Natives and Academics

Researching and Writing about American Indians

by Devon A Mihesuah

All too frequently, Native Americans have little control over how they and their ancestors are researched and depicted in scholarly writings. The relationship between Native peoples and the academic community has become especially rocky in recent years. Both groups are grappling with troubling questions about research ethics, methodology, and theory in the field and in the classroom.

In this timely and illuminating anthology, ten leading Native scholars examine the state of scholarly research and writing on Native Americans. They offer distinctive, frequently self-critical perspectives on several important issues: the representativeness of Native informants, the merits of various methods of data collection, the veracity and role of oral histories, the suitability of certain genres of scholarly writing for the study of Native Americans, the marketing of Native culture and history, and debates about cultural

essentialism. Some contributors propose alternative forms of scholarship. Special attention is also given to the experiences, responsibilities, and challenges facing Native academics themselves.

With lively prose and telling arguments, Natives and Academics lends clarity to the heated debate about the purpose and direction of Native American scholarship.

Devon A. Mihesuah is an associate professor of history at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. She is the author of Cultivating the Rosebuds: The Education of Women at the Cherokee Female Seminary and American Indians: Stereotypes and Realities.

Table of Contents

1 "Introduction"

Devon A. Mihesuah (Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff)

2 "American Indian History or Non-Indian Perceptions of American Indian History?" Angela Cavender Wilson (Cornell University, Ithaca, New York)

3 "Grandmother to Grandaughter: Generations of Oral History in a Dakota Family." Angela Cavender Wilson

4 "Commonalty of Difference: Indian Women and History." Devon A. Mihesuah

5 "Special Problems in Teaching Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony." Paula Gunn Allen (University of California-Los Angeles)

6 "Comfortable Fictions and the Struggle for Turf: An Essay Review of the Invented Indian: Cultural Fictions and Government Policies." Vine Deloria Jr. (University of Colorado, Boulder)

7 "Ethics and Responsibilities In Writing American Indian History." Donald L. Fixico (Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo)

8 "Licensed Trafficking and Ethnogenetic Engineering." Susan A. Miller (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

9 "American Indian Intellectualism and the New Indian Story." Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (Eastern Washington University, Cheney)

10 "Cultural Imperialism and the Marketing of Native America." Laurie Anne Whitt (Michigan Technological University, Houghton)

11 "On Revision and Revisionism: American Indian Representations in New Mexico." Theodore S. Jojola (University of New Mexico-Albuquerque)

12 "American Indian Studies is for Everyone." Duane Champagne (University of California-Los Angeles)

13 "Why Indians Should Be the Ones to Write About Indian Education." Karen Gayton Swisher (Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence, Kansas)

Contributors

Index

176 pp — ©1998