Category Archives: Ames Highlights

On the fourth Thursday of November, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, a national holiday honoring the early settlers and their harvest feast known as the first Thanksgiving. The commercialized version of Thanksgiving suggests the Pilgrims and local Native Americans, the Wampanoag, sat down for a peaceful meal to celebrate the harvest season. The truth is far more nuanced, as it often is when victors write final version of events.

On this Theme Thursday, the last in our Native American Heritage Month mini-series, we take a look at library resources related to the Indian Civil Rights Act. This 1968 act made many, but not all, of the guarantees of the Bill of Rights applicable within Native American tribes in the U.S. It is one of many decisions made at a federal level that made efforts at making native lands more sovereign, but there is still much work to be done.

Read more about the act and related efforts with some of these resources, available to be checked out from Ames.

American Indian civil rights handbook by Michael R. Smith

Encyclopedia of American Indian civil rights, edited by James S. Olson; Mark Baxter, Jason M. Tetzloff, and Darren Pierson, associate editors

The Indian, America’s unfinished business, report compiled by William A. Brophy and Sophie D. Aberle, et al.

Native Americans, edited by Donald A. Grinde, Jr.

Native Americans have taken an active role in every branch of the US military since the country formed. In fact, War Department officials have stated, that during WWII, if the entire population had enlisted at the same rate American Indians did, Selective Service would have been unnecessary. According to the Selective Service in 1942, at least 99 percent of all eligible Indians, healthy males aged 21 to 44, had registered for the draft. The annual enlistment for Native Americans jumped from 7,500 in the summer of 1942 to 22,000 at the beginning of 1945.

Native American contributions to war efforts during World World II were numerous but they are most famous of code talking. The name code talkers is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater. Code talking, however, was pioneered by Cherokee and Choctaw Indians during World War I.

Check out some of these titles, available in Ames, to learn more about these efforts and contributions.

Navajo code talkers, produced by Triage, Inc. for the History Channel

Defending whose country?: Indigenous soldiers in the Pacific war, by Noah Riseman

This video, available through Alexander Street Press, reveals how strongly Navajo cultural identity and spiritual references correlated with traditional Marine Corps values and a passionate patriotism. The famous Navajo Code Talkers, memorialized by Hollywood in the feature film “Windtalkers,” were an integral part of the armed forces during World War II. Navajo veterans who fought in the Pacific in World War II, used their unwritten Native American tongue as an unbreakable code language, essential in the American military intelligence machine. Richard West, President, Museum of the American Indian, says, “Ironically, the U.S. military used the Native American language as a potent instrument of war although the government had prohibited [native] people from speaking their own language for almost a century.”Successive generations of young Navajo men who fought in the elite division of the U.S. Marine Corps, relate their stories in this film. Vincent and his brother enlisted in the 1970s; his brother died in Vietnam. Benjamin, Calbert and Michael are currently training as Marines in San Diego.

Google “Native Americans and Revolution” and almost all the results are related to Native American involvement in the American Revolution. Also known as the American War for Independence, many Native Americans sided with the Americans, but many sided with the British or tried to remain neutral. The Declaration of Independence accused King George III of unleashing “merciless Indian Savages” against innocent men, women, and children. The image of ferocious warriors propelled into action by a tyrannical monarch fixed in memory and imagination the Indians’ role in the Revolution and justified their subsequent treatment. But many Indian nations tried to stay out of the conflict, some sided with the Americans, and those who fought with the British were not the king’s pawns: they allied with the Crown as the best hope of protecting their homelands from the encroachments of American colonists and land speculators.

The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities This study is one of several available through Ames. This particular one presents the first broad coverage of Indian experiences in the American Revolution rather than Indian participation as allies or enemies of contending parties. Colin Calloway focuses on eight Indian communities as he explores how the Revolution often translated into war among Indians and their own struggles for independence. Drawing on British, American, Canadian and Spanish records, Calloway shows how Native Americans pursued different strategies, endured a variety of experiences, but were bequeathed a common legacy as a result of the Revolution.

What started at the turn of the century as an effort to gain a day of recognition for the significant contributions the first Americans made to the establishment and growth of the United States, has resulted in a whole month being designated for that purpose. On August 3, 1990 U.S. President George H. W. Bush declared the month of November as National American Indian Heritage Month, thereafter commonly referred to as Native American Heritage Month. First sponsorship of “American Indian Heritage Month” was through the American Indian Heritage Foundation by the founder Pale Moon Rose, of Cherokee-Seneca descent and an adopted Ojibwa, whose Indian name Win-yan-sa-han-wi “Princess of the Pale Moon” was given to her by Alfred Michael “Chief” Venne.

This commemorative month aims to provide a platform for Native people in the U.S. to share their culture, traditions, music, crafts, dance, and ways and concepts of life. This gives Native people the opportunity to express to their community, both city, county and state officials their concerns and solutions for building bridges of understanding and friendship in their local area.

This month, Theme Thursdays will focus on revolutions within and related to Native Americans with our first post highlighting Native Americans’ roles in environmentalism and environmental justice.

The environmental revolution has been years in the making; contrary to stereotypes, Native American Indians do not have a “natural” affinity with environmentalism. What they do have is lands with a long history of being the dumping ground for uranium tailings, nuclear waste, and toxic chemicals. Reviving traditional land-based spiritual/cultural practices, and inventing new ones for the 21st century, play an increasingly vital part of many reservation cultures threatened by environmental pollution and cultural genocide.

Efforts at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline are just one example among many of Native Americans fighting for environmental rights. This video, available through Kanopy, documents the largest river restoration project in American history. Nearly three hundred miles in length, flowing from southern Oregon to northern California, the vast communities of the Klamath River have been feuding over its water for generations, and as a result, bad blood has polluted their river and their relationships equally. The film examines the complicated history of this conflict: how anger, fear and distrust have undermined the Klamath’s communities for decades.

This video, also available through Kanopy, chronicles the efforts of several tribes as they fight to end the harmful use of coal and work to bring clean, renewable energy projects into their communities, including wind and solar power. As Power Paths reveals, many Native American tribes are not waiting for the government to act. Instead, they are actively seeking investors and a way to control their own energy and sell the rest to the power companies.

Native Americans and the environment: Perspectives on the ecological Indian, edited and with an introduction by Michael E. Harkin and David Rich Lewis; foreword by Judith Antell; preface by Brian Hosmer; afterword by Shepard Krech III

American Indian environments: Ecological issues in Native American history, with contributions from Kai T. Erikson … [et al.]; edited by Christopher T. Vecsey and Robert W. Venables

American environmentalism: Readings in conservation history, edited by Roderick Frazier Nash

On the flip side, some Native American traditions stand in contrast to federal regulations. The idea that tribes have an inherent right to govern themselves is at the foundation of their constitutional status – the power is not delegated by congressional acts. Congress can, however, limit tribal sovereignty. Unless a treaty or federal statute removes a power, however, the tribe is assumed to possess it. Current federal policy in the United States recognizes this sovereignty and stresses the government-to-government relations between Washington, D.C. and the American Indian tribes. However, most land is held in trust by the United States, and federal law still regulates the political and economic rights of tribal governments.

One prime example of Native customs conflicting with federal regulations is whale hunting. In 2015, the Washington state native Makah Tribe has asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to waive federal marine mammal protections that ban the hunt. The Makah historically hunted gray whales for food and spiritual ceremonies but ceased in the 1920s, when gray whale numbers were at an all-time low. Learn about another whale-hunting tribe, the Inuit, in this e-book, available through Ames.

This week Theme Thursday focuses on a globalization and technological revolution.

The world is in the throes of a technological revolution that differs from the periodic waves of technical change that have marked the progress of industrial society since its origins 200 years ago. A shift is occurring in the sociotechnological paradigm that underlies our current sophisticated industrial structure. This old paradigm consists of the mass production of essentially standardized goods in ever-larger units; an emphasis on quantitative goals for production, requiring ever higher inputs of capital, energy, and raw materials to produce more and more; and little attention to environmental impact, resource use, and conservation issues.

In contrast, the new paradigm taking shape is identified with an emphasis on quality and diversification of products and processes, diffusion of small but highly productive units that rely on new technologies and are linked to a process of decentralization of production, adoption of process and product choices requiring far less energy and materials input per unit of output, and a greater awareness of the need to preserve the quality of local and global environments.

Interested in reading more? Check out these books from Ames.

Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems

Provides an exciting approach to some of the most contentious issues in discussions around globalization—bioscientific research, neoliberalism, governance—from the perspective of the “anthropological” problems they pose; in other words, in terms of their implications for how individual and collective life is subject to technological, political, and ethical reflection and intervention.

• Offers a ground-breaking approach to central debates about globalization with chapters written by leading scholars from across the social sciences.
• Examines a range of phenomena that articulate broad structural transformations: technoscience, circuits of exchange, systems of governance, and regimes of ethics or values.
• Investigates these phenomena from the perspective of the “anthropological” problems they pose.
• Covers a broad range of geographical areas: Africa, the Middle East, East and South Asia, North America, South America, and Europe.
• Grapples with a number of empirical problems of popular and academic interest — from the organ trade, to accountancy, to pharmaceutical research, to neoliberal reform.

Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development: Transforming the Industrial State

In this work, the authors offer a unified, transdisciplinary approach for achieving sustainable development in industrialized nations. They present an insightful analysis of the ways in which industrial states are unsustainable and how economic and social welfare are related to the environment, public health and safety.

Modern biotechnology originated in the mid-1970s with new advances in genetics, immunology, and biochemistry. Biotechnology includes all techniques that use living organisms or substances from organisms to produce or alter a product, cause changes in plants or animals, or develop microorganisms for specific purposes. Biotechnology encompasses several techniques and methods, including genome mapping, gene splicing (or the transfer of one or more genes with certain prospectively useful qualities to plants, domestic animals, fish, and other organisms), and molecular breeding.

Gene editing allows scientists to cut and paste the DNA that makes up human genes with speed and precision, inside living human cells. It can be used to repair damaged genes and to accelerate research into how genes function. It can also be used to transmit genetic traits to future generations, including through human sperm, eggs and embryos, which is now widely considered unethical.

Learn more about the biotechnology and genetic revolutions with these resources from Ames.

Race and the genetic revolution : science, myth, and culture, edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Kathleen Sloan

Beyond biotechnology: The barren promise of genetic engineering by Craig Holdrege and Steve Talbott

Life’s greatest secret: The race to crack the genetic code by Matthew Cobb

Genetics & society, edited by Penelope Barker

DNA: How the biotech revolution is changing the way we fight disease, by Frank H. Stephenson; foreword by Herbert Boyer

Bio-revolution: DNA and the ethics of man-made life, by Richard Hutton

Didn’t get enough? Check out these videos available through Kanopy.

Biotechnology: Cleaning Up with Microbes – As achievements in engineering and manufacturing move us toward 21st Century lifestyles, problems emerge as a result of these processes. Moreover, cleanup concerns plague us as a legacy of the industrial revolution. This program focuses on an innovative yet natural solution science proposes for the cleanup of polluting by-products. Discover how science is Cleaning Up With Microbes. Throughout the world, scientists are exploring the use of living organisms to help solve the problem of waste disposal and recycling. They have found that microbes–such as bacteria, fungi, and algae can take care of almost any waste by-product by doing what they do best– eating!

Cracking Your Genetic Code – What will it mean when most of us can afford to have the information in our DNA–all three billion chemical letters of it–read, stored, and available for analysis? Cracking Your Genetic Code reveals that we stand on the verge of such a revolution.

On this Theme Thursday we move from literary revolutionaries in Latin America to political revolutions in the Middle East. Arab Spring refers to the democratic uprisings that arose independently and spread across the Arab world in 2011. The movement originated in Tunisia in December 2010 and quickly took hold in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

Check out these texts, available from Ames, to learn more about this series of political movements that swept the Middle East.

The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism

This pioneering explanation of the Arab Spring will define a new era of thinking about the Middle East. In this landmark book, Hamid Dabashi argues that the uprisings occurring from Morocco to Iran and from Syria to Yemen have been driven by a delayed defiance that signifies no less than the end of postcolonialism. As he brilliantly explains, the permanent revolutionary mood has the potential to liberate not only those societies already ignited but ultimately many others as well.

Voices of the Arab Spring: Personal Stories from the Arab Revolutions

Narrated by dozens of activists and everyday individuals involved in the Arab Spring, this book documents the unprecedented events that led to the collapse of dictatorial regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Arab citizens were called to join the revolt during the second half of 2011, while the revolutionary moment was still unfolding. Their stories offer unique access to the message that inspired citizens to act, their experiences during revolt, and the lessons they learned from some of the most dramatic changes and appalling events to occur in the history of the Arab world. The riveting, revealing, and at times heartbreaking stories in this volume also include voices from Syria. Featuring participants from a variety of social and educational backgrounds and political commitments, these personal stories of action represent the true phenomenon of the Arab Spring’s united though broad social movements, collective identities, and youthful character. For years, these participants lived under regimes that brutally suppressed free expression and protest. Their testimony speaks to the multifaceted emotional, psychological, and cultural factors motivating citizens to join together and fight, putting a human face on events that might seem abstract or impersonal to many in the West.

The Transition Towards Revolution and Reform: The Arab Spring Realised?

The Arab Spring created a transition toward democracy for the peoples of Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan, who initially elected moderate Islamist parties to lead them out of economic deprivation and corruption. This study looks at the relative success of the move to democracy in these four Middle Eastern countries, comparing the secular leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and their desire for revolution with the monarchs of Morocco and Jordan and their priority of reform.

Arab Spring: Negotiating in the Shadow of the Intifadat

Beginning in January 2011, the Arab world exploded in a vibrant demand for dignity, liberty, and achievable purpose in life, rising up against an image and tradition of arrogant, corrupt, unresponsive authoritarian rule. These previously unpublished, country specific case studies of the uprisings and their still unfolding political aftermaths identify patterns and courses of negotiation and explain why and how they occur. The contributors argue that in uprisings like the Arab Spring negotiation is “not just a ‘nice’ practice or a diplomatic exercise.” Rather, it is a “dynamically multilevel” process involving individuals, groups, and states with continually shifting priorities-and with the prospect of violence always near. From that perspective, the essaysits analyze a range of issues and events-including civil disobedience and strikes, mass demonstrations and nonviolent protest, and peaceful negotiation and armed rebellion-and contextualize their findings within previous struggles, both within and outside the Middle East. The Arab countries discussed include Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. The Arab Spring uprisings are discussed in the context of rebellions in countries like South Africa and Serbia, while the Libyan uprising is also viewed in terms of the negotiations it provoked within NATO. Collectively, the essays analyze the challenges of uprisers and emerging governments in building a new state on the ruins of a liberated state; the negotiations that lead either to sustainable democracy or sectarian violence; and coalition building between former political and military adversaries.

Arab Spring in Egypt: Revolution and Beyond

This study examines the background to the 2011 uprising in Egypt, the limits of authoritarian rule and the rise of new secular movements. It studies the group dynamics of workers, young people, and women, evaluates the role of the military, and considers the impact of regime change and future prospects for pan-Arabism.