Midterm Flashcards
Sovereignty
The right to independent and unquestionable authority over a geographic area. Accordingly, tribal sovereignty refers to the inherent authority of indigenous tribes to govern themselves within the borders of another nation.
Economic Sovereignty
The ability to independently practice and regulate economic affairs without interference or prohibition. Economic sovereignty allows overall tribal sovereignty to expand, as an increase in financial revenues often means tribes are afforded a greater amount of influence in cultural and political matters.
Cultural Sovereignty
The ability to regulate, influence, and control aspects of culture. Unlike political sovereignty, cultural sovereignty can be exercised to a much greater extent and is largely considered the strongest aspect of tribal sovereignty.
Political Sovereignty
Govern their own affairs and the events that occur with their sovereign borders, but this sovereignty is limited. Some state laws apply to Indian Country. Tribes have the politically sovereignty to elect their own officials, established their own form of government, levy taxes, and prosecute tribal members for misdemeanors. Of all the forms of sovereignty listed, political sovereignty is the most difficult to assert and is most at odds with the authority of local, state, and federal governments.
Interdisciplinarity
Combining of two or more academic fields into one single discipline. An interdisciplinary field crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged. By one definition, Anthropology, English, History, Law, Music, and many others, are combined to represent Native American studies, although it may be argued that Native American studies represents its own field.
Essentialism
For any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. All things can be precisely defined or described. Terms or words should have a single definition and meaning. This term is dangerous and derogatory in Native American studies. Images, characteristics, or properties, that non-Native peoples associate with Indians, are incorrect because they have been essentialized over a long period of time.
Commerce Clause
United States Congress shall have power: “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” For our purposes, these five words, “and with the Indian Tribes,” are of fundamental importance to Native American studies, as this clause expressly grants only Congress the power to regulate the commercial affairs with Indian Tribes.
Decolonization
process by which colonized populations, in many cases indigenous populations, begin to reassert their sovereignty and autonomy over their cultures and territories. Decolonization is often viewed as a positive expression of self-determination among Native Americans. The reemergence of Native languages, the prominence and success of casino gaming, and the development of Native American studies programs.
Epistemology
Greek: “the study of knowledge or science,” epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature, scope, and understanding of knowledge. For our purposes in Native American studies. “ways of knowing,” are dramatically different from traditional Western modes of learning. Difference between passing knowledge down orally, as in the case of Native Americans, or writing, which applies to Western cultures.
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. Colonialism is an almost exclusively violent and oppressive process whereby the sovereignty of an indigenous population is subverted forcefully by the colonizer. The use of force or treaty (which carry the threat of force), but as well the systematic destruction of indigenous culture, such as language, history, ceremonies, etc.
The Fourth World
Term used since the 1980s, the “Fourth World” is considered by definition to encompass people and nations that are poor or marginal when compared to “First World” nations. They differ from “Third World” nations, as they are not thought to be in the process of development, rather, they are in a state of stagnation or regression.
Red Power
This phrase is attributed to Standing Rock Sioux author and educator, Vine Deloria, Jr. It denotes the idea of pan-Indian identity that was fostered in the late 1960s. The formation of the American Indian Movement, the occupation of Alcatraz, the National Indian Youth Council, and the National Congress of American Indians, can all be rightly considered examples.
Cahokia
Built in present day Illinois, the great mounds at Cahokia are some of the most spectacular examples of early engineering and social sophistication yet remaining on the North American continent. At the high point of its development, Cahokia was the largest urban center north of the great stone Mesoamerican cities of Mexico. Archaeologists estimate the city’s population at between 8,000 and 40,000 at its peak. In 1250, its population was larger than that of London, England.
Tecumseh
Finest military leaders of his time and renowned for his skills of oration. Leader of the Shawnee, an Algonquian-speaking Native American people. Tecumseh believed that Indians held land in common and that no individual or tribe had the right to cede territory without the consent of the others. Died at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, attempting to lead a depleted army and having been betrayed by his allies.
Treaty of Greenville (1795)
Signed at Fort Greenville on August 3, 1795, between a coalition of Native Americans & Frontiers men, known as the Western Confederacy, and the United States following the Native American loss at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. It put an end to the Northwest Indian War. In exchange for goods to the value of $20,000 the Native Americans turned over to the United States large parts of modern-day Ohio, the future site of downtown Chicago, the Fort Detroit area, and other parts of the Ohio River Valley.
Petroglyphs
“Stone carving” in Greek, petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading.
Bering Strait Land Bridge Theory
widely accepted since the 1930s. This model of migration into the New World proposes that people migrated from Siberia into Alaska, tracking big game animal herds. They were able to cross between the two continents by a land bridge called the Bering Land Bridge, which spanned what is now the Bering Strait the last major stage of the Pleistocene (Ice Age).
Social Darwinism
Term used for various ideologies predicated on the idea of survival of the fittest among the so-called “races” of humans. Although not explicitedly stated as being defined by this term, ideas about racial superiority have largely shaped the history. Native American studies is in many ways a field that attempts to reexamine ideas first formulated when social darwinism was in fashion, In order to correct inaccuracies about cultures and peoples largely formed under this ideology.
John Ridge
Son of Major Ridge, Cherokee Nation aristocracy. Born in 1802, Ridge was well-educated, having attended the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut in 1819, where he excelled as a student. His connections and talents allowed him to become a leading member of the National Committee along with his cousin Elias Boudinot and his father’s protégé, John Ross, as well as highly respected for his abilities and faithfulness to Indian welfare by all the tribes across the Southern United States.
John Ross
John Ross was Principal Chief of the Cherokee. Only an eighth Cherokee, Ross, unlike the Ridge family but very much like his foe Andrew Jackson, was not born into a wealthy aristocratic family. Through marriage and skillful business practices, he rose socially and politically, becoming the principal Chief of the Nation at a very young age.
The Treaty of New Echota
December 29, 1835, in New Echota, Georgia by US minority Cherokee political faction. Against John Ross, Cherokee Nation was expected to move west to the Indian Territory. Although it was not approved by the Cherokee National Council, it was ratified by the U.S. Senate and became the legal basis for the forcible removal known as the Trail of Tears. For their part in the treaty making process, John Ridge, Major Ridge, and Elias Boudinot, were murdered on the same day in 1839.
Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek
September 27, 1830, having been made between the Choctaw Nation and the United States Government. This was the first removal treaty carried into effect under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and ceded about 11 million acres of the Choctaw Nation (now Mississippi) in exchange for about 15 million acres in the Indian territory.
Grattan Massacre
August 19, 1854, east of Fort Laramie in Nebraska Territory, in present day Wyoming. High Forehead, who was accused of taking and killing a Mormon migrant’s cow (who was by all accounts lame and soon for death), a conflict ensued and one of the soldiers shot a Lakota chief named Conquering Bear. The Lakota warriors returned fire and killed a number of soldiers, including Lieutenant John Grattan. Americans were “the first to make the ground bloody.”
The Trail of Tears
Beginning in 1831 with the removal of the Choctaw from Mississippi from Oklahoma, a substantial portion of the Southeastern United States Native American population was forced to move westward to Indian Territory, what is now Oklahoma. In 1838, after resisting for eight years, the Cherokee Nation, the last to move, began a painful journey upon what is now known as The Trail of Tears. As many as one-fourth of the Cherokee population is thought to have died of starvation, exposure, or murder.
Sequoyah
Cherokee silversmith who in 1821 completed his independent creation of a Cherokee syllabary, making reading and writing in Cherokee possible. Supposedly, this achievement marks the only time in recorded history that a member of an illiterate people independently created an effective writing system.
The Cherokee Phoenix
The Cherokee Phoenix was the first newspaper published by Native Americans in the United States and the first bilingual newspaper published in the United States, as it was published in both the Cherokee language and English. The first issue was published February 21, 1828, under the editorship of Elias Boudinot, cousin of John Ridge. The paper remains in print today.
Wounded Knee (1890)
December 29th, 1890 near Wounded Knee on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whiteside intercepted Bigfoot’s band of Minniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota. 7th Cavalry opening firing indiscriminately from all sides. The 7th killed men, women, and children, as well as some of their own fellow troopers. 300 and many of the American soldiers awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
The Ghost Dance
Native American tribes synthesized selective aspects of the ritual with their own beliefs, a process which was intended to effect positive changes in those who practiced it. Wovoka is believed to have prophesied a peaceful end to white American expansion, while preaching the goal of returning to more traditional ways. Believed to have contributed to the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 and to a larger conflict sometimes erroneously referred to as “The Ghost Dance War.
Ex Parte Crow Dog (1883)
Like the Worcester ruling of 1832, this was a case in which the Supreme Court held that a federal court did not have jurisdiction to try Crow Dog, an Indian who killed another Indian, Spotted Tail of the Brule Sioux, on the reservation when the offense had been tried by the tribal council. US tried Crow Dog for murder, and he was sentenced to hang. On his appeal to the Supreme Court, the court held that unless Congress authorized it, the courts had no jurisdiction to try the case. Outraged this case resulted inCongress enacting the Major Crimes Act in 1885.
Major Crimes Act (1885)
Congress worked quickly after the Crow Dog decision to amend a situation they believed was in desperate need of repair. Places seven major offenses under federal jurisdiction if they are committed by a Native American against another Native American in Native territory. Murder, manslaughter, rape, arson, larceny, burglary and felony assault. Reduced sovereignty by removing their ability to try and to punish serious offenders in Indian country.
United States v. Kagama (1886)
The case, which concerned a murder that had taken place on an Indian reservation in California, upheld the constitutionality of the Major Crimes Act of 1885. Like future cases, Kagama confirmed Congress’ supposed plenary power over Indian affairs, an authoritythough to be granted to the U.S. Congress by the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition (1893)
Held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival. Frederic Jackson Turner presented his now landmark essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” In doing so, Jackson noted only declared the frontier closed, but contended that with no available frontier to be pushed towards, Native Americans were destined for extinction.
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Founded by Captain Richard Henry Pratt. W orked under the motto “Kill the Indian, save the man.” Carlisle, Pennsylvania that was founded in 1879. first off-reservation boarding school, and, regrettably, it became a model for over five hundred Indian boarding schools in other locations. The goal of total assimilation can be summed up in the school’s slogan: “To civilize the Indian, get him into civilization. To keep him civilized, let him stay.”
Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis (1904)
Held in St. Louis, “The Gateway to West,” in honor of the centennial anniversay of the Louisiana Purchase. grounds were covered with many displays that featured Indians, including Geronimo and Chief Joseph. Native peoples were largely put on display for onlookers before they disappeared forever, or, in the instance of young Indian students that were enrolled in boarding schools, admired for having been “civilized” by American attempts to educate Indian youth.
