Introduction
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MM01_TALB3893_01_SE_C01.indd01_TALB3893_01_SE_C01.indd PagePage 1 04/03/1404/03/14 12:0612:06 PMPM f-w-147f-w-147 //201/PH01604/9780131113893_TALBOT/TALBOT_NATIVE_NATIONS_OF_NORTH_AMERICA1_SE_9780201/PH01604/9780131113893_TALBOT/TALBOT_NATIVE_NATIONS_OF_NORTH_AMERICA1_SE_9780 ... 1 INTRODUCTION THE INDIGENOUS CONTRIBUTION AND PERSPECTIVE A Pueblo sun looking at the earth. A Native view of the cosmos as well as a Native perspective of the world. It is a reminder that countless cultures view the cosmos in different ways and each is correct. 1 MM01_TALB3893_01_SE_C01.indd01_TALB3893_01_SE_C01.indd PagePage 2 04/03/1404/03/14 12:0612:06 PMPM f-w-147f-w-147 //201/PH01604/9780131113893_TALBOT/TALBOT_NATIVE_NATIONS_OF_NORTH_AMERICA1_SE_9780201/PH01604/9780131113893_TALBOT/TALBOT_NATIVE_NATIONS_OF_NORTH_AMERICA1_SE_9780 ... 2 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION s the author of this text book , I must explain (Indians, Métis, and Inuit). Native Hawaiians also the title, Native Nations of North America , at are included under this rubric. They, along with A the outset. First, each chapter in the book Native Samoans and the Chamorros of Guam, are explores a serious concern or issue experienced by today living within the dominating orbit of the currently existing peoples who are native to North United States as semicolonized, Native peoples. America, or within its political jurisdiction, including Finally, the term North America as used here those in Alaska, Canada, and Hawai‘i. The book also includes also the Indigenous peoples of Mexico. The provides an ethnohistorical perspective, because one common usage of the term to include only the can only understand the present day through the English-speaking part of the continent is clearly Anglo- lens of historical events unique to and from the per- centric and therefore unscientific. The artificial divi- spective of the Indigenous people selected. sion of the northern part of the Western Hemisphere Second, the Native peoples featured in this book into English-speaking and Spanish-speaking spheres are rightly viewed as nations rather than as tribes. has occurred only in the last five hundred years and Therefore, the words Native and Indigenous are belies the many thousands of years prior to the Euro- capitalized just as are Caucasian and European in pean conquest during which the region was occupied conventional academic works. This book presents an solely by contiguous Indigenous societies speaking Indigenous perspective, not an anthropological one, many languages other than English or Spanish, all of because analysis is from the point of view of Native which existed without a Mexican border. scholarship, i.e., Native American (American Indian) This book was conceived as a companion text- Studies. The word tribe employed by cultural anthro- book to Native American Voices: A Reader (Reader ) now pologists as a generalized term inadequately defines in its third edition, by Susan Lobo, Steve Talbot, and the variable levels of sociopolitical integration found Traci L. Morris (2010) . This text expands on many of in North America among Indigenous peoples. The the themes detailed in the Reader, but in terms of concept of nation, derived from the Latin natio , is specific Indigenous peoples rather than as thematic more than two thousand years old and originally categories. For example, Chapter 2 , “The Hidden meant the family, language, customs, and beliefs of a Heritage: the Iroquois and the Evolution of Democ- people. The term was later extended to the popula- racy , “ presents a longer and more detailed account of tions of territories, states, individual nationalities, and the notable Iroquois Confederacy than is described in eventually modern nation-states. It was during the Part Two of the Reader . Similarly, Chapter 3 , “Greed early period of colonial expansion that the invading and Genocide: California Indians and the Gold European powers applied the term tribes to American Rush , “ is a fuller treatment of the themes of racism Indian societies to signify the inhabitants of a specific and genocide than is discussed in Part Four of the territory who share a common identity, origins, lan- Reader . Chapter 4 in the new book takes up the issue guage, and culture. From an Indigenous perspective, of Native American religious freedom by describing if we define Native peoples as nations, it follows that Lakota Sioux spirituality in the context of the 1890 the concept of sovereignty is also included, the right Wounded Knee massacre, and is a case study of “the to govern themselves as distinct and independent Sacred” discussed in Part Seven of the Reader . The peoples. This fundamental right was recently under- history of the Native Hawaiian struggle for Indige- scored when the United Nations General Assembly nous sovereignty documented in Chapter 8 of the adopted the Declaration On the Rights of Indigenous current book echoes articles in the Reader by Poka Peoples (UNDRIP) on September 13, 2007. There are Lanui (Part Three), Haunani-Kay Trask (Part Eight), approximately 375 million Indigenous people in the and Leanne Hinton (Part Ten). And so on. In addi- world, including those in the Americas. tion, each chapter of Native Nations of North America Third, the term Indigenous encompasses not only includes analytical concepts that can explain the issue the Native American or Indian peoples of North under discussion, such as racism, ethnic cleansing, America, but also Alaska Natives (Indians, Aleuts, the erosion of tribal sovereignty, subsistence rights, and Eskimos), and the First Nations of Canada or the abridgement of Indian religious freedom. MM01_TALB3893_01_SE_C01.indd01_TALB3893_01_SE_C01.indd PagePage 3 04/03/1404/03/14 12:0612:06 PMPM f-w-147f-w-147 //201/PH01604/9780131113893_TALBOT/TALBOT_NATIVE_NATIONS_OF_NORTH_AMERICA1_SE_9780201/PH01604/9780131113893_TALBOT/TALBOT_NATIVE_NATIONS_OF_NORTH_AMERICA1_SE_9780 ... CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 3 The chapters in Native Nations of North America: the three largest countries, Canada has over one An Indigenous Perspective also present an ethnographic million, the United States several million, and Brazil survey of Indigenous North America with issue- several hundred thousand American Indians. The oriented essays on the Haudenosaunee Iroquois, Indigenous genetic heritage is clearly the dominant California Indians, Lakota Sioux, Navajo and Hopi, strain in Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador in Cherokee Nation, the fishing peoples of the Columbia South America; in Mexico and most of the countries River Basin, Native Hawaiians, and Alaska Natives. of Central America; and in Greenland in North Chapter 9 on the Native peoples of Canada includes America. In Guatemala, Indian people constitute an Internet survey by Bruce E. Johansen, Professor of between 70 percent and 80 percent of the total Communication at the University of Nebraska at population with at least half speaking one of the Omaha, of issues facing Canada’s First Nations. many Native languages. Many do not speak Spanish. Chapter 11 , “The Trouble with Stereotypes , “ sur- Indigenous ancestry is one of the important elements veys the phenomenon of Indigenous urbanism, both in the racially mixed populations of Chile, Columbia, in its ancient and contemporary manifestations, and Venezuela, Brazil, and Panama. Native American is a fuller treatment and analysis of this important Indians “survive in every mainland American repub- but often neglected subject, discussed in Part Nine of lic (except in Uruguay where a rural mestizo or the Reader. mixed-blood population alone survives) and even on The selected Native nations also serve as examples a few Caribbean islands” ( Forbes 1969 , 7). for most of the cultural areas common in anthropolog- Linguists estimate fifty-six separate language ical usage (see Kehoe 1981 ), i.e., the Iroquois chapter families for the Native peoples of the Americas, a fact for the Northeast cultural area, Cherokee for the South- attesting to their long occupancy and complex east, the Lakota Sioux for the Plains, Navajo-Hopi for relationships in the Western Hemisphere. There are the Southwest, Alaska and Canada for the Arctic and as many as 1,700 to 2,000 Indigenous languages many subarctic, and the California and Northwest chapters with complex grammars and vocabularies containing for their respective culture areas in addition to Hawai‘i. up to 20,000 words. In Mexico alone there are thirty- A note to instructors who use this textbook: the chap- three principal Indian languages still spoken, as little ters do not have to be assigned consecutively. Any one related to each other as are Finnish, Chinese, and chapter with its themes and its respective bibliography Hebrew. It is estimated that there are more than and Study Guide can stand alone. thirty million Indigenous Americans in North, Central, and South America who speak one of the hundreds of still existent Indian languages, while THE NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURAL HERITAGE perhaps as many as one hundred million people pos- This is a book about the Native Peoples of North sess some degree of Indigenous ancestry. America from an Indigenous perspective. First and Until recently, it was difficult to estimate the foremost, this perspective includes a knowledge of number of persons of Indigenous descent currently and appreciation for the Indian heritage of the residing in the United States because of flawed research Americas. A listing of some of the major elements of methodology by the U.S. Census and failure to enu- this heritage will serve to demonstrate