Edited by Raymond Foxworth and Steve Dubb

Island Press, 2023

For too long, Native American people in the United States have been stereotyped as vestiges of the past, invisible citizens in their own land obliged to remind others, “We are still here!” Yet today, Native leaders are at the center of social change, challenging philanthropic organizations that have historically excluded Native people, and fighting for economic and environmental justice.

Edited by Raymond Foxworth of First Nations Development Institute and Steve Dubb of The Nonprofit Quarterly, Invisible No More is a groundbreaking collection of stories by Native American leaders, many of them women, who are leading the way through cultural grounding and nation-building in the areas of community, environmental justice, and economic justice. Authors in the collection come from over a dozen Native nations, including communities in Alaska and Hawaiʻi. Chapters are grouped by themes of challenging philanthropy, protecting community resources, environmental justice, and economic justice. While telling their stories, authors excavate the history and ongoing effects of genocide and colonialism, reminding readers how philanthropic wealth often stems from the theft of Native land and resources, as well as how major national parks such as Yosemite were “conserved” by forcibly expelling Native residents. At the same time, the authors detail ways that readers might imagine the world differently, presenting stories of Native community building that offer benefits for all. Accepting this invitation to reset assumptions can be at once profound and pragmatic. For instance, wildfires in large measure result from recent Western land mismanagement; Native techniques practiced for thousands of years can help manage fire for everyone’s benefit.

In a world facing a mounting climate crisis and record economic inequality, Invisible No More exposes the deep wounds of a racist past while offering a powerful call to care for one another and the planet. Indigenous communities have much to offer, not the least of which are solutions gleaned from cultural knowledge developed over generations.

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The Languages of Native America

Historical and Comparative Assessment

Edited by Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun

University of Texas Press, 1979

These essays were drawn from the papers presented at the Linguistic Society of America's Summer Institute at the State University of New York at Oswego in 1976. The contents are as follows:

Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun, "Introduction: North American Indian Historical Linguistics in Current Perspective"
Ives Goddard, "Comparative Algonquian"
Marianne Mithun, "Iroquoian"
Wallace L. Chafe, "Caddoan"
David S. Rood, "Siouan"
Mary R. Haas, "Southeastern Languages"
James M. Crawford, "Timucua and Yuchi: Two Language Isolates of the Southeast"
Ives Goddard, "The Languages of South Texas and the Lower Rio Grande"
Irvine Davis, "The Kiowa-Tanoan, Keresan, and Zuni Languages"
Susan Steele, "Uto-Aztecan: An Assessment for Historical and
Comparative Linguistics"
William H. Jacobsen, Jr., "Hokan lnter-Branch Comparisons"
Margaret Langdon, "Some Thoughts on Hokan with Particular Reference to Pomoan and Yuman"
Michael Silverstein, ''Penutian: An Assessment"
Laurence C. Thompson, "Salishan and the Northwest"
William H. Jacobsen, Jr., "Wakashan Comparative Studies"
William H. Jacobsen, Jr., "Chimakuan Comparative Studies"
Michael E. Krauss, "Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut"
Lyle CampbelI, "Middle American Languages"
Eric S. Hamp, "A Glance from Now On."

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Medicinal Plants of Native America, Vols. 1 and 2

Daniel E. Moerman

University of Michigan Press, 1987

In this encyclopedia of North American ethnobotany, thousands of native plants are organized by family, genus, use (illness), tribal culture, and common name. Foreword by Richard I. Ford.

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Our Fight Has Just Begun

Hate Crimes and Justice in Native America

Cheryl Redhorse Bennett

University of Arizona Press, 2022

Our Fight Has Just Begun is a timely and urgent work. The result of more than a decade of research, it revises history, documents anti-Indianism, and gives voice to victims of racial violence. Navajo scholar Cheryl Redhorse Bennett reveals a lesser-known story of Navajo activism and the courageous organizers that confronted racial injustice and inspired generations.

Illuminating largely untold stories of hate crimes committed against Native Americans in the Four Corners region of the United States, this work places these stories within a larger history, connecting historical violence in the United States to present-day hate crimes. Bennett contends that hate crimes committed against Native Americans have persisted as an extension of an “Indian hating” ideology that has existed since colonization, exposing how the justice system has failed Native American victims and families.

While this book looks deeply at multiple generations of unnecessary and ongoing pain and violence, it also recognizes that this is a time of uncertainty and hope. The movement to abolish racial injustice and racially motivated violence has gained fierce momentum. Our Fight Has Just Begun shows that racism, hate speech, and hate crimes are ever present and offers recommendations for racial justice.

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Thundersticks

Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America

David J. Silverman

Harvard University Press, 2016

The adoption of firearms by American Indians between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries marked a turning point in the history of North America’s indigenous peoples—a cultural earthquake so profound, says David Silverman, that its impact has yet to be adequately measured. Thundersticks reframes our understanding of Indians’ historical relationship with guns, arguing against the notion that they prized these weapons more for the pyrotechnic terror guns inspired than for their efficiency as tools of war. Native peoples fully recognized the potential of firearms to assist them in their struggles against colonial forces, and mostly against one another.

The smoothbore, flintlock musket was Indians’ stock firearm, and its destructive potential transformed their lives. For the deer hunters east of the Mississippi, the gun evolved into an essential hunting tool. Most importantly, well-armed tribes were able to capture and enslave their neighbors, plunder wealth, and conquer territory. Arms races erupted across North America, intensifying intertribal rivalries and solidifying the importance of firearms in Indian politics and culture.

Though American tribes grew dependent on guns manufactured in Europe and the United States, their dependence never prevented them from rising up against Euro-American power. The Seminoles, Blackfeet, Lakotas, and others remained formidably armed right up to the time of their subjugation. Far from being a Trojan horse for colonialism, firearms empowered American Indians to pursue their interests and defend their political and economic autonomy over two centuries.

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