Bringing together perspectives from a variety of disciplines, this book provides an interdisciplinary approach to the emerging discussion on Indigenous nationhood. The contributors argue for the centrality of nationhood and nation building in molding and, concurrently, blending the political, social, economic, and cultural strategies toward Native American self-definitions and self-determination. Included among the common themes is the significance of space—conceived both as traditional territory and colonial reservation—in the current construction of Native national identity. Whether related to historical memory and the narrativization of peoplehood, the temporality of indigenous claims to sovereignty, or the demarcation of successful financial assets as cultural and social emblems of indigenous space, territory constitutes an inalienable and necessary element connecting Native American peoplehood and nationhood. The creation and maintenance of Native American national identity have also overcome structural territorial impediments and may benefit from the inclusivity of citizenship rather than the exclusivity of ethnicity. In all cases, the political effectiveness of nationhood in promoting and sustaining sovereignty presupposes Native full participation in and control over economic development, the formation of historical narrative and memory, the definition of legality, and governance. SUNY Press has collaborated with Knowledge Unlatched to unlock KU Select titles. The Knowledge Unlatched titles have been made open access through libraries coming together to crowd fund the publication cost. Each monograph has been released as open access making the eBook freely available to readers worldwide. Discover more about the Knowledge Unlatched program here: https://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/, and access the book online at the SUNY Open Access Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12648/8474 .

Tribal Worlds considers the emergence and general project of indigenous nationhood in several geographical and historical settings in Native North America. Ethnographers and historians address issues of belonging, peoplehood, sovereignty, conflict, economy, identity, and colonialism among the Northern Cheyenne and Kiowa on the Plains, several groups of the Ojibwe, the Makah of the Northwest, and two groups of Iroquois. Featuring a new essay by the eminent senior scholar Anthony F. C. Wallace on recent ethnographic work he has done in the Tuscarora community, as well as provocative essays by junior scholars, Tribal Worlds explores how indigenous nationhood has emerged and been maintained in the face of aggressive efforts to assimilate Native peoples.

"This book presents a theoretical discussion of problems and issues encountered in the Native American community from a perspective that accepts Native knowledge as legitimate. Native American cosmology and metaphor are used extensively in order to deal with specific problems such as alcoholism, suicide, family, and community problems. The authors discuss what it means to present material from the perspective of a people who have legitimate ways of knowing and conceptualizing reality and show that it is imperative to understand intergenerational trauma and internalized oppression in order to understand the issues facing Native Americans today."--pub. website.

After World War II, American Indians began relocating to urban areas in large numbers, in search of employment. Partly influenced by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, this migration from rural reservations to metropolitan centers presented both challenges and opportunities. This history examines the educational programs American Indians developed in Chicago and gives particular attention to how the American Indian community chose its own distinct path within and outside of the larger American Indian self-determination movement. In what John J. Laukaitis terms community self-determination, American Indians in Chicago demonstrated considerable agency as they developed their own programs and worked within already existent institutions. The community-based initiatives included youth programs at the American Indian Center and St. Augustine's Center for American Indians, the Native American Committee's Adult Learning Center, Little Big Horn High School, O-Wai-Ya-Wa Elementary School, Native American Educational Services College, and the Institute for Native American Development at Truman College. Community Self-Determination presents the first major examination of these initiatives and programs and provides an understanding of how education functioned as a form of activism for Chicago's American Indian community.

"Describes how Native American tribes can strengthen sovereignty, property rights, and the rule of law to better integrate into modern economies, building a foundation for self-sufficiency and restoring dignity"--

In this wide-ranging and carefully curated anthology, Daniel M. Cobb presents the words of Indigenous people who have shaped Native American rights movements from the late nineteenth century through the present day. Presenting essays, letters, interviews, speeches, government documents, and other testimony, Cobb shows how tribal leaders, intellectuals, and activists deployed a variety of protest methods over more than a century to demand Indigenous sovereignty. As these documents show, Native peoples have adopted a wide range of strategies in this struggle, invoking "American" and global democratic ideas about citizenship, freedom, justice, consent of the governed, representation, and personal and civil liberties while investing them with indigenized meanings. The more than fifty documents gathered here are organized chronologically and thematically for ease in classroom and research use. They address the aspirations of Indigenous nations and individuals within Canada, Hawaii, and Alaska as well as the continental United States, placing their activism in both national and international contexts. The collection's topical breadth, analytical framework, and emphasis on unpublished materials offer students and scholars new sources with which to engage and explore American Indian thought and political action.

Entertaining and enlightening interviews with some of today’s most important Native Americans.