Native American Renaissance Lecture

0:02 Hello everyone, welcome back. So this week we are going to explore the Native American Renaissance. Uh first we're going to need to understand a little bit about the much longer history of indigenous America. So before European colonization, North America was home to hundreds of distinct indigenous nations. um each had their own language, their own government, their own religion and cultural traditions. This map just shows a few of the major um indigenous tribes. I want us to avoid speaking about Native Americans as though they were just one unified culture. These really were distinct peoples and their nations continue to exist today.

0:50 One reason that this history is so difficult to summarize is that the familiar map of the United States didn't exist. Um, rivers, mountain ranges, trade routes, um, and relationships between nations mattered much more than our modern state borders. So, when we use the phrase Native American, we are grouping together peoples who might not have shared a language um, or a political identity. Even our estimates of pre-cont population vary widely because disease and displacement transformed communities before many Europeans were able to record uh any kind of numbers. So we should be suspicious of uh neat numbers that make this enormous history seem simple.

1:40 Geography very much shaped the ways that indigenous communities lived. Native peoples were neither isolated nor uh culturally uniform. The diversity of indigenous America is very important because the familiar images that we see in say western movies can't possibly represent hundreds of different societies. For example, uh peoples on the northwest coast developed traditions that were centered on salmon fishing, woodworking, and maritime travel. And then across parts of the southwest, irrigation and dry farming supported agricultural communities. But in California, communities managed oak woodlands and harvested acorns, fish, uh nuts, and seeds, and they hunted game.

2:26 This diversity really matters because the familiar image of uh a mounted warrior on the Great Plains, for example, uh really only represents a very small part of indigenous history. uh horses for that matter spread among many plains peoples but only after Europeans introduced them to North America. We also need to abandon the assumption that people who didn't build European style cities uh lacked complex institutions. Things like kinship, trade diplomacy ceremonial obligations, and ecological expertise could organize very sophisticated societies. So European settlers did not arrive on an empty or undeveloped continent. They

3:14 encountered societies that had very long histories and complex political and cultural institutions. Um there are three examples here on the slide. So, Cahokia, which are these enormous uh mounds, including the monk's mound, uh required the movement of amazing quantities of earth to create. The scale of construction really tells us a lot about coordinated labor, about political authority and ceremonial life. It also reminds us that cities and monumental architecture are not uniquely European achievements. In the middle you can see the cliff palace at Mesa Verde, Colorado. Um, ancestral PBLO peoples constructed very elaborate settlements. Um, Choco Canyon's monumental buildings and road

4:01 systems also show sustained planning and regional connections. And then in the last image, you can see um, a map of the six Iracoy nations on the east coast. They developed a sophisticated system of diplomacy and of collective govern uh, governance. And this really offers us an example of political sophistication organized around relationships between nations rather than um a single centralized monarchy. Now I want to bring this discussion a little closer to home. Sacramento existed as an indigenous homeland long before it became California's capital. Uh the Nissan, Miwok and Patwin peoples

4:47 occupied the valley rivers and the delta as well as the surrounding foothills. The American and Sacramento rivers provided uh food gathering. Um they supported transportation as well as trade. Modern city and state boundaries are comparatively recent lines that have been drawn across much older indigenous territories. For example, if you travel from the Delta into Sacramento and then east toward the foothills, uh you cross areas that are associated with several different indigenous communities. Their to territories were largely shaped by waterways, by seasonal resource use, relationship with their neighbors, um and their individual histories that long predate the city of Sacramento. It's also worth remembering that many

5:34 familiar Sacramento area place names tell a settler history. When we look at indigenous geography, it helps us to ask whose histories a modern map makes visible and whose it hides. The Nissan inhabited much of the eastern Sacramento Valley and the western Sierra foothills. um they're related to but still distinct from other Maidu peoples. And then the Miwok communities lived in portions of the Delta and the Sierra Foothills while Patwin communities occupied lands that were west of the Sacramento River. These names need some careful attention. So Maidu can be used broadly for um several related peoples

6:21 while Nissan refers to um distinct communities of the southern Maidu language area. Miwok um likewise encomp encompasses several distinct groups and then pwin communities have their own separate histories and political identities. But these people developed detailed environmental knowledge. They used acorns, salmon, seeds. Um, and they managed the landscape through carefully planned burning. Their basket tree traditions really demonstrate um such remarkable technical and artistic skill. And we'll look at some of uh uh these in our art section. In the Sacramento region, the uh seasonal rhythms of salmon runs, oak

7:08 harvests, and other resources helped shape settlement and work. Burning and the careful harvesting of um nuts, seeds, plants were ways of actively managing landscapes. So, they weren't simply taking what nature happened to provide. Uh, when we look at baskets and grinding rocks later, I want you to see them as evidence of specialized knowledge rather than just as quaint artifacts from a supposedly simple way of life. Now, we have to deal with the facts of European colonization. European colonization brought disease, warfare, religious conversion, uh, and the

7:53 widespread seizure of indigenous lands. Epidemics caused devastating losses, um, among communities that really had no prior exposure to these diseases and may have killed up to 90% of indigenous peoples that were living in North America prior to European colonization. Indigenous nations responded to this in different ways. Some used diplomacy, some formed alliances, they tried to adapt to their circumstances, and others um engaged in armed resistance. Colonization involved unequal power and the systematic dispossession of native peoples, but it also took different forms in different places. So in California, the Spanish mission system

8:41 um sought to reorganize native lives around Catholic missions um convert them to Christianity and coerc them into labor on those missions. Um but in other regions, English and later American settlements expanded through uh complex systems, including warfare, uh treaties, land purchases, and outright seizure of land. As we already discussed, disease was catastrophic. But we should remember that disease alone doesn't explain dispossession. Political decisions, labor exploitation, military violence, and uh restrictions on movement made epidemics even more destructive. We also have to recognize indigenous

9:27 agency. Native communities worked hard to negotiate. They resisted. They adapted. They formed alliances and ultimately they survived. In the 19th century, manifest destiny popularized the belief that American expansion across the continent was inevitable and even divinely justified. So settlers portrayed themselves as bringing civilization and progress westward. uh while indigenous peoples were treated as obstacles to that progress. So I want you to notice how a story about national destiny can make the violence of territorial conquest

10:13 appear necessary and even virtuous. So consider um the artwork on the slide here. This is John Gas's 1872 painting American Progress. Um the white figure in the center is Colombia and she's carrying a light and a teleg telegraph wire. Um while the indigenous people and animals are retreating into the dark background. So the painting is turning a violent political process into a reassuring story about civilization advancing forward. That visual narrative does some very important ideological work. If the west is just imagined as an empty wilderness awaiting progress, then removing the people that are already living there can be represented as an

11:01 improvement rather than conquest. Indian removal and military expansion were policies enacted by governments and settlers who stood to benefit uh from access to land that did not belong to them. Let's talk for a moment about the tragedy that is the Trail of Tears. So, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 enabled the federal government to pursue the systematic removal of native nations from lands that were east of the Mississippi River. And in 1838 and 1839, thousands of Cherokee people were forcibly displaced to what was called then Indian territory. Thousands of

11:48 people died during this removal process. The Cherokee had developed a written constitution and other institutions that were highly praised by white Americans, but this didn't do anything to protect their land or their people. The underlying issue was expansion and political power. The forced journey followed confinement in camps where disease spread rampantly. And the deaths were not simply the unavoidable hardship of travel. They ultimately resulted from a government policy that uprooted people against their will. The California gold rush of 1848 brought enormous numbers of settlers all the way

12:35 west to California and this disrupted indigenous communities and destroyed important food sources. Uh, native Californians faced massacres, kidnapping, forced labor, displacement, and rampant disease. Uh, state laws and public funding helped enable some of this violence. California's indigenous population fell catastrophically during the mid-9th century. The gold rush might be a story of opportunity for settlers, but it was truly a disaster for many Native Americans. Um, I live near the gold discovery site in Col and I think it's very shocking to see that Sutter's Mill was built directly across from a Miwok grinding rock.

13:21 For indigenous Californians, the gold rush was not just an influx of miners themselves. Mining damaged fisheries and waterways. Um, newcomers occupied um, uh, Native American villages and gathering areas as I discussed in Col. and uh violent campaigns targeted entire communities. Uh for example, hydraulic mining was used uh to um basically liquefy entire hillsides into mud. So they used high-press water cannons called giants and they literally washed away the mountain sides of the Sierra Nevada. California's 1850 act for the government and protection of Indians, despite its kind of reassuring name, helped create

14:08 systems of coerced native labor. State and local authorities also supported militia expeditions against indigenous communities. Historians usually describe this period as genocidal because the violence was extremely widespread and in important instances it was organized and supported by public authorities. So we should be willing to examine the contrast between the gold rush as an American success story and its consequences for Native Americans. Federal negotiators signed 18 treaties with California tribes uh in 1851 and

14:55 1852 and they promised reservations and other protections for California natives. The US Senate secretly refused to ratify all 18 of these treaties and indigenous communities were then denied the lands that they had been promised while settlement continued. Um, remember this when we reached the red power movement, activists demanding treaty rights were often demanding that the government honor commitments that it had already made. The federal government didn't publish the rejected treaties for decades. So imagine negotiating over your homeland, making concessions in expectation of protection by the government, and then learning that the government never intended to put the agreement into effect at all. This

15:40 really helps explain why treaties are central to modern indigenous activism. Now, let's discuss the reservation system, which restricted many native nations to lands that were under extensive federal supervision. Um, and they often disrupted traditional economies and community life. um we should distinguish a reservation from a nation. So a reservation is a land area that has a particular legal history while a tribal nation is a political community whose identity and sovereignty can't be reduced to just the boundaries of that reservation land.

16:26 The DAW Act of 1887 divided communally held tribal lands into individual allotments and opened so-called surplus land to non-native ownership. A central concept for this lecture that I want you to remember is sovereignty. Um, sovereignty is the inherent authority of indigenous nations to govern themselves. Native activism would ultimately insist on more than just individual civil rights. Many of these reservations were located in remote regions uh with arid climates or otherwise difficult environments where agriculture and hunting were very challenging. Native communities were often separated from the rivers and

17:12 forests and grazing lands that had sustained their traditional ways of life. Conditions on many reservations were and in some cases still are horrific. Uh families faced chronic food shortages, inadequate housing, poor sanitation, um and limited access to adequate medical care. The federal government would frequently promise food or livestock, maybe agricultural equipment or other supplies in exchange for native land being seated to the government. But these promises were usually broken and corruption within the reservation system meant that supplies could be delayed um or withheld or perhaps even stolen. And this really created a particularly cruel form of

17:58 dependency. The government had destroyed or severely restricted indigenous communities ability to support themselves through traditional uh traditional means like hunting, farming or trade. And then they made their survival dependent on federal assistance that was frequently inadequate or completely missing. In 1889, the northern Pyute religious leader Woka taught a movement of spiritual renewal that became known as the ghost dance. Wvoka reported experiencing a vision uh during a solar eclipse in which he encountered God and he received instructions for restoring harmony to the world. Uh Ghost Dance

18:45 teachings spread among several different indigenous communities and they offered hope during an era of devastating dispossession. Um the beliefs and practices of the ghost dance varied between um indigenous nations, but the central idea um was that the dead would return, the buffalo would flourish again, and native peoples would be reunited with their ancestors. The dance itself was typically performed as a communal circle dance. So participants joined hands and they moved rhythmically. Um and this was accompanied by singing and prayers. um communities would continue for several days um in dancing and singing and some dancers would experience um ecstatic visions or enter transl-like states.

19:31 Well, Voca's teachings emerged during this period when indigenous communities had endured military defeat, hunger and starvation, confinement, and profound disruption of their traditional ways of life. So the promise of renewal was not simply just religious consolation for everything that had happened to them. It was responding to real conditions of suffering. Um federal authorities though feared that this movement could potentially inspire rebellion. We see indigenous religious expression being treated as a political threat. In December of 1890,

20:18 US soldiers confronted Lakota people um that were led by spotted elk near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. They feared that the ghost dance movement would escalate into an armed uprising. Uh the killing of Sitting Bull during an attempted arrest really intensified this crisis. Um and spotted elks band was then intercepted while moving toward Pine Ridge. So an attempt to disarm the group then escalated into gunfire and soldiers killed an estimated 250 to 300 Lakota people um including women and children. Wounded Knee became a symbol of federal violence against Native Americans. Importantly, it would also become a site of Native activism

21:03 again in 1973. For the later American Indian movement, returning to Wounded Knee was this deliberate act of historical memory. The name connected contemporary demands for justice to the violence of the 19th century. We need to talk a little bit about assimilation and boarding schools. So, federal assimilation policy sought to replace indigenous languages, religions, and cultural traditions with European American customs. So, children were forcibly sent to boarding schools, and they were separated from their families. They were prohibited from speaking their languages, and they had to take on new

21:50 clothing and even new names. Um, many of these children suffered horrible abuse, neglect, many died in the boarding schools. So, I want you to also think about what happens to a community when children are prevented from learning the language and traditions of their grandparents. Richard Henry Pratt, who was the founder of uh Carile Indian Industrial School, um became associated with this really horrific phrase, kill the Indian, save the man. This language is shocking because it really makes the objective explicit. Erase indigenous cultural identity while remaking the child according to white American expectations.

22:35 And the consequences of uh this practice of boarding schools were intergenerational. If children are prevented from learning um the language and the traditions and the ceremonies of their elders, that loss ends up rippling through whole communities in future generations. We should also take a moment to consider the issue of citizenship. So, Native Americans were uh considered citizens of their own tribal nations. So, we go back to that concept of sovereignty. um but not of the United States. Um the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted US citizenship to Native Americans that were born within the territorial limits

23:21 of the United States who didn't already have it. Uh before 1924, some Native Americans had already gained US citizenship through treaties. There were allotment policies, um through marriage to a non-native person, through military service. Um but the Indian Citizenship Act extended citizenship broadly without dissolving um allegiance to specific tribal nations. One problem is that citizenship did not immediately guarantee voting access. Um as we've seen in other units, states continued to use discriminatory restrictions and practices. Um native people at this point could be both US citizens and citizens or members of sovereign tribal nations. and those identities are not really

24:07 interchangeable. Um, the important thing to think about is how indigenous Americans were not granted birthright citizenship in a country that was created thousands of years after their ancestors had already been on the land. Now, during the 1950s, termination policies sought to end the federal government's recognized relationship with selected tribes. Uh, urban relocation programs then promised jobs and opportunity in cities like LA, San Francisco, um, Denver, and Minneapolis. But employment was not guaranteed, and

24:53 newcomers often encountered um, racial discrimination and isolation from their communities. um House Concurrent Resolution 108 um in 1953 announced a policy directed toward ending federal supervision of those selected tribes. So termination meant losing federal recognition, losing government services and protections and uh some devastating effects on land and community institutions. Ironically though, urban relocation also helped native people build um new networks of community and activism. and those networks would contribute to the later red power movement. I'd also like to take a moment to

25:39 discuss racist depictions of Native Americans in culture and media. Hollywood westerns and popular art um often depicted Native Americans as either violent obstacles to settlement or as noble figures belonging to some vanished past. Um, these stereotypes seem different, but both of them are denying indigenous people a place in contemporary society. Um, non-native actors frequently portrayed native actors without regard for any kind of tribal differences and while wearing brownface. Um, think about the structure of a classic Hollywood western. Um, we have a settler or maybe a cavalry officer, a cowboy or a sheriff. And this is the character whose hopes and fears

26:26 we're supposed to understand and identify with. Um while native people appear um either as a collective threat or maybe as picturesque background scenery um or as a plot device to uh teach wise lessons to those white characters. That wise old Indian stereotype um is known as the noble savage. And this stereotype might appear flattering at first glance, but it still is denying indigenous people the complexity of ordinary human lives. Um, both hostile and romantic stereotypes turn living communities into symbols for non-native audiences. This is why representation matters. Uh when native writers and artists take

27:11 control of their own narrative, they can depict contradiction, humor, um what it's like like to live as a Native American in modernity and their own personal individual experiences rather than just performing an outsider's expectations. Now during the 1960s, native activists organized around the uh issues of sovereignty, treaty enforcement, uh discrimination, and overall cultural survival. Um this movement developed alongside uh the civil rights movement and black power activism. Uh but its demands were different and distinct to them. So native nations were asserting their right to self-government. They weren't simply seeking inclusion in

27:57 wider society. Political activism created a new context for the flourishing of indigenous literature and art. Um, organizations like the National Indian Youth Council, which was founded in 1961, um, helped to articulate a new generation's demands. Um, activists use demonstrations, legal action, and direct action to challenge federal policy and defend treaty rights. Uh, one major distinction from a simple integrationist framework is that tribal sovereignty concerns collective political authority. Native activists could demand equal treatment as individuals while also insisting that their nations retain rights as sovereign nations.

28:48 All right, so now we've finally gotten to the central movement of this unit, the Native American Renaissance. The Native American Renaissance refers specifically to the growing national recognition of indigenous writing beginning in the late 1960s. And Scott Maday's Housemaid of Dawn won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969. and writers including Leslie Marman Soo and Joy Harjo uh enjoyed sto or explored storytelling and uh land issues of spirituality and issues of personal identity. We're going to look at all of these authors in our literature and poetry section a little bit later. But I think that we should remember that the term renaissance really is a label that is used by literary critics. It's

29:34 not evidence that native storytelling had ever stopped. Um these writers drew on oral traditions while also experimenting with the novel form with poetry um and other uh literary forms that were familiar to national audiences. This combination I think raises a really useful question. Why should tradition and innovation be treated as opposites? Um political activism and artistic expression really reinforced one another. Activists challenged the federal government's authority to define native lives, while writers and artists were challenging the cultural authority of outsiders to define native identity.

30:23 At this point, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the ways in which the larger counterculture movement of the 60s and 70s expressed both appreciation and appropriation of indigenous culture. Counterculture really developed this fascination with Native American spirituality, um, with their art, with Native American clothing. Um, and so many young Americans who were rejecting mainstream consumerism and organized religion um, looked to indigenous cultures for alternative ways of living. Some countercultural activists genuinely did admire Native American resistance to government authority and they supported indigenous struggles for sovereignty. For example, um, environmental activists

31:08 drew inspiration from indigenous relationships to the natural world. Although we should remember that they sometimes romanticized or oversimplified those traditions. However, uh this fascination frequently crossed the line from cultural appreciation into cultural appropriation. Um hippies, for example, adopted the clothing and jewelry um using feathers um and the ceremonial practices of uh indigenous Americans without necessarily understanding their cultural or religious significance. Um, for example, some countercultural communities experimented with things like sweat lodges, vision quests. Um, and these were borrowed from indigenous religious tradition and treated as opportunities

31:55 for personal enlightenment rather than as sacred practices that belong to a specific community. So, my mother was a young woman in the 70s and she um became very attached to a set of tarot cards called the Lakota sweat lodge cards. Um the image on the slide shows them. Uh at the time she was going through the very tragic death of her older brother and um she says that these cards really brought her peace and positive messages of hope that she could continue on despite her circumstances. Um, but using Lakota mythology outside of its context really skirts the line between appropriation and approp and appreciation. Um, I truly believe her when she says that appropriation was never her intention. And so we have to

32:43 understand that the non-indigenous people who appropriated indigenous practices during this time didn't necessarily understand appropriation in the way that we do now. Um, a good example of this is that only recently have indigenous tribes um, come forward and pointed out that uh, smudging practices with white sage is a closed religious practice. So, if you are not a member of a native uh, a native tribe that uses white sage to smudge, you really should not be doing that without permission. Uh it's also become really clear recently that um most people uh now know that it's inappropriate to use feathered Native American headdresses as um costumes. So these were very popular at

33:28 Coachella a few years ago. Um and it is now um you know it is now well known that these are really only supposed to be used for ceremonial purposes by indigenous people themselves. I think these examples really show how our understanding of cultural sensitivity is always evolving. We have to listen to and respect the boundaries that insiders draw concerning their own traditions and practices. Okay. So, let's continue the lecture by looking at uh one of the most visible political statements indigenous Americans made during the counterculture era. So in November of 1969, activists um organized as Indians of all tribes

34:16 occupied Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay and they claimed the abandoned federal property and they proposed a center for native education, culture, and community development. Uh their proclamation offered $24 in beads and cloth um to purchase the island, and this uses satire to expose colonial land claims. Um, the occupation lasted all the way until June 1971. We're going to read the proclamation later and we're going to look at how humor becomes a tool of political criticism. I think the island was a particularly effective choice because it was a former federal prison. Um, it was visible from San Francisco and it was no longer serving its intended purpose. So occupiers invoked the history of federal

35:03 land policy while using the site to attract national attention. Um the proclamation's offers of beads and cloth to purchase the island um really turns the logic of colonial purchase stories upside down. Um its description of Alcatraz as an ideal reservation. So it's isolated, it's lacking resources, um it's subject to federal control, uh is really a very biting irony rather than a sincere endorsement. Um occupation life um also involved uh very difficult practical questions. So issues of food, housing, um internal organization, media attention, and uh the relationship with the federal government. So the protest's importance lies not in a simple victory or defeat

35:49 but in the movement that it helped to galvanize. That movement would be the American Indian Movement or AIM AIM. And this was founded in Minneapolis in 1968. And it initially focused on issues of police brutality and discrimination against urban native people. Um, the trail of broken treaties brought activists to Washington DC in 1972. And in 1973, AIM activists and allies occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days. Um, that choice of Wounded Knee deliberately connected contemporary grievances with the history of the 1890 massacre that we already discussed. Um, activists

36:35 disagreed over strategies and confrontations carried some serious costs, but still these actions really forced a national audience to confront issues that had long been treated as just peripheral to American politics. Indigenous women also played major roles in political organizing, literature, and cultural preservation. um they challenged the limitations of mainstream feminism as we've seen with other groups um which was often centered on those experiences of white middleclass women. Uh we have the term intersectionality to explain how um the experiences of white middleclass women cannot um encompass the experiences of uh black women or

37:22 brown women. Um, for many indigenous feminists, questions about women's lives can't be separated from the issues of colonialism, um, land and sovereignty. And so, women were central to community organizing and cultural survival, but their contributions were sometimes overshadowed by um, accounts that were focused on male leaders. Indigenous feminism asks us to notice both colonial power and gendered power. Uh, one particularly important issue was the coercive sterilization of native women in the early 20th century. Uh, reproductive autonomy was not separate from sovereignty when government institutions exercised such incredibly intimate control over native bodies.

38:18 So throughout the 21st century, 20th and 21st century, native communities have um worked to strengthen their languages, revitalize their ceremonies and their artistic traditions, um and keep their historical knowledge through cultural centers, um schools and community programs. Um, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 acknowledged the importance of indigenous religious practices, even though um, I will say that its initial protections were pretty limited. Cultural survival for indigenous Americans doesn't mean just returning to a frozen idealized past. Um, it means allowing communities to determine how their living traditions continue and how

39:04 they change. Um, language revitalization illustrates both the damage caused by boarding schools and the determination of communities to repair that damage. Language carries place names, ceremonial knowledge, humor, um, ways of describing relationships that translation can't always correctly preserve. Federal policy has also begun shifting toward greater tribal self-determination. The Indian Self-Determination and Education Resistance Act um of uh 1975 um gave tribes expanded opportunities to administer programs that were previously controlled by federal agencies. But we should remember too that survival shouldn't be measured only by how

39:51 closely a community resembles its pre-colonial past. Living cultures change and the issue is who has the authority to direct that change. Today, federally recognized tribal governments exercise powers of self-government in areas including education, public safety, healthcare, um, and cultural preservation subject to some important federal legal limits. Um, native political struggles continue around treaty rights, sacred sites, environmental protection, and I want you to remember that Native American history really doesn't end with colonization. Um, indigenous nations remain living political and cultural communities.

40:38 Tribal sovereignty remains particularly complicated because uh tribal nations exercise inherent governmental powers while also operating within a legal system that Congress and the federal courts have um uh limited. So contemporary disputes over things like water access, um natural resources, legal jurisdiction um show that sovereignty is not an abstract slogan. um it affects concrete decisions about land safety, education and economic life. Um when we discuss political milestones, I want us to distinguish representation within state and federal governments from the separate question of tribal self-government. Both of these

41:23 matter and they're not the same achievement. Now, to finish the history section, I want to take a moment to congratulate Deb Howland for winning the governor election in New Mexico. She will be the first Native American woman to serve as government as governor in uh United States history. Um, representing the Lagona PBLO nation. Um, I also want to congratulate Peggy Flanigan who won a Senate seat in Minnesota. She became the first native woman senator in American history. Uh, and she comes from the Ojiway nation. All right. Now, let's turn to the assigned literature.

42:09 We're going to begin with Mama Day's Housemmaid of Dawn. So, the excerpt I assigned you opens with Abel running through um this beautiful landscape and it's suggesting a profound relationship between himself and the natural world. Um but then when he returns home by bus, he's drunk and he barely recognizes his grandfather Francisco. The contrast here is introducing the theme of alienation. Abel has physically returned, but his connection to his family, his community, um, and tradition is deeply strained. So, notice how Mama Day makes the landscape spiritually meaningful rather

42:55 than simply using it as just a backdrop. Um, let's take a moment to also consider the novel's structure. So, Made doesn't give us a straightforward account of Abel's feelings. Instead, he uses imagery, shifts in perspective, and the contrast between movement and stillness to make alienation something that we experience ourselves as we read the novel. Um, that opening image of running is really especially important. Running can be a ceremonial or communal act. It can connect a person to land um to their ancestors and to um an inherited rhythm of life. And that image contrasts so sharply with Abel's impaired return um

43:40 even when reunion with his grandfather Francisco is strained. So Francisco is um as a character is simply not uh just an elderly relative inserted for background. He represents continuity and memory, but he can't instantly heal the damage that Abel is carrying. And that makes the homecoming more complicated than just a familiar story of someone returning and then finding peace. I want you to ask what the landscape is doing in the pros. Is it merely a beautiful setting? Or is Mama Day presenting a relationship between person and place that western individualism has trouble describing?

44:26 Our next reading is a political document um but its most memorable technique is satire. We already spoke about it a little bit earlier in the lecture. Um the activists claim that Alcatraz by right of discovery um and their offer to purchase it for $24 in beads and cloth um deliberately reverses the logic of European colonial land claims. um they describe the island's inadequate conditions as suitable for a reservation and this exposes the mistreatment of native communities through irony. The proclamation also proposes native educational and cultural institutions. It's criticizing the past while at the same time imagining a different future.

45:14 Um I want you to pay attention to the proclamation's tone. Um the authors are imitating the authoritative language of colonial declarations. um while making claims that sound outrageous when spoken by indigenous people. Um that reversal really exposes how normalized the same claims were when they were made by the colonizers. Um but the document is really not merely a joke. It's proposals for education and cultural institutions are giving the occupation a constructive political purpose. Humor is what opens the argument and self-determination is its ultimate goal.

46:01 Now, let's look at Leslie Marman Silo's Yellow Woman. So, in Yellow Woman, um the narrator encounters Silva and begins wondering whether she stepped into a traditional PBLO story. Um she has a husband and a child. She has an ordinary contemporary life, but the story blurs the boundary between everyday reality and myth. Silo refuses to settle whether Silva is a supernatural figure or just a regular person. And that ambiguity is central to the story. At the end of the story, the narrator wishes that her grandfather were alive to hear her experience. Um, what this shows is that storytelling becomes a living tradition to which she might be able to

46:46 contribute. Um, notice how the narrator alternates between identifying herself as just an ordinary married woman and wondering whether she has actually become yellow woman. Um, the story refuses to tell us that one identity has to cancel the other. Silva is also similarly difficult to categorize. Um, the narrator might be drawn into an encounter with a supernatural figure or she might be interpreting an unsettling experience through the stories that have been passed down in her community. And Silo is not going to answer this question for us. We should also consider the issues of desire and responsibility. Since the narrator has a family and a regular life to return to, um, we have to think about

47:33 how the story makes her departure compelling rather than presenting her as simply virtuous or simply irresponsible. Um, the ending matters because storytelling itself becomes this bridge between the experience and the community. She imagines how the event might be told. And the absence of her grandfather makes us feel what's at stake when generations of storytellers are lost. Now I I'd like to turn our attention to Silo's poem Ceremony which appears at the beginning of her 1977 novel um which has the same name. I absolutely love this novel. Um, but we are only reading the poem for today. And the poem

48:20 introduces some of those central ideas that Silo explores throughout the novel. Um, the poem begins by introducing Thothwoman who is a creator figure from Pueblo tradition. And as Thwoman thinks about a story, it begins to take shape in the real world. Um, this is a really different understanding of storytelling from what we're accustomed to in the western literary tradition. Uh, we generally like to think of stories as representations of reality. Um, but here, Silo is reversing that relationship. Stories don't simply describe reality or add something new to reality. They actually help to create reality. And Soo also emphasizes that stories are not simply entertainment.

49:06 They preserve cultural knowledge. They transmit traditions and they help communities understand their relationship to the world around them. Um, I want you to consider just how important this becomes within the historical context that we've discussed. Um, for generations, American policies attempted to suppress indigenous languages, suppress their religion and their cultural traditions. So, preserving traditional stories becomes this act of cultural resistance. Silo is also drawing on oral storytelling traditions through the use of repetition, um, direct address of the audience and conversational rhythms. She's bringing indigenous oral traditions into the form of written literature.

49:53 One of the poem's central ideas is that stories possess power. um they shape how people understand themselves in the world, but they can also be destructive when they're used to perpetuate harmful ideas. Um think about the historical narratives that we've already discussed um like Manifest Destiny, for example, which portrayed westward expansion as heroic progress um or Hollywood westerns depicting Native Americans as obstacles to civilization. Um, these stories help justify dispossession and shaped how Americans understood indigenous history. And finally, I want you to consider the title ceremony. Uh, Silo suggests that storytelling itself can be ceremonial.

50:38 So through telling and retelling stories, indigenous communities maintain connections to their ancestors, their traditions, um, and their cultural identities. And this really brings us back to a central idea of the Native American Renaissance. Indigenous writers were asserting the continued vitality of their cultures and they were reclaiming the power to tell their own stories. Finally, Joy Harjo's eagle poem. um it really invites us to think of uh prayer as attentive participation in the world around us. We have this image of the

51:24 circling eagle that becomes a symbol of connection um among the natural human and spiritual worlds. This poem really links um awareness to responsibility. How should we treat other living beings if we understand ourselves as part of the same world that they live in? So like Maday and Silo, Harjo is uh refusing to treat nature as merely scenery. The poem begins by asking us to open ourselves to the sky and the world around us. And that opening gesture is really important. Prayer is framed as attention and relationship, not just requesting something from a distant divine authority. The eagle circling movement offers this

52:11 image of continuity rather than seeing human life above the natural world. Um the poem places us in this larger pattern of living, dying and renewal. Pay attention to the shift from observation to responsibility. Uh the speaker's encounter with the eagle is not just a private moment of beauty. It asks how people should live in relation to one another and to the world around them. So then if we connect all the readings together, Mama Day explores a broken relationship to place. Silo then explores the sustaining power of story and Harjo asks us to practice a conscious relationship to the living

52:56 world. All right. Now, we're moving into visual art, and we're going to begin with traditions that predate European colonization. So, indigenous artists created baskets, pottery, textiles, uh carvings, um and all of these could have practical, ceremonial, or aesthetic purposes all at the same time. um western distinctions between fine art and just useful objects really don't capture the significance of these traditions. We should be really cautious about applying European art history

53:42 categories too rigidly in this case. So a carved rock, a woven basket or a ceremonial object can have practical, spiritual and aesthetic roles all at the same time. Um, another challenge is preservation. So, stone survives really well in archaeological contexts, but fibers, wood, and feathers really do not. So, that means that the objects that we can still see are not necessarily representative of everything that people once made. Nissan and Maidu basket weavers um developed very sophisticated techniques using materials like willow, red bud um and grasses. So baskets could be used to

54:28 gather foods um to store foods to cook um or carry things. Some were woven really tightly so they could even hold water. And their patterns and construction reflect both artistic invention and a detailed knowledge of local environments. Most of the surviving museum sam uh examples are um postc contact. So they're not pre-colonial, but the traditions of these themselves have deep pre-colonial roots. Um the design of a basket really begins long before it's actually woven. So materials have to be identified. They have to be harvested in the right season. They're then prepared. Um sometimes stored. weaving uh really depends on a relationship with local ecosystems and on skills that have been

55:14 passed down from generation to generation. So when we see a tightly woven basket, we are looking at technical precision as well as um the visible pattern on the outside. So a cooking basket for example uh could be used with heated stones to prepare food without placing the basket over the flame itself. Let's also take a look at this example of um a Nissan petroglyph um at the Maidu Museum and Historic Site in Roseville. So, this preserves indigenous petroglyphs that have been carved into rock surfaces. Um this site also contains bedrock mortars which were used to process foods like acorns, so to

55:59 grind them. Um these features really connect artistic expression with daily use of the landscape and we should distinguish the carved designs from the grinding depressions. Um the mortars record repeated work while the petroglyphs are deliberately inscribed marks whose meanings we really can't just invent. Chase or Indian grinding rock which is in Amadore County um also preserves some extensive bedrock mortar um and hundreds of petetroglyphs. So the mortars are the rounded depressions in the images and they're used for food processing. So um grinding acorns into acorn mush for example. And the petroglyphs are the

56:47 faint carved lines and designs that you can just barely see in the images. Um, in these three images on the slide, you can see a grid pattern, a sun or a wheel design, and also a handprint. Now, during the 1960s and 70s, indigenous artists uh started to challenge the expectation that native art had to look traditional or belong to a past tradition. Um they experimented with modern styles while also addressing questions of cultural identity and representation. Um the Institute of American Indian Arts, which was founded in Santa Fe in 1962, really helped encourage this experimentation. There's a tension here between market

57:32 expectations and artistic freedom. Uh collectors often wanted recognizable Indian art. uh but artists might want to paint a city scene or experiment with abstraction or criticize stereotypes directly. And so the Institute of American Indian Arts helped create a space where young indigenous artists could engage with modern techniques without being told that innovation made their work less authentically native. Um this really parallels the literature. Mama Day and Silo are using contemporary literary forms while also drawing on indigenous experience and storytelling traditions. The point is not to choose between old and new, but um to refuse to let outsiders dictate that choice.

58:22 Let's take a look at Fritz Shoulders Indian with Beer can from 1969. So Fritz Shoulder actually studied at Sacramento City College and then he graduated from SAK State and that gives us a really cool local connection. So in this piece Indian with Beer can he is deliberately rejecting romanticized images of Native Americans by placing this modern consumer object near the figure in his hand. Um it recalls the negative stereotype of indigenous people as alcoholics. And I want you to consider why this image might have unsettled viewers who were accustomed to idealized portraits. Scher's painting really forces us to confront a question of representation.

59:09 Um, a native person holding a beer can is a contemporary image. Um, but alcohol also carries these deeply entrenched stereotypes in American portrayals of indigenous peoples. Um he uses loose and aggressive brush work and vivid color and these refuse that polished dignity of those older romantic portraits. Um shoulder makes the image difficult to admire in a conventional way and that discomfort is part of its intended effect. Um I wouldn't tell you that there's only one correct interpretation. This painting could be read as exposing the false expectations imposed on native people um while also raising legitimate concerns about reproducing harmful imagery.

59:59 Now let's take a look at TC Canon's Waiting for the Bus. Um TC Cannon is a Kiawa and Kado artist um who combined indigenous subjects with bold modern colors and stylized forms. So in this painting uh which is also known as an adarco princess the native woman is in traditional dress but she's holding a modern umbrella and sitting in an ordinary contemporary setting. The contrast really challenges the assumption that indigenous identity belongs only to a historic past. Um, maybe think about how this resembles Silo's Yellow Woman, where tradition and contemporary experience are overlapping with each other. Um, that contrast between traditional clothing and the

1:00:46 modern bus stop is more than just um visual satire. It exposes how we've been taught to imagine indigenous identity as belonging to um an idealized past. Canon's use of very strong colors and stylized forms also make this painting unmistakably a piece of modern art. Um, he's not simply documenting traditional dress. He is experimenting with how a contemporary indigenous subject can be represented and what the possibilities are. So, indigenous tradition remains present within the modern experience rather than surviving only as a museum object or a distant memory.

1:01:33 Finally, let's look at Lloyd Kau's Untitled from 1968. Um, Kievanu is a Cherokee artist and educator who helped to establish that Institute of American Indian Arts. And he encouraged native artists to experiment freely rather than reproduce what collectors expected indigenous art to look like. Um, so looking at this abstract work, I want us to resist the impulse to search for a stereotypically native symbol that can explain everything. Um, it might be really easy to say, "Oh, well, it's it's a quilt or it represents the division of land, but interpretation is ultimately left up to the viewer." Um the question is why do we expect indigenous art to announce its

1:02:18 cultural identity more visibly than we expect that of other modern artists? That question really brings us back to sovereignty in a cultural sense. Um who gets to decide what counts as authentic indigenous expression. Now to conclude, um the Native American Renaissance was really not a sudden return of a culture that had disappeared. Um it was a period of renewed visibility and experimentation built on traditions that had survived centuries of colonial pressure. The red power movement asserted sovereignty and treaty rights while writers and artists challenged stereotypes and reclaimed control over indigenous representation.

1:03:06 Cultural survival includes both preserving traditions and making something new. I want to leave you um thinking of Native American history as an ongoing history of political life, creativity, and cultural continuity. Across the lecture, we have seen two related struggles. the struggle for political authority over land and community life and the struggle for cultural authority over stories and images. The Renaissance is not a sudden beginning after centuries of silence. It is a period when long surviving indigenous traditions and new artistic experiments reached wider audiences often in direct conversation with political activism. So when you

1:03:51 encounter a depiction of Native Americans in the future, ask who created it, whose perspective it centers, and whether it portrays indigenous people as living participants in the present. All right, thanks for making it to the end of the lecture with me. Um, you have your usual quiz on the readings due on Sunday. You also have a discussion post this week. Um, since we have Wednesday off for I believe Memorial Day, um, I've decided to make both your initial post and your peer response due on Sunday. Um, I want you guys to remember though in your discussion post, you must provide clear, detailed, and accurate reference to the assigned readings or

1:04:37 artworks. Um, the use of AI to do assignments for this this class is uh truly out of control. And if I feel that your post doesn't reflect a thoughtful and original analysis of our assigned material, I'm sorry, but you will receive a zero. Uh, I'm very thankful to those of you who I know have been turning in your own work. So, please keep up the good work and don't let this policy scare you. I will see you all next week.