American Indian Culture and Research Journal

This is a historical cartographic analysis of Indian and Euro-American relations in the United States. We explore the threefold roles of government, academic, and tribal mapping, and bring them together with some findings. As can be seen, government and academia have shared cartographic data; both have learned from the tribes, and in turn, the tribes have learned from the others, not always to their well-being. All of these issues are involved in the affairs of Indians in our country and are discussed to analyze the ongoing spatial activities across the dynamic landscape of Native America.

Native American patterns of landownership among the Munsee- and Mahican-speaking peoples of the colonial Hudson Valley represented a set of practices that ranged from the communal landholding of larger political groups down to land held by individual families. At times these Indian groups treated their lands as cohesive homelands, and at other times they acted as if lands belonged to particular families. This article suggests that these practices sprang from a flexible political system where power was widely dispersed. Which pattern of landholding predominated at any given time depended on circumstances particular to each historical moment.

This article is based upon interviews dating from 1999 to 2010 with Mr. Albert Smith (Na'asho'ii dich'izhii), chronicling his personal experiences, motivation, purpose, and goal in serving in World War II as a code talker. He describes the iconic significance of his Navajo Code Talker uniform, and most importantly, how it symbolizes the Sacred Home/Land he worked to protect by serving in the US Marines during World War II. The article conveys firsthand information regarding indigenous environmental practice through warrior work, the role of spirituality in maintaining health, both in the field and upon return to home, and how Navajo worldview motivated his actions.

In this article, I discuss how indigenous understandings of time can contribute to broader studies of human societies, civilizations, and world history. Colonial paradigms have extended into the realm of world history and assumptions of human behavior have been unfairly applied to all human societies and labeled humans as aggressors against nature and each other. This is unjust especially to the populations that remain victims of colonialism and imperialism. I have developed or, put more appropriately, revealed an indigenous historical paradigm that can be applied to the study of human societies, but my primary goal is to provide a model that links indigenous histories in comparative studies of humans and human societies. To provide an adequate discussion of this model, I use examples from two indigenous societies (Maya and Hopi) to develop my thesis, and two other indigenous societies (Haudenosaunee and Cheyenne) for evaluation under this thesis. I conclude with a final discussion of Christian societies and their place in an indigenous view of world history.