Native American History

[Broken Parachute]

I just watched Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bury_My_Heart_at_Wounded_Knee_%28fi lm%29) and I loved it (and love that Fred Thompson played Ulysses S. Grant, haha). I've always been interested in Native American history, but I haven't ever taken classes in it or anything.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/Bury_My_Heart_At_Wounded_Knee_Poste r.jpg

Can anyone recommend any books or movies that are really good pertaining to Native Americans and their history or rights?

[sjb2k1]

i enjoyed the miniseries "into the west." deals with, obviously, the influx of Americans into the western part of our country in the 1800s. i have no idea, though, how much of it is truth and how much is TV drama.

[boykosaurus]

I have only read about the Caribbean and stuff like that, the "Americans" that the Spanish came upon and slaughtered.

If you're interested in that I suggest reading Bartolome de las Casas' Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

[open mind]

i didn't like the movie much....but the book is pretty well written.....and doesn't concentrate solely on the one tribe hollywood can't get enough of.

[Nevuk]

Yes, the book is excellent, the film is kind of mediocre.
Native American history is extremely odd to wrap your head around, if you want to go truly in detail, as it ties in with America's conception of the frontier. We're the ever-advancing frontier, and at the edge of that frontier there were always Indians. The issue is that this frontier changed, and so did the native americans living on it.
The Sioux were not unique in fighting back, they were just unique in winning a battle that late in the history of America. If you wish, you can get some glimpses of earlier history from Captivity narratives, but they are biased extremely and must be read with a careful eye to avoid the Noble Savage concept. (Mary Rowlandson wrote the most famous one. It's extremely racist but it does give a neat description of the way Pomquat tribes behaved in war).
Anyways though, the difficulty is that there are(were) hundreds of tribes in every part of the country. I'm cherokee, probably the most wide-spread group(and actually, the Cherokee have a written language and some documents from the early 1800s. I've always wanted to learn it but there aren't very many speakers of it). It gets even more troublesome when you realize that a famous tribe like the Iroquis is not actually one tribe, but rather a confederation of smaller tribes, and each tribe had radically different styles of governance, culture, and economy.
If you want to trace the history in literature, I can tell you how to do that to a certain extent, but it's so difficult to actually get a good grasp on the history in general of it. (It'd basically be like studying all of the tribes whom rome defeated, and trying to get an unbiased view). The literature history is that within america, the concept of the noble savage is a direct precursor to the idea of the magic negro, and both groups felt pressured to live up to the expectations placed upon them by whites in actuality.

[saysmydoctor]

You are in New York (or were), probably has the most rich Native American history, in my personal opinion. As a matter of fact, Albany has a pretty nice museum that discusses the Iroquois Federation at length. Beyond that, I'm not really sure what books to direct you towards. French and Indian War would be an interesting point to start from.

[Nevuk]

I did a module on the barbarian hordes from around 300-800ad and for this reason it is a complete joke. You basically have to resign yourself to the fact that we know nothing about these people and never will.
Yeah, I meant if you just want literary history - that's not real history, at the most you can just hope that people weren't lying entirely. The only written documents on them from their time come from outside sources or treaties they signed.
The real history is dead and gone, covered up just as much by our own stereotypes as anything else.

[Broken Parachute]

You are in New York (or were), probably has the most rich Native American history, in my personal opinion. As a matter of fact, Albany has a pretty nice museum that discusses the Iroquois Federation at length. Beyond that, I'm not really sure what books to direct you towards. French and Indian War would be an interesting point to start from.Ahh, thanks. I'm nerdy when it comes to museums, haha. I love them.

I did a module on the barbarian hordes from around 300-800ad and for this reason it is a complete joke. You basically have to resign yourself to the fact that we know nothing about these people and never will.

Yeah, I meant if you just want literary history - that's not real history, at the most you can just hope that people weren't lying entirely. The only written documents on them from their time come from outside sources or treaties they signed.
The real history is dead and gone, covered up just as much by our own stereotypes as anything else.That's really sad, actually, that an entire history of people can just be forgotten (or in this case, not able to be recorded or saved).

[SockMonkeyRiot]

I took a Native American History class when I was in High School with one of my favorite teachers who was a member of the Mohegan Tribe, was a great class but I don't really remember what we read/watched since it was over 5 years ago.

[open mind]

i'm not so much interested in the history because it can pretty much only be summed up with a list of things that were invented by natives, that there were occasional battles over resources among tribes, and they ultimately got totally fucked over one group at a time by explorers, settlers, and the governments they brought with them.....traditional cultural outlooks, and the various mythologies of the different native american tribes always interests me though.

[Nevuk]

i'm not so much interested in the history because it can pretty much only be summed up with a list of things that were invented by natives, that there were occasional battles over resources among tribes, and they ultimately got totally fucked over one group at a time by explorers, settlers, and the governments they brought with them.....traditional cultural outlooks, and the various mythologies of the different native american tribes always interests me though.
Yes, the trickster tales always fascinate me.

[open mind]

Yes, the trickster tales always fascinate me.

you have favorites?
i'm partial to raven stories....but i'm probably a bit biased because of my location.

[Nevuk]

I've never read any Raven stories. My favorite trickster tale is the one where coyote decides to wear a rotting deer vulva and becomes a woman and winds up pregnant. The name escapes me at the moment, but it's pretty unforgettable.

[Nevuk]

Oh, something interesting I recently stumbled across are the Cherokee memorials. They are essentially persuasive pieces written by the Cherokee to members of congress to convince them to let them stay. There are more than one, but I only know of two and can only find this one online:
http://www.teachushistory.org/indian-removal/resources/memorial-cherokee-nation-december-1829

(This is the Cherokee citizen's memorial, differing from the councils in that it is written from a more oral tradition standpoint)

[Broken Parachute]

We read a story about Native American mythology one time in my English class in my first or second year of high school...it focused on the Iroquois if I remember correctly. It was really interesting.

[open mind]

I've never read any Raven stories. My favorite trickster tale is the one where coyote decides to wear a rotting deer vulva and becomes a woman and winds up pregnant. The name escapes me at the moment, but it's pretty unforgettable.

coyote always was a bit of a slut haha....i like that the monster that was eating everything and fucking things up was torn to shreds by coyote and that those shreds then became humanity.

i've always dug the scary stories natives have, but i've only heard alaskan ones.....twisted leprechauns, shape shifters, evil shaman, and giant cannibals just seem more plausible then a zombie outbreak when you're out on the tundra.