The Relationship Between the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE AMERICAS AND THE HORSE: DECONSTRUCTING A EUROCENTRIC MYTH By Yvette Running Horse Collin A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Indigenous Studies University of Alaska Fairbanks May 2017 © 2017 Yvette Running Horse Collin APPROVED: Raymond Barnhardt, Ph.D., Committee Chair Beth Ginondidoy Leonard, Ph.D., Committee Co-Chair Theresa Arevgaq John, Ph.D., Committee Member Marco A. Oviedo, Ph.D., Committee Member Michael Koskey, Ph.D., Department Chair Todd Sherman, M.F.A., Dean, College of Liberal Arts Michael Castellini, Ph.D., Dean of the Graduate School Abstract This research project seeks to deconstruct the history of the horse in the Americas and its relationship with the Indigenous Peoples of these same lands. Although Western academia admits that the horse originated in the Americas, it claims that the horse became extinct in these continents during the Last Glacial Maximum (between roughly 13,000 and 11,000 years ago). This version of “history” credits Spanish conquistadors and other early European explorers with reintroducing the horse to the Americas and to her Indigenous Peoples. However, many Native Nations state that “they always had the horse” and that they had well established horse cultures long before the arrival of the Spanish. To date, “history” has been written by Western academia to reflect a Eurocentric and colonial paradigm. The traditional knowledge (TK) of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, and any information that is contrary to the accepted Western academic view, has been generally disregarded, purposefully excluded, or reconfigured to fit the accepted academic paradigm.
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