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Lis Brooks' book, <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-common-pot" target=”_blank”>The Common Pot</a>,demonstrates the ways in which Native leaders—including Samson Occom, Joseph Brant, Hendrick Aupaumut, and William Apess—adopted writing as a tool to reclaim rights and land in the Native networks of what is now the northeastern United States. She shows that writing was not a foreign technology but rather a crucial weapon in the Native Americans’ arsenal as they resisted——and today continue [to oppose—colonial domination.]<Having| (Click:?Having)[Having had their writings published for centuries, New England’s Native Americans have bucked a dark stereotype, which predicates indigenous authenticity on illiteracy. Lisa Brooks bravely demonstrates that Native New England's literary heritage actually represents Good Medicine (in the most traditional Indian sense of the word).
Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel, Mohegan Medicine Woman and Tribal Historian]
This site traces the different ways we might study the history of Native engagements with different kinds of technology to resist colonial [power.]<Would|(Click:?Would)
[Would you like to learn more about the use of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/StandingWithStandingRock/?ref=py_c" target=”_blank”>social media</a> for movements like [[nodapl]]? or older histories related to the [[printing press]] as part of Native literary resistance in the 19th century?]
Credits
Designed by Kiara M. Vigil
Assistant Professor of American Studies
Amherst College
Copyright
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>.As<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/01/nodapl-standing-rock-deep-north-170109063857178.html" target=”_blank”>Standing Rock</a> protests come to an end, Native Americans still face discrimination and racism across the Dakotas.
<center><img src="nodaplwater.jpg" height="400"></center>
Would you like to learn more about [[the beginning]] of NoDAPL? OR would you like to learn more about a broader History of [[Native Resistance?]] <center><img src="Cherokee-Phoenix.png" height="400"></center>
As a young man, Sequoyah had joined the Cherokee volunteers who fought under Andrew Jackson against the British in the War of 1812. In dealing with the Anglo soldiers and settlers, he became intrigued by their “talking leaves”-printed books that he realized somehow recorded human speech. In a brilliant leap of logic, Sequoyah comprehended the basic nature of symbolic representation of sounds and in 1809 began working on a similar system for [the Cherokee language.]<Ridiculed|(Click:?Ridiculed)
[Ridiculed and misunderstood by most of the Cherokee, Sequoyah made slow progress until he came up with the idea of representing each syllable in the language with a separate written character. By 1821, he had perfected his syllabary of 86 characters, a system that could be mastered in less than week. After obtaining the official endorsement of the Cherokee leadership, Sequoyah’s invention was soon adopted throughout the Cherokee nation. When the Cherokee-language printing press arrived on this day in 1828, the lead type was based on Sequoyah’s syllabary. Within months, the first Indian language newspaper in history appeared in New Echota, Georgia. It was called the Cherokee Phoenix.]
One of the so-called “five civilized tribes” native to the American Southeast, the Cherokee had long "embraced" the United States’ program of “civilizing” Indians in the years after the Revolutionary War, as a strategy for maintaining [tribal sovereignty.]<In|(Click:?In)
[ In the minds of Americans, Sequoyah’s syllabary further demonstrated the Cherokee desire to modernize and fit into the dominant Anglo world. The Cherokee used their new press to print a bilingual version of a republican constitution, and they took many other steps to assimilate Anglo culture and practice while still preserving some aspects of their traditional language and beliefs.]
Despite the Cherokee’s efforts to cooperate with white American society, their accomplishments did not protect them from the demands of [land-hungry Americans.]<Repeatedly|(Click:?Repeatedly) [Repeatedly pushed westward in order to make room for Anglo settlers, the Cherokee lost more than 4,000 of their people (nearly a quarter of the nation) in the 1838-39 winter migration to Oklahoma that later became known as the Trail of Tears. Nonetheless, the Cherokee people survived as a nation in their new home, thanks in part to the presence of the unifying written language created by Sequoyah.]
[Sequoya’s <a href="http://www.cherokee.org/About-The-Nation/History/Facts/Sequoyah-and-the-Cherokee-Syllabary" target=”_blank”>syllabary</a>]would increase literacy and communication across the Cherokee Nation as a rate that exceeded reading rates in the rest of the United States during the early 19th century.
Would you like to learn more about Baker and Greene and the [[history of publishing]] in Boston? OR would you like to learn more about the history of the Printing [[Press in Indian Country?]] <a href="http://www.wisdomoftheelders.org/turtle-island-storyteller-ladonna-brave-bull-allard/" target=”_blank”>LaDonna Brave Bull Allard</a> was crucial to building "Sacred Stone Camp" at Standing Rock in protest against DAPL.
There are many other examples of Native women playing crucial roles within indigenous resistance movements. For example, in the 1970's Sacheen Littlefeather appeared at the Academy Awards on behalf of Marlon Brando to refuse his best actor award for his role in "The Godfather" in order to draw attention to the efforts of the American Indian Movement and the history of mistreatment and misrepresentation taking place within the film industry in Hollywood.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2QUacU0I4yU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><center><img src="sacred stone camp.png" height="500"></center>
The <a href="http://sacredstonecamp.org/" target=”_blank”>Sacred Stone Camp</a> is a cultural camp near Cannon Ball, the northeastern border of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
The camp is dedicated to the preservation of Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota cultural traditions.
Would you like to learn more about who [[helped start]] the NoDAPL resistance at Standing Rock and founded the Sacred Stone Camp? Indian Country Media <a href=" https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/events/fight-the-power-100-heroes-of-native-resistance-part-"target=”_blank”>Network</a> is a clearinghouse for indigenous news across the United States and the world. It began as a print newspaper but now has a wider digital presence, and often includes the voices of Native leaders, activists, and professors from across the Americas on current events as well as historical issues.
Their example of Native resistance is very focused on individual actions and on men, would you like to learn more about [[Native women’s]] roles in resistance movements? Or, would you like to learn more about other acts of resistance related to [[Native sovereignty and representation that are taking place in New England]] using online platforms?
<center><img src="indigenous resistance.png" height="400"></center>A History of <a href="http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/03/when-boston-was-the-hub-of-the-literary-world/" target=”_blank”>publishing</a> in Boston demonstrates how the city was a "hub" for printers and authors during the 19th and 20th centuries. For many Native intellectuals, like Dakota author <a href="https://acdc.amherst.edu/view/asc:422407" target=”_blank”>Charles Eastman</a> publishing houses such as Brown, Little, and Company became literary allies who helped to promote many of his books, and by extension to help promote Native literature as a crucial component of American culture.
<img src="Eastman.jpg" height="300">
How might you learn more about the history of [[Native people’s involvement with publishing?]] Philip Round's work, which we will be reading this semester, on the history of the book in Indian Country traces the different paths that books, publishers, and printing presses took in order to spread books and encourage reading practices across Native space in the 19th century. The <a href="http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/cherokee-phoenix" target=”_blank”>Cherokee Phoenix</a> was the first Native newspaper published in the US in 1828 in New Echota, Georgia. It was a bilingual paper that published stories in English and Cherokee based on Sequoyah's syllabary.
Would you like to learn more about [[new technologies]] being used by Native americans to resist colonial power? OR would you like to learn more about the Cherokee Leader [[Elias Boudinot?]]In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly determined that affordable Internet access is a human right, critical to citizen participation in democratic governments. Given the significance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to social and political life, many U.S. tribes and Native organizations have created their own projects, from streaming radio to building networks to telecommunications advocacy. In Network Sovereignty, Marisa Duarte examines these ICT projects to explore the significance of information flows and information systems to [Native sovereignty, and toward self-governance, self-determination, and decolonization.],By|(Click:?By)
[By reframing how tribes and Native organizations harness these technologies as a means to overcome colonial disconnections, Network Sovereignty shifts the discussion of information and communication technologies in Native communities from one of exploitation to one of Indigenous possibility.]
Marisa Duarte's book, <a href="http://marisaduarte.net/tribalbroadband.html" target=”_blank”>Network Sovereignty</a> is the first to explore the history of the internet in Indian Country and will be an essential part of our class this semester.
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<img src="Elias Boudinot.jpeg" height="200">
This document is a published copy of a speech delivered by Elias Boudinot, Cherokee missionary and future editor of the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper, in Philadelphia on May 26, 1826 and printed by William F. Geddes. Boudinot's speech was part of a fund-raising tour designed to procure money for the establishment of a printing press in the Cherokee Nation from which to publish a national [newspaper.]<In|(Click:?In)
[ In this speech, Boudinot emphasizes the "progress" of the Cherokees by detailing their agricultural and domestic employments and the invention and adoption of the written Cherokee language devised by Sequoyah (also George Guest).]<Boudinot|(Click:?Boudinot)
[Boudinot further highlights the influence Christian missionaries have had in the] [Cherokee Nation.]<He|(Click:?He) [ He urges his audience to distinguish themselves philanthropically by supporting not only the publication of a national newspaper, but also the establishment of a seminary within the Cherokee Nation.]
You can learn more about <a href="https://acdc.amherst.edu/view/asc:427890/asc:427892" target=”_blank”>Elias Boudinot's</a> writings by looking at his printed texts that part of the Kim-Wait/Eisenberg Collection of Native American Literature.The Kim-Wait/Pablo Eisenberg Collection of Native American Literature is the largest archive of materials related to Native authorship ever established by an individual collector. Amherst College has been actively adding to the <a href="https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/holdings/nativeamericanlit" target=”_blank”>KWE Collection</a> and it now holds over 2,500 books by Native authors from the Americas.
<img src="LaDonna Brave Bull Allard.png" height="400">
One of the founding members of the Sacred Stone Camp at Standing Rock connects that struggle with other stories of indigenous survival. LaDonna Brave Bull Allard notes, "As we struggle for our lives today against the Dakota Access pipeline, I remember her. We cannot forget our stories of survival." <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/why-the-founder-of-standing-rock-sioux-camp-cant-forget-the-whitestone-massacre-20160903" target=”_blank”>Yes Magazine</a> published a piece about why the Whitestone Massacre is relevant to the fight at Standing Rock.
Jean O'Brien's book about the systemic erasure of indigenous peoples' histories in New England in her book, <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/firsting-and-lasting" target=”_blank”>Firsting and Lasting</a>, demonstrates the power of historical writing as a tool for colonization as well as a site of resistance for indigenous people. This is the first book that we will read as a class, and it will help us generate questions and methods for reading the books in the KWE collection of Native Literature.
Students from a class in Boston have also generated a blog that was inspired by O'Brien's book, which illusrates the ways that Colonialism functions as a <a href="http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/89.pdf" target=”_blank”>structure and not an event</a> in the US.
<a href="http://firstinglastingboston.tumblr.com/about" target=”_blank”>This blog</a> is one example of how using digital platforms on the internet might be useful for generating discussion across a range of disciplines related to past and present issues affecting indigenous people.
Our final project as a class this semester will be to create a website, using Twine, to teach the public beyond Amherst about what you have learned regarding Native history, literature, and the KWE Collection.