American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture

Front Cover
Oxford University Press, 1997 M09 25 - 315 pages
Does activism matter? This book answers with a clear "yes." American Indian Ethnic Renewal traces the growth of the American Indian population over the past forty years, when the number of Native Americans grew from fewer than one-half million in 1950 to nearly 2 million in 1990. This quadrupling of the American Indian population cannot be explained by rising birth rates, declining death rates, or immigration. Instead, the growth in the number of American Indians is the result of an increased willingness of Americans to identify themselves as Indians. What is driving this increased ethnic identification? In American Indian Ethnic Renewal, Joane Nagel identifies several historical forces which have converged to create an urban Indian population base, a reservation and urban Indian organizational infrastructure, and a broad cultural climate of ethnic pride and militancy. Central among these forces was federal Indian "Termination" policy which, ironically, was designed to assimilate and de-tribalize Native America. Reactions against Termination were nurtured by the Civil Rights era atmosphere of ethnic pride to become a central focus of the native rights activist movement known as "Red Power." This resurgence of American Indian ethnic pride inspired increased Indian ethnic identification, launched a renaissance in American Indian culture, language, art, and spirituality, and eventually contributed to the replacement of Termination with new federal policies affirming tribal Self- Determination. American Indian Ethnic Renewal offers a general theory of ethnic resurgence which stresses both structure and agency--the role of politics and the importance of collective and individual action--in understanding how ethnic groups revitalize and reinvent themselves. Scholars and students of American Indians, social movements and activism, and recent United States history, as well as the general reader interested in Native American life, will all find this an engaging and informative work.

From inside the book

Contents

American Indian Ethnic Renewal
3
ETHNIC RENEWAL
17
RED POWER AND THE RESURGENCE OF INDIAN IDENTITY
81
LEGACIES OF RED POWER RENEWAL AND REFORM
185
References
257
Index
287
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 55 - Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men's conduct. Yet very frequently the ‘world images' that have been created by ‘ideas' have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest.
Page 35 - David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991); Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White...
Page 65 - I defy the most patient ethnologist to make headway against this kind of opposition. One is just driven crazy by it. Indeed, after a few weeks of associating solely with Nuer one displays, if the pun be allowed, the most evident symptoms of 'Nuerosis'.
Page 215 - Following in the footsteps of the Emancipation Proclamation of ninetyfour years ago, I see the following words emblazoned in letters of fire above the heads of the Indians— THESE PEOPLE SHALL BE FREE!
Page 132 - ... history of this nation. This tiny island would be a symbol of the great lands once ruled by free and noble Indians. What use will we make of this land? Since the San Francisco Indian Center burned down, there is no place for Indians to assemble and carry on tribal life here in the white man's city.
Page 73 - More specifically, postmodern theory provides a critique of representation and the modern belief that theory mirrors reality, taking instead 'perspectivist' and 'relativist' positions that theories at best provide partial perspectives on their objects, and that all cognitive representations of the world are historically and linguistically mediated.
Page 136 - The American Indian Movement hit our reservation like a tornado, like a new wind blowing out of nowhere, a drumbeat from far off getting louder and louder. It was almost like the Ghost Dance fever that had hit the tribes in 1890. ... I could feel this new thing, almost hear it, smell it. touch it. Meeting up with AIM for the first time loosened a sort of earthquake inside me. (Pp. 73-74) Frances Wise was on the Trail of Broken Treaties: Many of the people with us were like me before Alcatraz.
Page 107 - Respondents were asked to select their origin (or the origin of some other household member) from a "flash card" listing ethnic origins. Persons of Hispanic origin, in particular, were those who indicated that their origin was Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or some other Hispanic origin.
Page 35 - Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the 'Racial' Self, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp.

About the author (1997)

Joane Nagel is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas. Her work on ethnicity and nationalism includes a number of books and articles focusing on the politics of ethnicity, ethnic identity, and ethnic movements in the United States, the Middle East, and Africa. Among these publications are Competitive Ethnic Relations (with Susan Olzak, 1986) and American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk (with Troy Johnson and Duane Champagne, 1997).

Bibliographic information