Does activism matter? This book answers with a clear "yes." American Indian Ethnic Renewal traces the growth of the American Indian population over the past forty years, when the number of Native Americans grew from fewer than one-half million in 1950 to nearly 2 million in 1990. This quadrupling of the American Indian population cannot be explained by rising birth rates, declining death rates, or immigration. Instead, the growth in the number of American Indians is the result of an increased willingness of Americans to identify themselves as Indians. What is driving this increased ethnic identification? In American Indian Ethnic Renewal, Joane Nagel identifies several historical forces which have converged to create an urban Indian population base, a reservation and urban Indian organizational infrastructure, and a broad cultural climate of ethnic pride and militancy. Central among these forces was federal Indian "Termination" policy which, ironically, was designed to assimilate and de-tribalize Native America. Reactions against Termination were nurtured by the Civil Rights era atmosphere of ethnic pride to become a central focus of the native rights activist movement known as "Red Power." This resurgence of American Indian ethnic pride inspired increased Indian ethnic identification, launched a renaissance in American Indian culture, language, art, and spirituality, and eventually contributed to the replacement of Termination with new federal policies affirming tribal Self- Determination. American Indian Ethnic Renewal offers a general theory of ethnic resurgence which stresses both structure and agency--the role of politics and the importance of collective and individual action--in understanding how ethnic groups revitalize and reinvent themselves. Scholars and students of American Indians, social movements and activism, and recent United States history, as well as the general reader interested in Native American life, will all find this an engaging and informative work.

This volume brings together an impressive collection of important works covering nearly every aspect of early Native American history, from contact and exchange to diplomacy, religion, warfare, and disease.

Beliefs and feelings about language vary dramatically within and across Native American cultural groups and are an acknowledged part of the processes of language shift and language death. This volume samples the language ideologies of a wide range of Native American communities--from the Canadian Yukon to Guatemala--to show their role in sociocultural transformation. These studies take up such active issues as "insiderness" in Cherokee language ideologies, contradictions of space-time for the Northern Arapaho, language socialization and Paiute identity, and orthography choices and language renewal among the Kiowa. The authors--including members of indigenous speech communities who participate in language renewal efforts--discuss not only Native Americans' conscious language ideologies but also the often-revealing relationship between these beliefs and other more implicit realizations of language use as embedded in community practice. The chapters discuss the impact of contemporary language issues related to grammar, language use, the relation between language and social identity, and emergent language ideologies themselves in Native American speech communities. And although they portray obvious variation in attitudes toward language across communities, they also reveal commonalities--notably the emergent ideological process of iconization between a language and various national, ethnic, and tribal identities. As fewer Native Americans continue to speak their own language, this timely volume provides valuable grounded studies of language ideologies in action--those indigenous to Native communities as well as those imposed by outside institutions or language researchers. It considers the emergent interaction of indigenous and imported ideologies and the resulting effect on language beliefs, practices, and struggles in today's Indian Country as it demonstrates the practical implications of recognizing a multiplicity of indigenous language ideologies and their impact on heritage language maintenance and renewal.

This book describes the struggle of Indian tribes and their governments to achieve freedom and self-determination despite repeated attempts by foreign governments to dominate, exterminate, or assimilate them. Drawing on the disciplines of political science, history, law, and anthropology and written in a direct, readable style, American Indian Tribal Governments is a comprehensive introduction to traditional tribal governments, to the history of Indian-white relations, to the structure and legal rights of modern tribal governments, and to the changing roles of federal and state governments in relation to modem tribal governments. Publication of this book fills a gap in American Indian studies, providing scholars with a basis from which to begin an integrated study of tribal government, providing teachers with an excellent introductory textbook, and providing general readers with an accessible and complete introduction to American Indian history and government. The book's unique structure allows coverage of a great breadth of information while avoiding the common mistake of generalizing about all tribes and cultures. An introductory section presents the basic themes of the book and describes the traditional governments of five tribes chosen for their geographic and cultural diversity-the Senecas, the Muscogees, the Lakotas, the Isleta Pueblo, and the Yakimas. The next three chapters review the history of Indian-white relations from the time Christopher Columbus "discovered" America to the present. Then the history and modem government of each of the five tribes presented earlier is examined in detail. The final chapters analyze the evolution and current legal powers of tribal governments, the tribal-federal relationship, and the tribal-state relationship. American Indian Tribal Governments illuminates issues of tribal sovereignty and shows how tribes are protecting and expanding their control of tribal membership, legal systems, child welfare, land and resource use, hunting and fishing, business regulation, education, and social services. Other examples show tribes negotiating with state and federal governments to alleviate sources of conflict, including issues of criminal and civil jurisdiction, taxation, hunting and fishing rights, and control of natural resources. Excerpts from historical and modem documents and speeches highlight the text, and more than one hundred photos, maps, and charts show tribal life, government, and interaction with white society as it was and is. Included as well are a glossary and a chronology of important events.

The American Indian occupation of Alcatraz Island was the catalyst for a more generalized movement in which Native Americans from across the country have sought redress of grievances as they continue their struggle for survival and sovereignty. In this volume, some of the dominant scholars in the field join to chronicle and analyze Native American activism of the 1960s and 1970s. The book also provides extended background and historical analysis of the Alcatraz takeover and discusses its place in contemporary Indian activism.

In Race and Family: A Structural Approach, author Roberta L. Coles looks at ethnic minority families in a novel way— through a structural lens. Unlike many texts on race and family, this book offers an approach that illustrates overarching structural factors affecting all families as opposed to examining each ethnicity in isolation from one another. By focusing on various structural factors such as demographic, economic, and historical aspects, this book analyzes various family trends in a cross-cutting manner to exemplify the similarities and distinctions among all racial and ethnic groups.