Midterm Flashcards
(85 cards)
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.
