As the first ethnohistory of modern urban Indians, this perceptive study looks at Indians from many tribes living in cities throughout the United States. Fixico has had unparalleled access to Native Americans, particularly their contemporary oral tradition. Through firsthand observations, interviews, and conventional historical sources, he has been able to assess the major impact urbanization has had on Indians and see how they have come to terms with both the negative and enriching aspects of living in cities. The result is an insightful and empathetic account of how Indian identity is sustained in cities. Today two-thirds of all Indians live in cities. Many of these urban Indians are third- or fourth-generation city dwellers, the descendants of those who first came to urban areas during the federal government's push for relocation from the late 1940s through the 1960s. Fixico looks at both groups of urban Native Americans--those who first settled in cities some fifty years ago and those who have grown up there in the past thirty years--and finds in their experiences a record of survival and adaptation. Fixico offers a new view of urban Indians, one centered on questions of how their modern identity emerges and perseveres. He shows how the corrosive effects of cultural alienation, alcoholism, poor health services, unemployment, and ghetto housing are slowly being overcome, particularly since the 1970s. After fifty years of urban experiences, Native Americans living in cities are better able today than at any other time to balance tradition and modernity.
Currently, there are three approaches to studying American Indians: from how white Americans approach Indian studies, from the dynamics or exchange of Indian-white relations and from the Indian point of view. Donald Fixico, an American Indian, has been teaching and writing history for a quarter of a century. This book is the direct result of his experience as a scholar who 'thinks like an Indian' in an academic environment created predominantly by non-Indian thinkers. This book addresses current approaches to studying Native American traditional knowledge and acknowledges an Indian intellectualism that has up until now been ignored in studying Native American history. Written primarily from inside the Native world, but fully cognizant of the American cultures outside of that world, his unique voice speaks to a need for understanding the interior Native world: a world in which linear thinking is atypical and circularity is preferable.
For too many years, the academic discipline of history has ignored American Indians or lacked the kind of open-minded thinking necessary to truly understand them. Most historians remain oriented toward the American experience at the expense of the Native experience. As a result, both the status and the quality of Native American history have suffered and remain marginalized within the discipline. In this impassioned work, noted historian Donald L. Fixico challenges academic historians--and everyone else--to change this way of thinking. Fixico argues that the current discipline and practice of American Indian history are insensitive to and inconsistent with Native people's traditions, understandings, and ways of thinking about their own history. In Call for Change, Fixico suggests how the discipline of history can improve by reconsidering its approach to Native peoples. He offers the "Medicine Way" as a paradigm to see both history and the current world through a Native lens. This new approach paves the way for historians to better understand Native peoples and their communities through the eyes and experiences of Indians, thus reflecting an insightful indigenous historical ethos and reality.
Addresses current approaches to studying Native American traditional knowledge and acknowledges an Indian intellectualism that has up until now been ignored in studying Native American history.
As a child growing up in rural Oklahoma, Donald Fixico often heard “hvmakimata”—“that’s what they used to say”—a phrase Mvskokes and Seminoles use to end stories. In his latest work, Fixico, who is Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Mvskoke (as “Muskogee” is spelled in the Mvskoke language), and Seminole, invites readers into his own oral tradition to learn how storytelling, legends and prophecies, and oral histories and creation myths knit together to explain the Indian world. Interweaving the storytelling and traditions of his ancestors, Fixico conveys the richness and importance of oral culture in Native communities and demonstrates the power of the spoken word to bring past and present together, creating a shared reality both immediate and historical for Native peoples. Fixico’s stories conjure war heroes and ghosts, inspire fear and laughter, explain the past, and foresee the future—and through them he skillfully connects personal, familial, tribal, and Native history. Oral tradition, Fixico affirms, at once reflects and creates the unique internal reality of each Native community. Stories possess spiritual energy, and by summoning this energy, storytellers bring their communities together. Sharing these stories, and the larger story of where they come from and how they work, “That’s What They Used to Say” offers readers rare insight into the oral traditions at the very heart of Native cultures, in all of their rich and infinitely complex permutations.
From 19th-century trade agreements and treatments to 21st-century reparations, this volume tells the story of the federal agency that shapes and enforces U.S. policy toward Native Americans. Bureau of Indian Affairs tells the fascinating and important story of an agency that currently oversees U.S. policies affecting over 584 recognized tribes, over 326 federally reserved lands, and over 5 million Native American residents. Written by one of our foremost Native American scholars, this insider's view of the BIA looks at the policies and the personalities that shaped its history, and by extension, nearly two centuries of government-tribal relations. Coverage includes the agency's forerunners and founding, the years of relocation and outright war, the movement to encourage Indian urbanization and assimilation, and the civil rights era surge of Indian activism. A concluding chapter looks at the modern BIA and its role in everything from land allotments and Indian boarding schools to tribal self-government, mineral rights, and the rise of the Indian gaming industry.
Indian Resilience and Rebuilding provides an Indigenous view of the last one-hundred years of Native history and guides readers through a century of achievements. It examines the progress that Indians have accomplished in rebuilding their nations in the 20th century, revealing how Native communities adapted to the cultural and economic pressures in modern America. Donald Fixico examines issues like land allotment, the Indian New Deal, termination and relocation, Red Power and self-determination, casino gaming, and repatriation. He applies ethnohistorical analysis and political economic theory to provide a multi-layered approach that ultimately shows how Native people reinvented themselves in order to rebuild their nations. Fixico identifies the tools to this empowerment such as education, navigation within cultural systems, modern Indian leadership, and indigenized political economy. He explains how these tools helped Indian communities to rebuild their nations. Fixico constructs an Indigenous paradigm of Native ethos and reality that drives Indian modern political economies heading into the twenty-first century. This illuminating and comprehensive analysis of Native nation’s resilience in the twentieth century demonstrates how Native Americans reinvented themselves, rebuilt their nations, and ultimately became major forces in the United States. Indian Resilience and Rebuilding, redefines how modern American history can and should be told.
Few people today know that the forty-sixth state could have been Sequoyah, not Oklahoma. The Five Tribes of Indian Territory gathered in 1905 to form their own, Indian-led state. Leaders of the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Muscogees, and Seminoles drafted a constitution, which eligible voters then ratified. In the end, Congress denied their request, but the movement that fueled their efforts transcends that single defeat. Researched and interpreted by distinguished Native historian Donald L. Fixico, this book tells the remarkable story of how the state of Sequoyah movement unfolded and the extent to which it remains alive today. Fixico tells how the Five Nations, after removal to the west, negotiated treaties with the U.S. government and lobbied Congress to allow them to retain communal control of their lands as sovereign nations. In the wake of the Civil War, while a dozen bills in Congress proposed changing the status of Indian Territory, the Five Tribes sought strength in unity. The Boomer movement and seven land dispensations—beginning with the famous run of 1889—nevertheless eroded their borders and threatened their cultural and political autonomy. President Theodore Roosevelt ultimately declared his support for the merging of Indian Territory with Oklahoma Territory, paving the way for Oklahoma statehood in 1907—and shattering the state of Sequoyah dream. Yet the Five Tribes persevered. Fixico concludes his narrative by highlighting recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, most notably McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020), that have reaffirmed the sovereignty of Indian nations over their lands and people—a principal inherent in the Sequoyah movement. Did the story end in 1907? Could the Five Tribes revive their plan for separate statehood? Fixico leaves the reader to ponder this intriguing possibility.
Currently, there are three approaches to studying American Indians: from how white Americans approach Indian studies, from the dynamics or exchange of Indian-white relations and from the Indian point of view. Donald Fixico, an American Indian, has been teaching and writing history for a quarter of a century. This book is the direct result of his experience as a scholar who 'thinks like an Indian' in an academic environment created predominantly by non-Indian thinkers. This book addresses current approaches to studying Native American traditional knowledge and acknowledges an Indian intellectualism that has up until now been ignored in studying Native American history. Written primarily from inside the Native world, but fully cognizant of the American cultures outside of that world, his unique voice speaks to a need for understanding the interior Native world: a world in which linear thinking is atypical and circularity is preferable.
This book explores the identity of American Indians from an Indigenous perspective and how outside influences throughout history, from the arrival of Columbus in 1492 to the twenty-first century, have affected Native people. Non-Native writers, boarding school teachers, movie directors, bureaucrats, churches, and television have all heavily impacted how Indians are viewed in the United States. Drawing on the life experiences of many American Indian men and women, this volume reveals how American Indian identity comprises multiple identities, including the noble savage, wild savage, Hollywood Indian, church-going Indian, rez Indian, urban Indian, Native woman, Indian activist, casino Indian, and tribal leader. Indigenous people, in their own voices, share their experiences of discrimination, being treated as outsiders in their own country, and the intersections of gender, culture, and politics in Indian-white relations. Yet the book also highlights the resilience of being Indian and the pride felt from being a member of a tribe(s), knowing your relatives, and feeling connected to the earth. Being Indian and Walking Proud is a compelling resource for any reader interested in Indigenous history, including students and scholars in Native American and Indigenous studies, anthropology, and American history.
As a child growing up in rural Oklahoma, Donald Fixico often heard “hvmakimata”—“that’s what they used to say”—a phrase Mvskokes and Seminoles use to end stories. In his latest work, Fixico, who is Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Mvskoke (as “Muskogee” is spelled in the Mvskoke language), and Seminole, invites readers into his own oral tradition to learn how storytelling, legends and prophecies, and oral histories and creation myths knit together to explain the Indian world. Interweaving the storytelling and traditions of his ancestors, Fixico conveys the richness and importance of oral culture in Native communities and demonstrates the power of the spoken word to bring past and present together, creating a shared reality both immediate and historical for Native peoples. Fixico’s stories conjure war heroes and ghosts, inspire fear and laughter, explain the past, and foresee the future—and through them he skillfully connects personal, familial, tribal, and Native history. Oral tradition, Fixico affirms, at once reflects and creates the unique internal reality of each Native community. Stories possess spiritual energy, and by summoning this energy, storytellers bring their communities together. Sharing these stories, and the larger story of where they come from and how they work, “That’s What They Used to Say” offers readers rare insight into the oral traditions at the very heart of Native cultures, in all of their rich and infinitely complex permutations.
The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century, Second Edition is updated through the first decade of the twenty-first century and contains a new chapter challenging Americans--Indian and non-Indian--to begin healing the earth. This analysis of the struggle to protect not only natural resources but also a way of life serves as an indispensable tool for students or anyone interested in Native American history and current government policy with regard to Indian lands or the environment.
Donald Fixico, one of the foremost scholars on Native Americans, details the day-to-day lives of these indigenous people in the 20th century. As they moved from living among tribes in the early 1900s to the cities of mainstream America after WWI and WWII, many Native Americans grappled with being both Indian and American. Through the decades they have learned to embrace a bi-cultural existence that continues today. In fourteen chapters, Fixico highlights the similarities and differences that have affected the generations growing up in 20th-century America. Chapters include details of daily life such as education; leisure activities & sports; reservation life; spirituality, rituals & customs; health, medicine & cures; urban life; women's roles & family; bingos, casinos & gaming. Greenwood's Daily Life through History series looks at the everyday lives of common people. This book explores the lives of Native Americans and provides a basis for further research. Black and white photographs, maps and charts are interspersed throughout the text to assist readers. Reference features include a timeline of historic events, sources for further reading, glossary of terms, bibliography and index.
For too many years, the academic discipline of history has ignored American Indians or lacked the kind of open-minded thinking necessary to truly understand them. Most historians remain oriented toward the American experience at the expense of the Native experience. As a result, both the status and the quality of Native American history have suffered and remain marginalized within the discipline. In this impassioned work, noted historian Donald L. Fixico challenges academic historians--and everyone else--to change this way of thinking. Fixico argues that the current discipline and practice of American Indian history are insensitive to and inconsistent with Native people's traditions, understandings, and ways of thinking about their own history. In Call for Change, Fixico suggests how the discipline of history can improve by reconsidering its approach to Native peoples. He offers the "Medicine Way" as a paradigm to see both history and the current world through a Native lens. This new approach paves the way for historians to better understand Native peoples and their communities through the eyes and experiences of Indians, thus reflecting an insightful indigenous historical ethos and reality.
As the first ethnohistory of modern urban Indians, this perceptive study looks at Indians from many tribes living in cities throughout the United States. Fixico has had unparalleled access to Native Americans, particularly their contemporary oral tradition. Through firsthand observations, interviews, and conventional historical sources, he has been able to assess the major impact urbanization has had on Indians and see how they have come to terms with both the negative and enriching aspects of living in cities. The result is an insightful and empathetic account of how Indian identity is sustained in cities. Today two-thirds of all Indians live in cities. Many of these urban Indians are third- or fourth-generation city dwellers, the descendants of those who first came to urban areas during the federal government's push for relocation from the late 1940s through the 1960s. Fixico looks at both groups of urban Native Americans--those who first settled in cities some fifty years ago and those who have grown up there in the past thirty years--and finds in their experiences a record of survival and adaptation. Fixico offers a new view of urban Indians, one centered on questions of how their modern identity emerges and perseveres. He shows how the corrosive effects of cultural alienation, alcoholism, poor health services, unemployment, and ghetto housing are slowly being overcome, particularly since the 1970s. After fifty years of urban experiences, Native Americans living in cities are better able today than at any other time to balance tradition and modernity.
American Indians in a Modern World recounts how American Indians, tribal communities, and tribal governments have survived and flourished in the period following the Dawes Land Allotment Act of 1887, especially through tremendous cultural resilience.
The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century, Second Edition is updated through the first decade of the twenty-first century and contains a new chapter challenging Americans--Indian and non-Indian--to begin healing the earth. This analysis of the struggle to protect not only natural resources but also a way of life serves as an indispensable tool for students or anyone interested in Native American history and current government policy with regard to Indian lands or the environment.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.