The Achuar people have survived in isolation in the Amazonian jungle by aggressively resisting intruders. In this book, Descola depicts an altogether unfamiliar civilisation, whose values often seem bizarre to Western eyes.

Revised and expanded to include fresh research, a discussion of recent interpretive trends, and a review of new literature, The Free People-Li Gens Libres is a comprehensive history of the Metis community and national historic site of Batoche, Saskatchewan.Diane Payment has a long personal association with Batoche; her study is the culmination of thirty years of documentary and field research as a participant-observer within the community. Her inquiry draws on a range of dictated and written historical sources, both Metis and non-Metis, as well as more recent oral history narratives and personal observations. The Free People is one of the few studies on Metis communities in western and northern Canada. Payment's approach demonstrates that any understanding of Metis culture cannot be based on European or Euro-Canadian historical models, but on its own values and traditions. She argues that Batoche has persisted as a community despite conflict, crisis, and prejudice from immigrant ethnic groups and institutions such as the Canadian government and the Roman Catholic Church, succeeding in maintaining its uniquely Metis identity.

She was both guardian of the hearth and, on occasion, ruler and warrior, leading men into battle, managing the affairs of her people, sporting war paint as well as necklaces and earrings.

She built houses and ground corn, wove blankets and painted pottery, played field hockey and rode racehorses.

Frequently she enjoyed an open and joyous sexuality before marriage; if her marriage didn't work out she could divorce her husband by the mere act of returning to her parents. She mourned her dead by tearing her clothes and covering herself with ashes, and when she herself died was often shrouded in her wedding dress.

She was our native sister, the American Indian woman, and it is of her life and lore that Carolyn Niethammer writes in this rich tapestry of America's past and present.

Here, as it unfolded, is the chronology of the native American woman's life. Here are the birth rites of Caddo women from the Mississippi-Arkansas border, who bore their children alone by the banks of rivers and then immersed themselves and their babies in river water; here are Apache puberty ceremonies that are still carried on today, when the cost for the celebrations can run anywhere from one to six thousand dollars. Here are songs from the Night Dances of the Sioux, where girls clustered on one side of the lodge and boys congregated on the other; here is the Shawnee legend of the Corn Person and of Our Grandmother, the two female deities who ruled the earth. Far from the submissive, downtrodden "squaw" of popular myth, the native American woman emerges as a proud, sometimes stoic, always human individual from whom those who came after can learn much.

At a time when many contemporary American women are seeking alternatives to a life-style and role they have outgrown, Daughters of the Earth offers us an absorbing -- and illuminating -- legacy of dignity and purpose.

This book addresses the right of indigenous peoples to live, own and use their traditional territories, and analyses how international law addresses this. Through its meticulous examination of the interaction between international law and indigenous peoples' land rights, the work explores several burning issues such as collective rights, self-determination, property rights, cultural rights and restitution of land. It delves into the notion of past violations and the role of international law in providing for remedies, reparation and restitution. It also argues that there is a new phase in the relationship between States, indigenous peoples and private actors, such as corporations, in the making of territorial agreements.

This study of the Native American in the western, romance, detective, horror, and science fiction genres examines how even historically accurate representations distort and bias the Native American figure to fit European-based traditions and modern agendas. The authors provide critical approaches for evaluating the literature. They argue that while popular fiction conventions determine and limit authentic portraits of Native American cultures, successful popular fiction writers approach literary quality by fusing authentic Native American culture with the standard genre conventions. Approximately 200 books are discussed and evaluated, and true Native American stories and writings are contrasted with mainstream versions of Indian culture.

While the exploitation of Native Americans has long been recognized, little has been written about the manipulation of Native American figures in recent popular fiction. This study will appeal to students of Native American culture, literature, and popular culture. An appendix of special terms is provided along with a comprehensive bibliography.

Inuit hunting traditions are rich in perceptions, practices and stories relating to animals and human beings. The authors examine key figures such as the raven, an animal that has a central place in Inuit culture as a creator and a trickster, and qupirruit, a category consisting of insects and other small life forms. After these non-social and inedible animals, they discuss the dog, the companion of the hunter, and the fellow hunter, the bear, considered to resemble a human being. A discussion of the renewal of whale hunting accompanies the chapters about animals considered 'prey par excellence': the caribou, the seals and the whale, symbol of the whole. By giving precedence to Inuit categories such as 'inua' (owner) and 'tarniq' (shade) over European concepts such as 'spirit 'and 'soul', the book compares and contrasts human beings and animals to provide a better understanding of human-animal relationships in a hunting society.

In this era of recognition and reconciliation in settler societies indigenous peoples are laying claims to tribunals, courts and governments and reclaiming extensive territories and resource rights, in some cases even political sovereignty. But, paradoxically, alongside these practices of decolonization, settler societies continue the work of colonization in myriad everyday ways. This book explores this ongoing colonization in indigenous-settler identity politics in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

This book examines recent changes to Indigenous policy in English-speaking settler states, and locates them within the broader shift from social to neo-liberal framings of citizen-state relations via a case study of Australian federal policy between 2000 and 2007.

The Cherokees' saga of oppression and genocide blends history, Moravian diaries and family legends into a fascinating tale. A personal story of the lives, loves and battles of a famous family, betrayed by militia, governors and presidents.

A chronicle of hardship and persistence, Removal Aftershock centers on the Seminoles and their experiences in the West after the federal government forced them out of their Florida homelands during the early 1800s. Gaining control of Florida in 1819, the United States initiated a series of treaties that compelled the Native-American tribes to ac cept reduced territory, relocations, and finally removal to west of the Mississippi. Some Seminoles fought to stay in Florida; others, along with their black slaves, were sent west between 1834 and 1859. After enduring the trials of removal, the Western Seminoles faced a new struggle. As a small tribe, they had to fight to maintain their identity and land rather than be absorbed into the much larger Creek Nation, as the treaties seemingly required. The struggle for independence from the Creeks was aggravated by other problems, including on the one hand, government neglect, delayed annuities, and corrupt officials; on the other, they were confronted by threatening Plains Indians, measles and smallpox epidemics, alcohol abuse, droughts, and crop failures. Following an 1856 treaty that brought them independence from the Creeks, the Seminoles were next drawn into the Civil War, which riddled the tribe with division and dispersal, property destruction, and death. In 1866, the Semi noles' cooperation with the Confederates was used to justify reduction of their land from more than 2 million acres to 200,000 acres. In telling the story of the Seminoles after removal, Jane Lancaster highlights a neglect ed area of Native-American studies and places the tribe in proper historical perspec tive. Despite their countless hardships and the inhumane policies of the government, the Seminoles have survived to the present day an enduring testament to the stubbornness and determination of the early tribal leaders.

In a break from the contemporary focus on the law's response to inter-racial crime, the authors examine the law's approach to the victimization of one Indigenous person by another. Drawing on a wealth of archival material relating to homicides in Australia, they conclude that settlers and Indigenous peoples still live in the shadow of empire.

This book, the first of its kind, comprehensively explores Native American claims against the United States government over the past two centuries. Despite the federal government's multiple attempts to redress indigenous claims, a close examination reveals that even when compensatory programs were instituted, Native peoples never attained a genuine sense of justice. David E. Wilkins addresses the important question of what one nation owes another when the balance of rights, resources, and responsibilities have been negotiated through treaties. How does the United States assure that guarantees made to tribal nations, whether through a century old treaty or a modern day compact, remain viable and lasting?

When researchers want to study indigenous populations they are dependent upon the highly variable way in which states or territories enumerate, categorise and differentiate indigenous people. In this volume, anthropologists, historians, demographers and sociologists have come together for the first time to examine the historical and contemporary construct of indigenous people in a number of fascinating geographical contexts around the world, including Canada, the United States, Colombia, Russia, Scandinavia, the Balkans and Australia. Using historical and demographical evidence, the contributors explore the creation and validity of categories for enumerating indigenous populations, the use and misuse of ethnic markers, micro-demographic investigations, and demographic databases, and thereby show how the situation varies substantially between countries.

Endangered Peoples of Oceania: Struggles to Survive and Thrive introduces a wide range of Pacific Islanders and indigenous and migrant cultures in Australia and New Zealand and the challenges they face today. This volume focuses on 16 endangered peoples, from Micronesians and Melanesians to Samoans in New Zealand. Students and other readers will become knowledgeable about the contemporary impacts and responses to such factors as nuclear testing, migration for jobs, uncontrolled development, and ecotourism. The chapters are written by anthropologists based on their recent fieldwork, which guarantees unparalleled accuracy and immediacy. The peoples of Oceania are struggling to be economically independent and autonomous while maintaining their distinctive cultural traditions. Each chapter in Endangered Peoples of Oceania: Struggles to Survive and Thrive is devoted to a specific people, including a cultural overview of their history, subsistence strategies, social and political organization, and religion and world view; threats to their survival; and their response to these threats. A section entitled "Food for Thought" poses questions that encourage a personal engagement with the experience of these peoples, and a resource guide suggests further reading and lists films and videos as well as pertinent organizations and web sites. As the curriculum expands to include more multicultural and indigenous peoples, this unique volume will be valuable to both students and teachers.