“The Case of Elizabeth Locklear: Seeing #MMIW in the Archives”
“Meeting at the Headwaters: Confluence, Yana Wana, and Water Writing as Methodology”
“whik’ixoniwhe’: The Indigenous History of Dos Rios and Ah Pah Dams in Northern California, 1951-1970”
“Navigating Archives of Colonial Power with Indigenous Methods
“Mi’kmaw Women’s Sovereignty Assertion Beyond the Politics of Recognition: Examining the Potential of Non-Status Liminality and Land Claim in Nova Scotia, 1974-1985”
“Containing Engagement: Strategic Approaches to Community Engagement for Conservation Gene Drive in Hawaiʻi”
The Editors and Editorial Board of NAIS, the journal of Native American & Indigenous Studies, are pleased to announce the Fellows and Mentors of the inaugural year of the journal’s Writing & Mentoring Fellowship. Each of the 44 applications in a highly competitive pool was read and ranked by the two Editors and 15 members of the NAIS Editorial Board. A Committee composed of the Editors and 4 Editorial Board members then made the final award of 6 Fellowships. We are especially grateful for the Mentors’ enthusiastic willingness to participate in this important endeavor aimed at supporting early-career Indigenous Studies scholars.
Kelly McDonough & K. Tsianina Lomawaima
NAIS Editors
“Hpecasni Unspeic’iyapi: Adult Language Acquisition at Sitting Bull College”
There is a growing need in Native communities for working-age adults who are proficient in Indigenous language. The “restoring” of this “lost generation” (Olthuis et al 2013), is, however, understudied. To address this gap in research, this article describes and examines the Hpecasni Unspeic’iyapi, an adult language learning aspect of the Lakota Language Capacity Building Initiative. In the spring of 2017 Sitting Bull College, a tribally controlled college on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation was awarded NSF Award #1664416 to implement the Lakota Language Capacity Building Initiative (LLCBI).
“We reflected on the story we wanted to tell and divided it into three, focusing on just one of them for our first publication. Jani has been an awesome motivator, holding us accountable to our goals, and helping us keep everything in perspective.”
“Kūpono Ka Lā I Ka Lolo: Kanaka Chronemics and (Re)setting Hawaiian Time”
This paper redefines “Hawaiian Time” by analyzing traditional time-related concepts from two Hawaiian stories recorded in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (the Hawaiian language) by 19th-century Kanaka Maoli writer, J. W. K. Kaualilinoe. This analysis on a never-before-studied topic provides a glimpse into what I call Kanaka Chronemics or traditional Hawaiian understandings of time. How did pre-contact Kānaka track time? What natural/man-made instruments were used by Kānaka to observe time? How can we apply these traditional concepts of time to current Hawaiian language and culture revitalization efforts?
“Living Historiographies: McGirt v. Oklahoma, Settler Historical Production and Choctaw Archives”
This paper examines histories at multiple levels: how Choctaw “histories” have built upon oft-misguided anthropological findings, the actual events of history sourced from under-utilized sets of archival material, the history of the existing archival sources, and how those sources have been used in Choctaw historiography, and how now-canonical histories were written from a narrow subset of archival sources. By examining the gap between the existing massive archive of Choctaw-produced material and the canon of Choctaw history, I show how these narrow understandings of Choctaw history paved the way for the State of Oklahoma’s current legal arguments in McGirt v. Oklahoma.
“Concentrated Trauma and the Reservation Effect”
Drawing from the case of the Yurok and Hoopa Valley Reservations of northern California, I show how “the reservation” is the seat of deep spiritual and personal meaning in present day, yet also is a place where social inequalities cluster, especially violence, health comorbidities and polysubstance use disorder epidemics including methamphetamine and OxyContin. Drawing from ethnographic in-depth interviews across 1,000+ exposure hours and drafted in collaboration with the Yurok Tribal Court, I theorize a “reservation effect” whereby “concentrated trauma” sits alongside the sacred such that those who seek the latter must first navigate the former.
“Indigenous Self-Identification as Settler State Elimination of Indigenous Peoples from Mestizo Territories in Latin America”
This project foregrounds understudied non-Indigenous mestizo territories like El Salvador where settlers have long-established, secured, and depoliticized their occupation and possession of Indigenous lands. Drawing on the case of El Salvador, this article will demonstrate how international discourses of Indigenous rights intersect with national ideologies of mestizaje and multiculturalism to facilitate the settler state erasure of Indigenous peoples from mestizo territories throughout Latin America.
“Choosing Termination: Guy Jennison and the Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma”
“Choosing Termination” demonstrates Chief Jennison’s advocacy for termination represented a deliberate rejection of the constraints and restrictions imposed by federal authority and will show how Jennison successfully engineered termination to exchange one collection of colonial entanglements for an alternative, less intrusive set of impositions that accorded the Ottawas greater control over their internal affairs and future. Taking an ethnobiographical approach, this article analyzes Jennison’s perspective and challenges the dichotomy of victimization or assimilation that dominates historiographical accounts of tribal termination.