Native American Politics

La palabra muisca, significa en lenguaje nativo persona o gente. Y según muy serias investigaciones los nativos muiscas parecen descendientes de los chinos que poblaron la América Central, y de ahí sin duda pasaron a Panamá, territorio que antes pertenecía a Colombia, Perú, Ecuador y otros lugares. Sí, a los “Chibchas” o “Muiscas” los hacen descendientes de los chinos, por cuanto el legisla cultural y legendaria, cuna a la vez de los primeros inventos y de una gran civilización. De la misma manera se afirma que los fenicios también se establecieron en América.

Hidden in the mountains, the indigenous peoples of Mexico have kept alive the spiritual path of the ancient Toltecs, one of the most powerful Mesoamerican spiritual traditions alive today. Tracing their lineage to a time before the Aztec, the Toltecs recognize Earth as a living being, share a profound communion with their land, and demonstrate unusual powers of perception.

It has often been said that the greatest invention of all time was the sail, which facilitated the internationalization of the globe and thus, ushered in the modern era. Columbus’ contact with the New World, alongside European maritime contact with the Far East, transformed human history, and, in particular, the history of Africa.

Faced with a constant stream of news reports of standoffs and confrontations, Canada’s “reconciliation project” has obviously gone off the rails. In this series of concise and thoughtful essays, lawyer and historian Bruce McIvor explains why reconciliation with Indigenous peoples is failing and what needs to be done to fix it.

Colonists brought a different view of nature, one that saw its resources as commodities to be bought and sold. Over the course of centuries, this conflict of ideologies would continue, one that persists today in courtroom debates surrounding Indigenous rights, on frontlines protesting pipeline projects, and in the hearts and minds of people advocating that "water is life". So when a water protector proclaims "water is life", they speak not just in slogan form, but as part of an ancient philosophy that dates back millennia.

During the early twentieth century, the American government’s standing expectation was that Native Americans should be adopting Western customs. In the face of that prospect, anthropologist and musicologist Frances Densmore sought to preserve Native American culture—particularly as it was expressed through music. In her extensive writings on Native American lifestyles, music, and history, Densmore opened a window onto American experiences that had been obscured by stereotypes, and encouraged a better appreciation of the varied traditions of tribes nationwide.

Invisible No More is a collection of stories by Native American leaders, many of them women, who are leading the way through cultural grounding and nation-building in the areas of community, environmental justice, and economic justice. Authors in the collection come from over a dozen Native nations. While telling their stories, authors excavate the history and ongoing effects of genocide and colonialism. At the same time, the authors detail ways that listeners might imagine the world differently, presenting stories of Native community building that offer benefits for all.

In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about the treatment of Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight into the ongoing legacy of colonialism. She engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrifcation, writing, and representation.

On a hot summer day in 1876, George Armstrong Custer led the Seventh Cavalry to the most famous defeat in U.S. military history. Outnumbered and exhausted, the Seventh Cavalry lost more than half of its 400 men, and every soldier under Custer's direct command was killed. It's easy to understand why this tremendous defeat shocked the American public at the time. But with Custerology, Michael A. Elliott tackles the far more complicated question of why the battle still haunts the American imagination today.

His name was Geronimo. And any mention of that name immediately conjures up images of the last gasp of Native American control of the Western Frontier. Geronimo, to be sure, was one of the most effective leaders in the resistance against America’s westward advance, but he was much more than just a good field commander for the Apaches. For even after the West was supposedly won, Geronimo proved more than ready to adapt. In this book, you will get the full picture of Geronimo: the good, the bad, and the downright incredible.

Part manifesto, part memoir, This Wound Is a World is an invitation to “cut a hole in the sky / to world inside”. Belcourt issues a call to turn to love and sex to understand how Indigenous peoples shoulder their sadness and pain without giving up on the future. His poems upset genre and play with form, scavenging for a decolonial kind of heaven where “everyone is at least a little gay”.

Whirlwind, the twin brother of Stone, disappears during a raid into northeastern New Spain. So Stone brings together Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Gataka warriors to go after his missing brother - but there are many things between earth and sky that oppose his quest.

In Voices from Hudson Bay Cree elders recall the daily lives and experiences of the men and women who lived and worked at the Hudson’s Bay Company post at York Factory in Manitoba. Their stories, their memories of family, community, and daily life, define their past and provide insights into a way of life that has largely disappeared in northern Canada. The era the elders describe, from the end of World War I to the closing of York Factory in 1957, saw dramatic changes—both positive and negative—to Indigenous life in the North.

The remarkable story of the author of Indian Boyhood's growth into the White world at his father's recommendation because he says the Indian's world is over; how Charles learns and adapts to it; and what he learns along the way.

In 1872, during a fight along the Yellowstone River between US troops protecting railroad workers and Sioux warriors, one of the Sioux did something both unusual and inspiring. At the height of the battle, with bullets whizzing all around him, this warrior sat down, loaded his cannupa (sacred pipe), and began to smoke, partaking in his people's religious sacrament.

Stories define us. They tell us who we are or, at least, who we think we are. The American story of westward expansion draws upon heroic tales of courage and perseverance and the "pioneer spirit". But settlers and their descendants also spread false narratives about Indians in order to justify ruinous private and public acts. The stories we heard and the tales we hear even now give people cover to behave abominably. And this abominable behavior has economic effect.

Charles Eastman is unique among Indian writers, whether storytellers or oral historians. He was raised traditionally, as a Woodland Sioux, by his grandmother, from 1858 to 1874, until he was 15. He thus gained a thorough first-hand knowledge of the lifeways, language, culture, and oral history. His father (thought to have been hanged at Mankato, Minnesota) reappeared and insisted he receive the white man's education.

Throughout history, there have been men of war and men of peace, but few have actually had a war named after them. When it comes to Pontiac, a few facts are certain. For one thing, he certainly led the first major attack of Pontiac's War in May 1763, when he and 300 of his men attacked Fort Detroit in what is now the city of the same name. Unfortunately for his cause, Pontiac failed to gauge just how strong the British presence was, and his attack was quickly repelled. On the other hand, he was not a man who easily gave up.

The words of the individuals included in this book offer just a glimpse of the results of the effort of one group of people to educate people who were in many cases not seeking the knowledge being offered. These are tales of lessons learned, languages lost, traditions replaced, & charity corrupted.

Nearly 500 years after his death and the demise of his empire, Montezuma II is the most famous ruler of the most famous civilization in the New World, the Aztec. For centuries the legends surrounding his life and the conquest of the Aztecs by Hernan Cortes have fascinated readers and historians alike. So what is known about the famous Aztec ruler? Naturally, there is still a fierce debate over what happened during the conquest of the Aztec.