Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.45.1.tallbear
K. Tallbear
This essay is voiced by “IZ,” a character personifying the evolving field of “Native American” or “Indigenous” studies in the United States. IZ was introduced to readers in Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s edited volume Critical Indigenous Studies: Engagements in First World Locations 2016, in which Moreton-Robinson wrote: “Twenty years into this century, Indigenous-centered approaches to knowledge production are thriving” and our “object of study is colonizing power in its multiple forms, whether the gaze is on Indigenous issues or on Western knowledge production.” Today, “critical Indigenous studies” represents a coming together of multiple national engagements by Indigenous scholars and sovereignty movements with universities around the world. In this essay, IZ’s object of study and critical polydisciplinamorous Indigenous engagement is a scientist searching for signs of “intelligent” life off-Earth.
这篇文章由“IZ”配音,他是美国“美洲原住民”或“原住民”研究领域的化身。艾琳·莫顿·罗宾逊(Aileen Moreton Robinson)主编的《批判性土著研究:第一世界地区的参与》(Critical Native Studies:Engagements in First World Locations 2016)一书向读者介绍了IZ,Moreton Robinson在书中写道:“本世纪二十年来,以土著人为中心的知识生产方法正在蓬勃发展”,我们的“研究对象是多种形式的殖民权力,无论是关注土著问题还是西方知识生产。”,“批判性土著研究”代表着土著学者和主权运动与世界各地大学的多次国家参与。在这篇文章中,IZ的研究对象和批判性的多学科土著参与是一位科学家,他正在寻找地球上“智慧”生命的迹象。
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Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.45.1.shorter_tallbear
D. Shorter, K. Tallbear
Providing the history and significance of the varied collection of articles in this American Indian Culture and Research Journal special issue, coeditors David Shorter and Kim TallBear describe involvement in an Indigenous studies working group formed in conjunction with the Making Contact 2018 workshop hosted by the Berkeley SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Center. As a whole, “Settler Science, Alien Contact, and Searches for Intelligence” takes a critical eye to frontiers, space exploration, the history of science, and the colonial politics of surveillance technologies.
{"title":"An Introduction to Settler Science and the Ethics of Contact","authors":"D. Shorter, K. Tallbear","doi":"10.17953/aicrj.45.1.shorter_tallbear","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17953/aicrj.45.1.shorter_tallbear","url":null,"abstract":"Providing the history and significance of the varied collection of articles in this American Indian Culture and Research Journal special issue, coeditors David Shorter and Kim TallBear describe involvement in an Indigenous studies working group formed in conjunction with the Making Contact 2018 workshop hosted by the Berkeley SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Center. As a whole, “Settler Science, Alien Contact, and Searches for Intelligence” takes a critical eye to frontiers, space exploration, the history of science, and the colonial politics of surveillance technologies.","PeriodicalId":80424,"journal":{"name":"American Indian culture and research journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46569466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.45.1.painter
F. Painter
In the 1970s a string of cattle mutilations grabbed national attention. Thousands of cows in twenty-one states were turning up dead under suspicious circumstances. The culprits left no tire tracks or footprints, only exsanguinated cows missing trademark body parts. Many members of the public suspected (and still suspect) aliens were responsible. This article analyzes FBI files on the mutilations and reveals the central role Indian land played in the FBI’s search for the cow killers. It then wields Indian land to launch an Indigenous critique of settler speculations about the alien.
{"title":"G-Men, Green Men, and Red Land: Extraterrestrial Miscreants, Federal Jurisdiction, and Exceptional Space","authors":"F. Painter","doi":"10.17953/aicrj.45.1.painter","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17953/aicrj.45.1.painter","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1970s a string of cattle mutilations grabbed national attention. Thousands of cows in twenty-one states were turning up dead under suspicious circumstances. The culprits left no tire tracks or footprints, only exsanguinated cows missing trademark body parts. Many members of the public suspected (and still suspect) aliens were responsible. This article analyzes FBI files on the mutilations and reveals the central role Indian land played in the FBI’s search for the cow killers. It then wields Indian land to launch an Indigenous critique of settler speculations about the alien.","PeriodicalId":80424,"journal":{"name":"American Indian culture and research journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45531455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.45.1.kite
S. Kite
How is colonialism connected to American relationships with extraterrestrial beings? This commentary analyzes contemporary and founding US mythologies as constant, calculated attempts for settlers to obtain indigeneity in this land stemming from a fear of the “unknown.” From Columbus’s arrival to the Boston Tea Party, from alien and UFO fervor to paranormal experiences, spiritualism, New Age, and American Wicca, American mythology endlessly recreates conspiracy theories to justify its insatiable desire for resource extraction. I examine the US American mythology of extraterrestrials from two directions: the Oglala Lakota perspective of spirits born through a constellation of stars, and the “American” perspective of extraterrestrials born out of settler futurities. Manifest Destiny goes so far as to take ownership over time and reconfigure it into a linear, one-way street that is a progression towards apocalypse. For American Indians and other peoples targeted by the United States government, conspiracy theories prove true. Those who are targeted, Native and otherwise, understand as the violence of American mythology pours across the continent—abduction and assimilation, or death. How can Indigenous nonhuman ontologies orient settler ethics for the future?
{"title":"“What’s on the earth is in the stars; and what’s in the stars is on the earth”: Lakota Relationships with the Stars and American Relationships with the Apocalypse","authors":"S. Kite","doi":"10.17953/aicrj.45.1.kite","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17953/aicrj.45.1.kite","url":null,"abstract":"How is colonialism connected to American relationships with extraterrestrial beings? This commentary analyzes contemporary and founding US mythologies as constant, calculated attempts for settlers to obtain indigeneity in this land stemming from a fear of the “unknown.” From Columbus’s arrival to the Boston Tea Party, from alien and UFO fervor to paranormal experiences, spiritualism, New Age, and American Wicca, American mythology endlessly recreates conspiracy theories to justify its insatiable desire for resource extraction. I examine the US American mythology of extraterrestrials from two directions: the Oglala Lakota perspective of spirits born through a constellation of stars, and the “American” perspective of extraterrestrials born out of settler futurities. Manifest Destiny goes so far as to take ownership over time and reconfigure it into a linear, one-way street that is a progression towards apocalypse. For American Indians and other peoples targeted by the United States government, conspiracy theories prove true. Those who are targeted, Native and otherwise, understand as the violence of American mythology pours across the continent—abduction and assimilation, or death. How can Indigenous nonhuman ontologies orient settler ethics for the future?","PeriodicalId":80424,"journal":{"name":"American Indian culture and research journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43798195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.45.1.lempert
William Lempert
This article traces parallels between James Cook’s 1768 Endeavour voyage to measure the transit of Venus and current initiatives searching for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). While separated by vast time and space, both are united in their appeal to celestial frontier science in the service of all humanity, and contain discrepancies between their ethical protocols and probable outcomes. Past, present, and future colonial projects are interwoven by drawing on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “time-knot,” Star Trek’s “prime directive,” and firsthand experience in SETI’s Indigenous studies working group. This analysis cautions against the current trend toward unabated interstellar imperialism and suggests alternative approaches for engaging outer spaces and beings through celestial wayfinding.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.45.1.maile
D. Maile
Conquest of new frontiers in the universe requires the colonization of old ones. This article interrogates technoscience desires to explore outer space, and how time and territory for discovering extraterrestrials and habitable planets are organized through settler colonialism on our own. Examining modern astronomy at Mauna Kea, I argue the technoscientific promise of the Thirty Meter Telescope hinges on a temporality of lateness—late to show up and late in time—that contributes to the dehumanization, elimination, and dispossession of Kanaka Maoli, the Indigenous people of Hawai‘i. I demonstrate further that kia‘i—mountain protectors—unsettle technoscientific conquest by cruising Mauna Kea as an alternative tempo that disrupts the pace of building the observatory.
{"title":"On Being Late: Cruising Mauna Kea and Unsettling Technoscientific Conquest in Hawai‘i","authors":"D. Maile","doi":"10.17953/aicrj.45.1.maile","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17953/aicrj.45.1.maile","url":null,"abstract":"Conquest of new frontiers in the universe requires the colonization of old ones. This article interrogates technoscience desires to explore outer space, and how time and territory for discovering extraterrestrials and habitable planets are organized through settler colonialism on our own. Examining modern astronomy at Mauna Kea, I argue the technoscientific promise of the Thirty Meter Telescope hinges on a temporality of lateness—late to show up and late in time—that contributes to the dehumanization, elimination, and dispossession of Kanaka Maoli, the Indigenous people of Hawai‘i. I demonstrate further that kia‘i—mountain protectors—unsettle technoscientific conquest by cruising Mauna Kea as an alternative tempo that disrupts the pace of building the observatory.","PeriodicalId":80424,"journal":{"name":"American Indian culture and research journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45008031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.44.4.veerbeek
V. Veerbeek
At the end of the nineteenth century, the US government established a system of off-reservation boarding schools in an effort to assimilate Indigenous youth into the American nation-state. Music emerged as one of the most enduring strategies that these schools employed to reshape the cultural sensibilities of young Native Americans. A lively music culture could be found, for instance, at Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, which was home to a marching band and dozens of other music groups throughout its history. Although school officials created these institutions for the purposes of assimilation and cultural genocide, this music program often had a more ambiguous place in the lives of students. To understand the role of music within Sherman Institute during the early twentieth century, this article examines the school’s marching band and the place of Indigenous cultural expression. While the school had students march to the beat of civilization, young Native Americans found various strategies to combat assimilation using the same instruments. At the same time, they also used the cultures of their communities to navigate life in an environment that the government created to destroy those very cultures.
{"title":"A Dissonant Education: Marching Bands and Indigenous Musical Traditions at Sherman Institute, 1901–1940","authors":"V. Veerbeek","doi":"10.17953/aicrj.44.4.veerbeek","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17953/aicrj.44.4.veerbeek","url":null,"abstract":"At the end of the nineteenth century, the US government established a system of off-reservation boarding schools in an effort to assimilate Indigenous youth into the American nation-state. Music emerged as one of the most enduring strategies that these schools employed to reshape the cultural sensibilities of young Native Americans. A lively music culture could be found, for instance, at Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, which was home to a marching band and dozens of other music groups throughout its history. Although school officials created these institutions for the purposes of assimilation and cultural genocide, this music program often had a more ambiguous place in the lives of students. To understand the role of music within Sherman Institute during the early twentieth century, this article examines the school’s marching band and the place of Indigenous cultural expression. While the school had students march to the beat of civilization, young Native Americans found various strategies to combat assimilation using the same instruments. At the same time, they also used the cultures of their communities to navigate life in an environment that the government created to destroy those very cultures.","PeriodicalId":80424,"journal":{"name":"American Indian culture and research journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43513216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.44.4.hedlund
Selma Hedlund
In 2016, a historically large gathering of Indigenous peoples, tribal nations, and allies took place at the Standing Rock reservation, North Dakota, in response to the proposed construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Under the assertion of Mni Wičoni (Water Is Life), a social movement emerged with the purpose of protecting clean drinking water and Indigenous lands. Drawing on Gerald Vizenor’s theoretical framework that emphasizes storytelling and active presence over settler resistance, this study argues that Indigenous water protectors’ collective action in the movement, as well as their stories and remembrance of Standing Rock, are acts of survivance, in which they are able to denounce othering and challenge the colonizer’s gaze. While water is often described as a first medicine by Indigenous peoples, the water protectors’ stories in this essay suggest that the movement itself represented another remedy as well. Specifically, this movement represents a pivotal moment of cultural revitalization and community across what participants refer to as “Indian country,” in which individuals are able to engage in large scale grassroots decolonizing praxis rooted in spirituality and ceremony, and suspend genocidal traps of victimry that they have long battled.
2016年,在北达科他州立岩保留地举行了一场历史性的大型集会,聚集了土著人民、部落国家和盟友,以回应拟议中的达科他输油管道(DAPL)建设。在Mni wi oni(水就是生命)的主张下,出现了一场旨在保护清洁饮用水和土著土地的社会运动。借鉴Gerald Vizenor的理论框架,强调讲故事和积极的存在,而不是定居者的抵抗,本研究认为,土著水保护者在运动中的集体行动,以及他们的故事和对立岩的记忆,都是生存的行为,他们能够谴责他人并挑战殖民者的目光。虽然水经常被土著人民描述为第一剂良药,但本文中水保护者的故事表明,该运动本身也代表了另一种治疗方法。具体来说,这一运动代表了参与者所说的“印度国家”的文化复兴和社区的关键时刻,在这里,个人能够参与植根于精神和仪式的大规模基层非殖民化实践,并暂停他们长期以来与之抗争的种族灭绝受害者陷阱。
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Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.44.4.haake
Claudia B. Haake
When pressured to remove after the 1830 Indian Removal Act, some from among the Seneca appealed to the federal government to prevent displacement. In these letters and petitions, their authors periodically invoked the notion of protection, an instrument of cross-cultural diplomatic encounters of the previous century. Seneca authors sought to defend their tribe against settler takeover by invoking two different kinds of protection, external and internal. They further drew upon a civil right, petitioning, although originally it had been a method of exclusion from full political rights, and rejected the legal incorporation forced upon American Indians through the “domestic dependent nations” ruling.
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Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.44.4.mohler
C. Mohler
The current television era, sometimes called “Peak TV,” was ushered in with serious creatordriven shows of the late 1990s. The increasingly frequent Indian character type of the manipulative, money-hungry, and usually criminal casino “chief”/CEO simultaneously offers dramatically significant guest-star roles for Native actors and reflects a neoliberal version of the Noble Savage fit for twenty-first century audiences. This article analyzes examples of the “casino Indian: characterization found in the award-winning television dramas The Sopranos, Big Love, The Killing and House of Cards. Adapting the figure of the imagined “Indian” to suit the anxieties of our political and economic moment, each of these critically acclaimed shows have created an image of “Indianness” in relation to “casinos” and thereby have added the casino Indian trope to the long-established line of “Indian” characters crafted by non-Native “experts,” writers, and artists of the stage and screen.
{"title":"Playing (the Casino) Indian: Native American Roles in Peak TV","authors":"C. Mohler","doi":"10.17953/aicrj.44.4.mohler","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17953/aicrj.44.4.mohler","url":null,"abstract":"The current television era, sometimes called “Peak TV,” was ushered in with serious creatordriven shows of the late 1990s. The increasingly frequent Indian character type of the manipulative, money-hungry, and usually criminal casino “chief”/CEO simultaneously offers dramatically significant guest-star roles for Native actors and reflects a neoliberal version of the Noble Savage fit for twenty-first century audiences. This article analyzes examples of the “casino Indian: characterization found in the award-winning television dramas The Sopranos, Big Love, The Killing and House of Cards. Adapting the figure of the imagined “Indian” to suit the anxieties of our political and economic moment, each of these critically acclaimed shows have created an image of “Indianness” in relation to “casinos” and thereby have added the casino Indian trope to the long-established line of “Indian” characters crafted by non-Native “experts,” writers, and artists of the stage and screen.","PeriodicalId":80424,"journal":{"name":"American Indian culture and research journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44489315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}