American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The oil-producing regions of western Pennsylvania and New York are legendary as the birthplace of the modern petroleum industry; as with any narrative of American origins, it is important to scrutinize the role of racism and colonialism in establishing narratives that render Indigenous people as ghosts, guides, or givers who facilitate white access to resources while fading into a mythical past. Such narratives certainly proliferated in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century popular press, where petroleum was initially known by its regional moniker, “Seneca Oil,” and dreams of “Indian spirits” were said to lead prospectors to successful holes. The reality was that the Seneca people waged active legal and political battles to secure their rights to land, resources, and sacred sites in Pennsylvania and New York throughout the height of the oil boom. Their historical relationship with oil as a healing natural substance led leaders to preserve the Oil Spring Territory between 1797 and 1801; a century later, Seneca leaders engaged in ever-more complex negotiations with white-owned oil companies, and wound up in an existential fight against the Americans attempting to liquidate their treaty-protected territories.

In this article, I examine race, indigeneity, and sovereignty in order to understand the relationship between them as they structure the lives of Black people on the continent of Africa and in the African diaspora. Specifically, I am interested in Black Indigeneities and explore the following questions: What are Black Indigeneities, beyond the connections between African-descended and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, especially the U.S.? Indigeneity implies ties to land and heritage, but what does it look like when those ties have been weakened or severed? What does it look like for places and people living with the consequences of different but related histories of settler and indirect colonization and chattel slavery on both sides of the Atlantic? Rather than trying to arrive at definitive responses, I use these questions as a point of departure for outlining an analytical framework that identifies sovereignty as a crucial element in understanding the diversity of Black Indigenous histories and experience under different but related structures of power. I distinguish between indigeneities of remembering and indigeneities of recovery. I also seek to go beyond the concept of arrivantcy as a framework for understanding the indigeneities of African-descended peoples in the Americas.

This article examines the claims to an Indigenous identity made by the four state-recognized Abenaki tribes in Vermont through an analysis of their petition for federal acknowledgement (1982–2005) and applications for state recognition (2010–2012). A detailed analysis of their claims demonstrates that the tribes are not Abenaki, but instead, represent the descendants of French Canadians who immigrated to the Champlain Valley of northwestern Vermont in the mid-nineteenth century. In this case study of what the anthropologist Circe Sturm has called “race shifting,” I demonstrate how the politics of recognition, which do not include the kin-making and relations of Indigenous nations, serve the interests of settler colonialism under the guise of decolonization. I attribute the emergence of race shifting along three vectors: the move away from white identity post-Civil Rights era; the lack of a tribal presence in Vermont; and the flaws in the state recognition process.

"Paranormal heritage" is contested and should be understood as bridging conceptual divides within dark heritage studies and settler colonial studies. Through historic/fictitious narratives, regional legends, and fortean research this article examines paranormal heritage in the Ohio River Valley, connected to the cryptozoological figure of Mothman, as a continued weaving of settler heritage. Using decolonial and Indigenous theory, it argues that through weaving certain paranormal heritages Indigenous stories and landscapes are usurped, and Indigenous Peoples and Title are erased to ‘indigenize’ settler populations. Paranormal settler heritages require attention for their role in the logic of elimination and settler moves to innocence.

This article describes the health-care access experiences of Indigenous members of a Gulf Coast, non-federally recognized tribe. Research exploring the experiences of non-federally recognized tribes is needed, as these tribes lack resources available to federally recognized tribes. Using a qualitative description research approach and through partnership with a community advisory board, thirty-one semi-structured life-course interviews were conducted with women tribal members. A qualitative descriptive analytic approach revealed the following key themes: First Health-Care Experiences; Going to Family Members for Health Care; Going to Indigenous Healers for Health Care and; Generational Changes in the Transmission of Traditional Knowledge. Our findings highlight the role that family members and Indigenous healers play in addressing health-care gaps and needs for tribal members. In addition, results suggest that Indigenous healers are respected, valued members of the community, and there is concern that healing knowledge is not being passed down to future generations. This research addresses a gap in the need for holistic understandings of Indigenous women’s reproductive and sexual health care, which is required for the development of interventions which not only address social justice issues and weaknesses in the health-care system, but that also promote the existing strengths and resources in Indigenous communities.

In 2019, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) celebrated its centennial year with little public recognition of the Gabrieliño-Tongva and Tovaangar, the original inhabitants of the region known as the Los Angeles Basin. Reflecting on this occasion, this paper considers UCLA’s relationship to the invasion and colonization of California, adding to the growing body of research examining the history of chattel slavery and Indigenous dispossession in the establishment of US higher education. Focusing on lands occupied by the UCLA campus, this article tracks the movement of communally stewarded lands of the Gabrieliño-Tongva over three waves of colonialism: Spanish missionaries’ illegal seizure of lands to construct Mission San Gabriel Arcángel in 1771, privatization of lands into ranchos under Mexican governance after 1821, and the subdivision and sale of lands under US rule after 1850. (Re)storying this narrative, this article documents the unsevered link between the original inhabitants of Tovaangar and UCLA to underscore the need for postsecondary institutions to confront their colonial inheritance and reorient responsibilities that fortify the futures of California Native nations.

(none)

none