ES 241 Final Project Prompt 2

Course Summary & Reflection

Bela Cortwright & Roselyn Romero

Table of Contents

• What is Indigenous Studies?
• Overview of Key Concepts
• Introduction of Project Focus
• Native Peoples Defined
• Key Court Cases, Legislation, and Doctrines
• What is Native Land?
• Indigenous Relationship to Land
• International Legislation
• Boarding Schools & Genocide
• California Natives
• Conclusion & Reflection

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What is Indigenous Studies?

• Indigenous Studies: a comprehensive field that broadly explores the ongoing histories, traditions, cultures, policies, and struggles of Indigenous Peoples, Native Hawaiians (Kanaka Maoli), Alaska Natives, Aboriginal Peoples of Canada, and Aboriginal Australians as they pertain to sovereignty, colonialism, land, relationships to federal and state governments, and decolonization
• Why is Indigenous Studies important in university curricula?
• Not really discussed in K-12 public and private schools across the United States
• Often “whitewashed”; that is, we tend to focus on the purportedly heroic efforts of colonizers (e.g., Christopher Columbus and Spanish Missionaries) rather than the violent displacement of Native peoples
• Indigenous Studies ≠ common knowledge
• Erasure, underrepresentation, and misrepresentation of Native peoples in media

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Overview of Key Concepts

Native Peoples: anyone belonging to any Native Tribe

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Sovereignty: the inherent right of Indigenous People to self-governance, land, food, resources, and equality

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Native Land: any place where Indigenous People have a connection to the land

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Colonial Legislation: any laws that help preserve settler colonialism

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Genocide: the deliberate destruction of national, racial, religious, or ethnic groups

Introduction of Project Focus

With a focus on land, culture, and sovereignty, we pulled information from three main sources. The book American Indian Politics and The American Political System by Wilkins and Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark will help establish a baseline of Indigenous relations in the United States from a political science perspective, including Indigenous governments and legal and political rights. The excerpts from Native Studies Keywords help define key concepts including sovereignty and land, especially as those relate to the history of Native Americans. Lastly, Bauer’s book California Through Native Eyes: Reclaiming History will allow us to examine California history from an Indigenous perspective, as well as their experiences and stories.

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Native Peoples Defined

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• American Indian: Person who belongs to the tribal nations of the continental United States
• Alaska Native: Person who belongs to the tribal nations and villages of Alaska
• Native American: A Native person of the United States and its trust territories (i.e., Kanaka Maoli, Samoans); persons from the First Nations of Canada, Indigenous communities in Mexico, and Central and South America who are citizens of the United States

federally recognized tribal nations

federally and state-recognized reservations

Source: Tribal Nations and the United States

Key Court Cases

• Johnson v. McIntosh (1823): Native people are not entitled to land ownership because they cannot properly care for it, a justification for colonialism.
• Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831): Native nations “have an unquestioned right to the lands they occupy, until that right shall be extinguished by a voluntary cession to ur government.” Nonetheless, Native nations are “domestic dependent nations.”
• Worcester v. Georgia (1832): Supreme Court held that states (i.e., Georgia) do not have legal jurisdiction over tribal nations. The Court also established the foundation for the “trust relationship” between the federal government and Native nations.
• Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903): Congress could unilaterally abrogate treaty rights and expropriate land without the consent of Native nations.
• Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez (1978): Because Native nations possess the sovereign right to determine tribal membership criteria, the federal government cannot intervene when it comes to allegations of sex- or gender-based discrimination in such criteria.
• Tee-Hit-Ton v. United States (1955): Supreme Court ruled Alaska Natives lacked recognition to their aboriginal territory; thus, the federal government could take “unrecognized” Native lands without paying compensation.

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Source: Teves

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Key Legislation

• General (Dawes) Allotment Act (1887): divided Native lands into individual allotments of 80-160 acres, and Native peoples were given fees in trust for 25 years until they were deemed competent. The federal government then seized the remaining land (Teves).
• Indian Citizenship Act (1924): Congress conferred citizenship on all Native peoples (Wilkins and Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark).
• Indian Reorganization Act (1934): ended the allotment policy, permitted tribal nations to hire attorneys, and provided measures through which Native lands could be restored. However, it also allowed the federal government to consolidate tribal lands in order to extract natural resources from those lands (Teves).
• House Concurrent Resolution 108 (1953): terminated federal treaty obligations and special concessions to all Native tribes, dismantled tribal reservations, and moved Native peoples to more urban areas to facilitate assimilation (Wilkins and Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark).

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Key Doctrines

• Trust Doctrine: the federal government’s legal and moral pledge to respect the reserved and inherent rights of Indigenous peoples.
• Plenary Power Doctrine: the exclusive, preemptive, and absolute power of the United States federal government over tribal nations, their lands, and their resources.
• Despite Native nations’ inherent rights to land and self-governance, the United States federal government has used these doctrines to violate treaties and expropriate Native lands.

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Source: Wilkins and Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark.

• Doctrine of Discovery: grants absolute or superior land title in the United States over the Indigenous land rights of Native peoples based on the colonial concept that settlers “discovered” the land.

What is Native Land?

• Any land that Indigenous peoples have a deep, historical or spiritual connection with
• Not limited to reservations, which further promotes settler colonialism (Teves).
• Land is meaningful spiritually and because of the stories that Indigenous peoples tell about it (Teves).
• Article 25 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: "Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands..." (emphasis added)
• It is important to recognize that “all the land in the Americas is Indian land” (Teves).
• Land is a “storied site of human interaction” (Goeman).
• Indigenous views of land vs. “continental” views of land:
• Indigenous: center movement, mobility; islands are socially constructed by people from continents who claim a size-based superiority over islands (Teves)
• Continental: space and place; continents = centers of worldliness, cosmopolitanism, and sophistication (Teves)

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Indigenous Relationship to Land

• Land: landscape, place, territory, and home → not empty and cannot be purchased.
• Their right to land is based in the Constitution and treaties that address Native sovereignty and land rights.
• Land has history and meaning. They also claim ancestral and spiritual relationship (including Creation stories) to people that lived on the land before settlers arrived.
• Native peoples recognize that the land produces all the living things that allowed them to survive. Their relationship with the environment is vital to social organization and intellectual development.
• Relationships between land and people are complex and personal.
• The Western economic system is not environmentally sustainable.
• Topophilia: the affective bond between people and place
• Because many countries including the U.S. and Canada have violated treaties with Native nations, international legislation has been used to intervene in situations of deceit, expropriation, and colonial violence.

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Source: Teves

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International Legislation

• United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007): “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard” (Teves).
• United Nations Definition of Genocide: The committing of certain acts with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such (Lobo). These acts include:
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm
• Deliberate infliction of conditions of life “calculated to bring about” physical destruction
• Imposing measures to prevent birth
• Forcibly transferring children of one group to another group
• A notable site of genocidal acts is boarding schools, which were created to “kill the Indian, save the man” (Captain Richard Pratt, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada).

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Boarding Schools & Genocide

• Boarding schools were located in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
• Goal: distance Indigenous peoples from their own lands
• Extreme discipline, where they corrected “savage” behaviors

• Damage: deracination, loss of Indigenous languages, uprooting from community
• Connection to Genocide:
• Native American children were taken away from their community and moved to these (mainly Christian) boarding schools, where they were punished physically for trying to remain connected to their community through language and culture.
• As outlined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, “forcibly transferring children of one group (i.e., Indigenous peoples) to another group” constitutes genocide.

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Source: Teves & Lobo

California Natives and Creation

• Creation stories always started with water, and from there explained how the earth (land, mountains, etc) was made to be suitable for humans.
• Creation stories are a product of everyday actions and relationships, they are living understandings of what happened in the past
• Specific land and was given to the individual Tribal Nations by the creator
• Defies legal doctrine of terra nullis and the Doctrine of Discovery
• The creation stories differed by tribe and explained dissimilarities between the ethnic groups and their culture

• Creation stories were the beginning of Native history and used to counter the settlers’ histories and laws.

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Source: Bauer

California Natives and Naming

• Languages and identities reinforced the significance of place and California Indian understandings of their past.
• Oral narratives followed topographic markers, not chronological ones as in settler histories. Place-names structured narratives, they began the story, provided landmarks, and concluded the story
• Oral narratives with specific place-names told an older history of California, refuting the notion that these were empty lands, ready to be colonized.

• These place-names asserted Native sovereignty over the land, identifying the people’s borders, borderlands, and economic resources
• The place-names asserted Native sovereignty over the land.

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Source: Bauer

California Natives and Discovering

• Religious leaders prophesied the moment Indigenous Peoples discovered settlers, before they ever met each other.
• Prophecies may have been the product of hindsight or rumors that traveled along trade networks.
• Prophets predicted the ideologies, plants, animals, and technologies that we call settler colonialism.
• There were both negative (consequences) and positive aspects of these prophecies

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• Prophets established order and continuity in Indigenous lives.
• The settlers were not saviors or saints like they claimed; instead, they were causes of destruction.

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Source: Bauer

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California Natives and Persisting

• By the Great Depression, California Indians faced threats to their health
• Illnesses including trachoma and tuberculosis
• Causes included poor sanitation and overcrowding
• Traditional Native healing methods were viewed as antimodern
• There were histories and stories of traditional healing methods working
• Though the government placed nurses in the field, they were focused on preventative care and improving hygiene, instead of treating illnesses

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• There were also land issues which required persistence (i.e., LA aqueduct, Owens Valley Settlers)
• Native peoples were able to power through and persist through narratives.

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Source: Bauer

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Conclusion

How course materials enhance our understanding of key issues in Indigenous Studies

• Indigenous Relationships with Land: Prior to taking this course, we had heard about Standing Rock, but had never been taught the story of Elouise Cobell in 100 Years: One Woman’s Fight for Justice nor the story of the Devils Tower located in the Lakota Black Hills as featured in the film In the Light of Reverence. These films — along with course readings — demonstrate Native peoples’ ongoing struggle for land and sovereignty against individuals who disrespect, desecrate, and expropriate their lands.
• Loss of Culture: Before this course, we knew that Native American Peoples and Culture were not like they once were; however, the causes, including legislation and boarding schools, were mostly unknown. In the chapter, “I Lost My Talk” we were able to learn about what occurred at boarding school and the detrimental effects boarding schools had on Native American communities.

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How these materials inspire us to pursue more advanced courses in the future

• ES 241 is merely a survey of Indigenous Studies; therefore, there is still so much for us to learn about Indigenous nations. However, this general overview of Native issues encourages us to pursue a more extensive comprehension of themes pertaining to land, legislation, and decolonization.
• Other courses at Cal Poly such as ES 321 (Native Americans in Popular Culture), ES/NR 406 (Indigenous Peoples and International Law and Policy), and ES 326 (Native American Architecture and Place) would further deepen our understanding of key issues outlined in ES 241.

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Reflection

Bela’s Reflection: This course helped me reevaluate how I (and most Americans) view land versus how Indigenous Peoples view land, as well as their relationship with nature and animals. Though I have always cared about sustainability and the environment, certain readings made me reevaluate how white-washed environmental movements are, as they do not take Native American perspective into account. Considering the Native perspective is important because Indigenous peoples have been taking care of the environment longer than white settlers. In elementary school on Earth Day we would always plant trees as a way of “helping the environment,” because as we were taught, climate change was caused solely by cutting down trees. However, through the documentaries this quarter (including 100 Years: One Woman’s Fight for Justice) I have been able to see real worlds examples of how large corporations are truly the cause of climate change. Overall, taking this class has allowed me to dig deeper into topics and knowledge I had learned about previously, and from there evaluate the differences in tone and information taught from different perspectives.

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Roselyn’s Reflection: As an elementary school student, I recall creating 3D models of missions from cardboard boxes, making stereotypical “Indian” hats with autumn-colored leaves, and celebrating Thanksgiving not knowing the violent truth behind the holiday. I also remember visiting the Mission Basilica San Buenaventura in Ventura, CA, about a 30-minute drive from my hometown, and being told a Westernized version of the origins of the lands upon which I grew up and lived. This course has transformed my understanding of Indigenous peoples, their ongoing fight for sovereignty, and their beautiful and rich cultures. Through ES 241, I have learned to “un-learn” what I have been taught as a young girl and to start thinking about the efforts I can make toward decolonization and liberation for Native nations. As a college student and a budding journalist, I aim to use this knowledge of Indigenous history, sovereignty, colonial legislature, and Native lands to raise awareness of these issues and be a vocal ally for Native peoples, whether it be through land acknowledgment at the start of meetings or advocating for Land Back initiatives.

Works Cited

Bauer, William J. California Through Native Eyes: Reclaiming History. University of Washington Press, 2016.

Lobo, Susan, et al. Native American Voices: a Reader. Routledge, 2016.

Teves, Stephanie N., et al. Native Studies Keywords. The University of Arizona Press, 2015.

Tribal Nations and the United States: an Introduction. National Congress of American Indians, Embassy of Tribal Nations, 2015.

Wilkins, David E., and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark. American Indian Politics and the American Political System. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.