Cultivating the Rosebuds


Book Description

Established by the Cherokee Nation in 1851 in present-day eastern Oklahoma, the nondenominational Cherokee Female Seminary was one of the most important schools in the history of American Indian education. Devon Mihesuah explores its curriculum, faculty, administration, and educational philosophy. Recipient of a 1995 Critics' Choice Award of the American Educational Studies Association. 24 photos.




The Complete Idiot's Guide to Native American History


Book Description

This book is a comprehensive overview of the history and culture of the peoples who are now known as the First Americans. Author Walter C. Fleming covers the many different tribes that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, including compelling biographies of their greatest leaders. He examines the beliefs, customs, legends and the myriad contributions Native Americans have given to modern society, and details the often tragic history of their conquest by European invaders, their treatment-both historical and recent-under the U.S. government, and the harsh reality of life on today's reservations.




On Our Own Terms


Book Description




Engendered Encounters


Book Description

In this interdisciplinary study of gender, cross-cultural encounters, and federal Indian policy, Margaret D. Jacobs explores the changing relationship between Anglo-American women and Pueblo Indians before and after the turn of the century. During the late nineteenth century, the Pueblos were often characterized by women reformers as barbaric and needing to be "uplifted" into civilization. By the 1920s, however, the Pueblos were widely admired by activist Anglo-American women, who challenged assimilation policies and worked hard to protect the Pueblos? "traditional" way of life. ø Deftly weaving together an analysis of changes in gender roles, attitudes toward sexuality, public conceptions of Native peoples, and federal Indian policy, Jacobs argues that the impetus for this transformation in perception rests less with a progressively tolerant view of Native peoples and more with fundamental shifts in the ways Anglo-American women saw their own sexuality and social responsibilities.




Integrations


Book Description

"Education plays a central part in the history of racial inequality in America, with people of color long advocating for equal educational rights and opportunities. Though school desegregation initially was a boon for educational equality, schools began to resegregate in the 1980s, and schools are now more segregated than ever. In Integrations, historian Zoë Burkholder and philosopher Lawrence Blum set out to shed needed light on the enduring problem of segregation in American schools. From a historical perspective, the authors analyze how ideas about race influenced the creation and development of American public schools. Importantly, the authors focus on multiple marginalized groups in American schooling: African Americans, Native Americans, Latinxs, and Asian Americans. In the second half of the book, the authors explore what equal education should and could look like. They argue for a conception of "educational goods" (including the development of moral and civic capacities) that should and can be provided to every child through schooling--including integration itself. Ultimately, the authors show that in order to grapple with integration in a meaningful way, we must think of integration in the plural, both in its multiple histories and the many possible meanings of and courses of action for integration"--




The Role of Female Seminaries on the Road to Social Justice for Women


Book Description

In the United States, female seminaries and their antecedents, the female academies, were crucial first institutions that played a vital role in liberating women from the "home sphere," a locus that was the primary domain of Euro-American women. The female seminaries founded by Native Americans and African Americans had different founding rationales but also played a key role in empowering women. On the whole, the initial intent of these schools was to prepare women for their proper role in American society as wives and mothers. An unintended effect, however, was to prepare women for the first socially accepted profession for women: teaching. Thus equipped, women played a crucial role in the development of American education at all levels while achieving varying degrees of social justice for themselves and other groups through engagement in the reform movements of their times--including women's suffrage, abolition, temperance, and mental health reform. By recapturing the role religion played in shaping education for women, Welch and Ruelas offer a refreshing take on history that draws on several primary texts and details more than one hundred female seminaries and academies opened in the United States.




Erosion


Book Description

In Erosion, Gina Caison traces how American authors and photographers have grappled with soil erosion as a material reality that shapes narratives of identity, belonging, and environment. Examining canonical American texts and photography, including John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Octavia Butler’s Parable series, John Audubon’s Louisiana writings, and Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Caison shows how concerns over erosion reveal anxieties of disappearance that are based in the legacies of settler colonialism. Soil loss not only occupies a complex metaphorical place in the narrative of American identity; it becomes central to preserving the white settler colonial state through Indigenous dispossession and erasure. At the same time, Caison examines how Indigenous texts and art such as Lynn Riggs's play Green Grow the Lilacs, Karenne Wood’s poetry, and Monique Verdin's photography challenge colonial narratives of the continent by outlining the material stakes of soil loss for their own communities. From California to Oklahoma to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Caison ultimately demonstrates that concerns over erosion reverberate into issues of climate change, land ownership, Indigenous sovereignty, race, and cultural and national identity.




Fictions of Female Education in the Nineteenth Century


Book Description

Seeking to understand how literary texts both shaped and reflected the century's debates over adolescent female education, this book examines fictional works and historical documents featuring descriptions of girls' formal educational experiences between the 1810s and the 1890s. Alves argues that the emergence of schoolgirl culture in nineteenth-century America presented significant challenges to subsequent constructions of normative femininity. The trope of the adolescent schoolgirl was a carrier of shifting cultural anxieties about how formal education would disrupt the customary maid-wife-mother cycle and turn young females off to prevailing gender roles. By tracing the figure of the schoolgirl at crossroads between educational and other institutions - in texts written by and about girls from a variety of racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds - this book transcends the limitations of "separate spheres" inquiry and enriches our understanding of how girls negotiated complex gender roles in the nineteenth century.




Recovering Our Ancestors' Gardens


Book Description

2020 Gourmand World Cookbook Award Winner of the Gourmand International World Cookbook Award, Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens is back! Featuring an expanded array of tempting recipes of indigenous ingredients and practical advice about health, fitness, and becoming involved in the burgeoning indigenous food sovereignty movement, the acclaimed Choctaw author and scholar Devon A. Mihesuah draws on the rich indigenous heritages of this continent to offer a helpful guide to a healthier life. Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens features pointed discussions about the causes of the generally poor state of indigenous health today. Diminished health, Mihesuah contends, is a pervasive consequence of colonialism, but by advocating for political, social, economic, and environmental changes, traditional food systems and activities can be reclaimed and made relevant for a healthier lifestyle today. New recipes feature pawpaw sorbet, dandelion salad, lima bean hummus, cranberry pie with cornmeal crust, grape dumplings, green chile and turkey posole, and blue corn pancakes, among other dishes. Savory, natural, and steeped in the Native traditions of this land, these recipes are sure to delight and satisfy. This new edition is revised, updated, and contains new information, new chapters, and an extensive curriculum guide that includes objectives, resources, study questions, assignments, and activities for teachers, librarians, food sovereignty activists, and anyone wanting to know more about indigenous foodways.




Voices in the Drum


Book Description

The history of indigenous peoples in North America is long and complex. Many scholarly accounts now rely on statistical data to reconstruct this past, but amid all the facts and figures, it is easy to lose sight of the human side of the story. How did Native people express their thoughts and feelings, and what sources of strength did they rely on to persevere through centuries of change? In this engaging narrative, acclaimed historian R. David Edmunds combines careful research with creative storytelling to give voice to indigenous individuals and families and to illustrate the impact of pivotal events on their lives. A nonfiction account accompanies each narrative to provide necessary historical and cultural context. Voices in the Drum features nine stories, each of which focuses on a fictional character who is a composite, or representation, of historical people. This series of portrayals takes the reader on an epic journey through time, beginning in the early 1400s with the Mound Builder cultures and ending with the modern-day urbanization of Native people. Along the way, we observe fictional characters interacting with real historical figures, such as Anthony Wayne, Tecumseh, and John Sutter, and taking part in actual events, such as the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the Trail of Tears, the California gold rush, and the forced removal of Native children to off-reservation boarding schools. The people portrayed in these pages belong to various tribes, including Potawatomis, Lakotas, Oneidas, and Cherokees. Their individual stories, ranging from humorous to tragic, give readers a palpable sense of how tribal peoples reacted to the disruptive changes forced on them by European colonizers and U.S. government policies. Both entertaining and insightful, the stories in this volume traverse a range of time periods, events, themes, and genres. As such, they reverberate like voices in the drum, inviting readers of all backgrounds to engage anew with the rich history and cultures of indigenous peoples.