American Indian Culture 2 Volumes

This invaluable resource provides a comprehensive historical and demographic overview of American Indians along with more than 100 cross-referenced entries on American Indian culture, exploring everything from arts, literature, music, and dance to food, family, housing, and spirituality. American Indian Culture: From Counting Coup to Wampum is organized by cultural form (Arts; Family, Education, and Community; Food; Language and Literature; Media and Popular Culture; Music and Dance; Spirituality; and Transportation and Housing). Examples of topics covered include icons of Native culture, such as pow wows, Indian dancing, and tipi dwellings; Native art forms such as pottery, rock art, sandpainting, silverwork, tattooing, and totem poles; foods such as corn, frybread, and wild rice; and Native Americans in popular culture. The extensive introductory section, breadth of topics, accessibly written text, and range of perspectives from the many contributors make this work a must-have resource for high school and undergraduate audiences.

Americans are still fascinated by the romantic notion of the "noble savage," yet know little about the real Native peoples of North America. This two-volume work seeks to remedy that by examining stereotypes and celebrating the true cultures of American Indians today. The two-volume American Indians and Popular Culture seeks to help readers understand American Indians by analyzing their relationships with the popular culture of the United States and Canada. Volume 1 covers media, sports, and politics, while Volume 2 covers literature, arts, and resistance. Both volumes focus on stereotypes, detailing how they were created and why they are still allowed to exist. In defining popular culture broadly to include subjects such as print advertising, politics, and science as well as literature, film, and the arts, this work offers a comprehensive guide to the important issues facing Native peoples today. Analyses draw from many disciplines and include many voices, ranging from surveys of movies and discussions of Native authors to first-person accounts from Native perspectives. Among the more intriguing subjects are the casinos that have changed the economic landscape for the tribes involved, the controversy surrounding museum treatments of American Indians, and the methods by which American Indians have fought back against pervasive ethnic stereotyping.

"This two-volume work seeks to help readers understand American Indians by analyzing their relationships with the popular culture of the United States of America."--Cover p. [4].

This series introduces readers to the variety of rich cultural forms within America's racial and ethnic minority groups. These volumes provide a comprehensive overview of American Indian (Native American) life and history.

This landmark two volume source ranks as one of the field's most comprehensive guides to Native American studies, offering historical, cultural, and modern reference, supporting a complete range of research. The history, culture, and present state of Native America is revealed, explored, and explained in this, the most comprehensive reference work on the indigenous peoples of North America ever assembled. Anyone and everyone interested in Native Americans will find Native Americans indispensable. Systematically presenting historical and modern data for all known Native American groups in Canada and the United States, the different groups are listed alphabetically within 10 culture areas. The volumes are richly illustrated and include photos and drawings, culture area and tribal location maps, a master bibliography, bibliographic citations for each tribal entry, a glossary, and a subject index.

In a single source, this comprehensive two-volume work provides the entire history of American Indians, as told by Indians themselves. Voices of the American Indian Experience provides unique insights into American Indian history by focusing on Indian accounts instead of on relying on other sources. As a result, their voices are clearer, and readers learn more about Indians directly from Indians, rather than through accounts that are filtered, diluted, and possibly even misinterpreted by an outsider's perspective. The volumes comprise a vast and fascinating variety of sources that span creation stories from Native American prehistory, to Indians who met the earliest Europeans to visit the Americas, all the way through to American Indians who served in recent foreign conflicts in the U.S. Armed Forces. This work provides information that is essential to fully understanding the history of the United States, and will be a valuable resource for advanced high school students and college students as well as general audiences with an interest in history or Native American culture.

This essential reference examines the history, culture, and modern tribal concerns of American Indians in North America. Despite the fact that 565 federally recognized tribes exist on the continent of North America, non-Native Americans typically know very little about the modern world of American Indians. In a few instances, the uneasy coexistence of the two cultures has served to create controversy, such as fake Indians fraudulently leveraging ethnicity-based benefits, U.S. officials disposing of nuclear waste near reservations, and sports clubs basing mascots on cultural stereotypes. This unique survey scrutinizes the historical background as well as the contemporary issues of American Indian societies as both part of—and completely separate from—the world around them. Encyclopedia of American Indian Issues Today features subjects commonly discussed, including reservations, poverty, sovereignty, the problem of solid waste on reservations, and the lives of urban Indians, among other contemporary issues. Organized into ten sections, the book also provides helpful sidebars and informative essays to address topics on casinos and gaming, sexual identity, education, and poverty.

This powerful two-volume set provides an insider's perspective on American Indian experiences through engaging narrative entries about key historical events written by leading scholars in American Indian history as well as inspiring first-person accounts from American Indian peoples. This comprehensive, two-volume resource on American Indian history covers events from the time of ancient Indian civilizations in North America to recent happenings in American Indian life in the 21st century, providing readers with an understanding of not only what happened to shape the American Indian experience but also how these events—some of which occurred long ago—continue to affect people's lives today. The first section of the book focuses on history in the pre-European contact period, documenting the tens of thousands of years that American Indians have resided on the continent in ancient civilizations, in contrast with the very short history of a few hundred years following contact with Europeans—during which time tremendous changes to American Indian culture occurred. The event coverage continues chronologically, addressing the early Colonial period and beginning of trade with Europeans and the consequential destruction of native economies, to the period of Western expansion and Indian removal in the 1800s, to events of forced assimilation and later self-determination in the 20th century and beyond. Readers will appreciate how American Indians continue to live rich cultural, social, and religious lives thanks to the activism of communities, organizations, and individuals, and perceive how their inspiring collective story of self-determination and sovereignty is far from over.