Connect with the Libraries
Have an idea for Subject of the Month?
August 2021: Self-Determination Not Colonialization
Dean George (left), president of the North American Indian Association of Detroit, and an NAIA Detroit member (right) display two bumper stickers which read "CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS" and "CUSTER HAD IT COMING;" original taken in 1971 and available via the Virtual Motor City collection.
Selector: Clayton Hayes
I identify as white (of Western and Southern European ancestry) and I cannot speak on behalf of anyone whose ancestry includes peoples indigenous to this continent (nor should I attempt to). I have tried throughout to highlight resources by indigenous authors, which privilege indigenous voices, and which profile indigenous activists or indigenous-led movements.
August 9th is recognized as the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations and I had originally planned to develop a guide for August centered on Michigan's indigenous populations. This broad idea changed, in part due to recent uncovering of unmarked graves at Residential School sites in Canada, into the theme of Native American activism against colonialist power in the United States. I wanted to provide sources detailing the damage done to indigenous populations by our government, but I also did not want to push an implicit narrative that Native Americans were passive in the face of state-sanctioned colonialist violence. I also wanted to provide a reminder that Residential Schools were a part of United States policy as well, and have include photographs and information on the school which operated in Mount Pleasant until the 1930s.
Wayne State University rests on the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Three Fires Confederacy, a settlement called Waawiyaataanong in the Anishinaabemowin language of the Ojibwe and later referred to as Detroit. These were and are sovereign lands shared by the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Wyandot nations. We advance our educational objectives at Wayne State on a foundation of colonial violence and erasure for which this acknowledgement does the absolute bare minimum of reparation. This land acknowledgement is based on that of the WSU Student Senate, which exists thanks to advocacy by the WSU Native American Student Organization, and has been adapted here to remove the implicit assertion that the 1807 Treaty of Detroit justifies past, current, and future colonialist violence.
Self-Determination, Activism, and the Red Power Movement
Self-Determination and Self-Definition
Say We Are Nations by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2015This wide-ranging and carefully curated anthology presents the words of Indigenous people who have shaped Native American rights movements from the late nineteenth century through the present day.
Indian Self-Rule by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 1995A collection of first-hand accounts from individuals who had leading roles in Indian-White relations. A key reference for the modern Indian experience.
Survival and Regeneration by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2017Survival and Regeneration captures the heritage of Detroit's colorful Indian community through printed sources and the personal life stories of many Native Americans. During a ten-year period, Edmund Jefferson Danziger, Jr. interviewed hundreds of Indians about their past and their needs and aspirations for the future.
We Will Always Be Here by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2016In We Will Always Be Here, contemporary tribal leaders, educators, and activists speak about their own experiences fighting for Indian identity, self-determination, cultural survival, and community development.
Activists
Standing up to Colonial Power by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2018Standing Up to Colonial Power focuses on the lives, activism, and intellectual contributions of Henry Cloud (1884-1950), a Ho-Chunk, and Elizabeth Bender Cloud (1887-1965), an Ojibwe, both of whom grew up amid settler colonialism that attempted to break their connection to Native land, treaty rights, and tribal identities.
The New Warriors by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2001An indispensable introduction to the rich variety of Native leadership in the modern era, The New Warriors profiles Native men and women who have played a significant role in the affairs of their communities and of the nation over the course of the twentieth century.
Saving the Reservation by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2001Joseph R. Garry, a Coeur d'Alene Indian, served six terms as president of the National Congress of American Indians in the 1950s. He led the battles to compel the federal government to honor treaties and landownership and dominated an era in government-Indian relations little attended by historians.
Life of the Indigenous Mind by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2019An examination of the early activism, life, and writings of Vine Deloria Jr. (1933-2005), the most influential indigenous activist and writer of the twentieth century and one of the intellectual architects of the Red Power movement.
Activism
City Indian by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2015From the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition to the 1934 Century of Progress Fair, American Indians in Chicago voiced their opinions about political, social, educational, and racial issues. City Indian focuses on the privileged members of the American Indian community in Chicago who were doctors, nurses, business owners, teachers, and entertainers.
Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2012In the late 1960s, a loose coalition of hippies, civil rights advocates, Black Panthers, unions, Mexican-Americans, Quakers and other Christians, celebrities, and others joined with Red Power activists to fight for Indian rights and confront Federal policy which sought to extinguish all remnants of native life and culture.
From Wounded Knee to Checkpoint Charlie by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2016A historical analysis of the transatlantic relations of the American Indian radical sovereignty movement of the late Cold War.
Local, Regional, and National Organizations
- Uniting Three Fires Against ViolenceA coalition supporting Tribes in Michigan to address disproportionate rates of violence impacting Tribal communities.
- Yellowhead InstituteA First Nation-led research center based at Ryerson University that develops research and policy related to land and governance.
Residential Schools
United States
The Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School, established by an act of Congress in 1891, operated from 1893 to 1934 in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Students were taken from families across Michigan, as well as from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York. At least 174 undocumented deaths took place at the school. The facility was abandoned in 2008 and is now property of the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Nation.
Photos above from the Virtual Motor City collection
- Federal Education Policy & Off-Reservation Schools 1870-1933
A description of education policy toward Native Americans and the experiences of Indians who attended off-reservation boarding schools from Central Michigan University's Clarke Historical Library.
American Indian Education by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2017The history of American Indian education from colonial times to the present is a story of how Euro-Americans disrupted and suppressed common cultural education and childrearing practices, and how Indians actively pursued and preserved them.
Colonized Through Art by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2017Colonized through Art explores how the federal government used art education for American Indian children as an instrument for the "colonization of consciousness," hoping to instill the values and ideals of Western society while simultaneously maintaining a political, social, economic, and racial hierarchy.
Recovering Native American Writings in the Boarding School Press by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2017The first comprehensive collection of writings by students and well-known Native American authors who published in boarding school newspapers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Canada
A Knock on the Door by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2015Between 2008 and 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada provided opportunities for individuals, families, and communities to share their experiences of residential schools and released several reports based on 7000 survivor statements and five million documents from government, churches, and schools, as well as a solid grounding in secondary sources.
Magic Weapons by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2007The legacy of the residential school system ripples throughout Native Canada, its fingerprints on the domestic violence, poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide rates that continue to cripple many Native communities. Magic Weapons is the first major survey of Indigenous writings on the residential school system.
United States Colonial Policy
Early Interaction
Peoples of the Inland Sea by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2018A history of the Great Lakes peoples over nearly three centuries of rapid change, from pre-Columbian times through the era of Andrew Jackson's Removal program. As the people themselves persisted, so did their customs, religions, and control over their destinies, even in the Removal era.
Theft Is Property! by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2019This title discusses how indigenous activists must navigate claims that their land was stolen by Anglo settlers while recognizing that territoriality and property ownership are themselves settler concepts.
19th Century
Indian Affairs and the Administrative State in the Nineteenth Century by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2010The romantic myth of an individualized, pioneering expansion across an open West obscures nationally coordinated administrative and regulatory activity in Indian affairs, land policy, trade policy, infrastructure development, and a host of other issue areas related to expansion.
Authorized Agents by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2019While the crisis of removal profoundly reshaped Indian country between 1820 and 1860, indigenous intellectuals and tribal leaders often worked with various collaborators--translators, editors, and amanuenses--to address the tensions between American empire and Indian nations. Drawing on established conventions of Indian diplomacy, these collaborative writings were bound up with the life of colonial institutions but they intervened in them as well.
Blood Will Tell by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2017Blood Will Tell reveals the underlying centrality of "blood" that shaped official ideas about who was eligible to be defined as Indian by the General Allotment Act in the United States.
20th Century and Beyond
Native Americans and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2010Not generally associated with Native Americans or Native American affairs, Truman's presidency marked the end of the Indian New Deal begun under the Roosevelt administration and the start of a policy known as "termination", which anticipated the end of tribalism and the assimilation of all Native Americans by encompassing final compensation for tribal grievances, relocation to urban centers, and a dismantling of the trust relationship between the government and Native American nations.
Forgotten Tribes by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2004The Federal Acknowledgment Process (FAP) is one of the most important and contentious issues facing Native Americans today. A complicated system of criteria and procedures, the FAP is utilized by federal officials to determine whether a Native community qualifies for federal recognition by the United States government.
United States Colonialism
America, Amerikkka by Call Number: [ebook]Publication Date: 2014America, Amerikkka traces the historical and ideological patterns behind America's sense of itself. In its examination of America's "chosenness", the book ranges across the doctrine of the "rights of man" in the 18th and 19th centuries, the role of America in the twentieth century as "global policeman", and the enforcement of neo-colonial relations over the "third world".
Follow the WSU Libraries
To keep up with library events and happenings, follow us on:
- WSU Libraries on Facebook
This link opens in a new window
- WSU Libraries on Twitter
This link opens in a new window
- WSU Libraries on Instagram
This link opens in a new window
- WSU Libraries YouTube Channel
This link opens in a new window
