American Indian / Native American Studies – Exam Notes

Knowledge systems rooted in place, kinship with land, animals, plants; conveyed via stories, ceremony, seasonal practice.
Creation stories affirm origin “since time immemorial,” rebutting Bering Strait narrative.
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK): sustainable land-care (fire, harvest cycles); 7-generation principle guides decisions.
Place-based learning links language, history, environment; example: California tribes’ tending of acorn, salmon, basketry plants.

Sovereignty: inherent nation-to-nation authority; limited only by explicit Congressional action.
Self-determination: tribes control governance, courts, police, schools, research.
Self-governance: operational control of federal programs (P.L. $93\text{–}638$ ).
Colonization / Imperialism: violent seizure, forced law, religion, economy.
Settler Colonialism: ongoing project that removes/erases Natives to replace them; not a past event.
Racist Nativism: whites cast selves as “native” Americans, marking non-whites as foreign.
Genocide (UN, 1948): any of 5 acts committed with intent to destroy a group; all met in U.S. Indian policy.
Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCRT): 9 tenets framing colonization as endemic and policy as rooted in white supremacy while centering story, survivance, sovereignty.
Blood Quantum: U.S. tool to shrink tribal rolls; halves each mixed generation; many tribes now adopt lineage criteria instead.

$1830$ Indian Removal Act ➔ Trail(s) of Tears.
$1887$ Dawes Allotment Act ➔ loss of communal land.
$1934$ Indian Reorganization Act ➔ end allotment, encourage tribal constitutions, land-into-trust.
$1953$ Termination & Public Law $280$ ➔ state jurisdiction, loss of status; officially reversed $1970$ .
$1975$ Indian Self-Determination & Education Assistance Act ➔ contract/compact authority.
$1978$ Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) ➔ keep Native children with Native families.
$1988$ Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) ➔ economic development.

Imaginary tropes (Brian Baker): roaming nomad, childish ward, wild dancer, “redskin warrior.”
Functions: justify land theft, reservations, paternalism; produce invisibility yet hyper-visibility via mascots, film.
“Playing Indian” & sports mascots reinforce settler identity; erasure of living peoples.

Boarding-school era (1879–1970s): “Kill the Indian, save the man” → loss of language, abuse, graves.
Relocation (1950s): urbanization, attempted assimilation; sparked intertribal activism.
Ongoing intergenerational impacts: high violence, health disparities, over-suspension of Native students.

Red Power Era: Alcatraz occupation (1969–71), Trail of Broken Treaties (1972), Wounded Knee II (1973).
Water & Land Defense: Standing Rock “No DAPL” (2016–17); Shasta Dam raise opposition.
MMIWG2S: grassroots response to crisis of Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women/Girls/Two-Spirit; federal MMU (2021).
LANDBACK: campaign to return public/“surplus” lands (e.g., Black Hills) to tribes.
Language/Cultural Revitalization: Breath of Life institutes; tribal dictionaries, immersion schools, hip-hop artists incorporating language.

Land, water, mineral rights reserved unless ceded; litigated in courts (e.g., Winters, Arizona v. California).
Gaming, energy, forestry, agriculture fund services; still within federal-trust oversight.

Always link policy to its aim: control land & resources.
Distinguish political/legal identity (citizens of sovereign nations) from racial category.
Note pendulum of U.S. policy: removal → allotment → reorganization → termination → self-determination.
Center Native agency, survivance, and present-day leadership when analyzing history.