Menominee Drums

In 1961, the U.S. government terminated the Menominee Indians’ federal status as a recognized tribe, including rights to a self-governed reservation. The Menominees were not the only tribe subject to this injustice; the government’s action was part of its larger policy of termination, which aimed to assimilate all Native Americans into larger American society. For the Menominees, as well as for other tribes, the result was devastating; in addition to their loss of land, Native peoples lost their livelihoods, assets, and very identities. In Menominee Drums, Nicholas C. Peroff explains how termination evolved and how it affected the Menominees. He also tells the astounding story of how the termination was reversed. Through an organized campaign called DRUMS, the tribe was able to regain its status of federal recognition.

Drawing on meticulous archival research and a close working relationship with the Menominee Historic Preservation Department, David R. M. Beck picks up where his earlier work, Siege and Survival: History of the Menominee Indians, 1634?1856, ended. The Struggle for Self-Determination begins with the establishment of a small reservation in the Menominee homeland in northeastern Wisconsin at a time when the Menominee economic, political, and social structure came under aggressive assault. For the next hundred years the tribe attempted to regain control of its destiny, enduring successive policy attacks by governmental, religious, and local business sources. ø The Menominee?s rich forests became a battleground on which they refused to cede control to the U.S. government. The struggle climaxed in the mid-twentieth century when the federal government terminated its relationship with the tribe. Throughout this time the Menominee fought to maintain their connection to their past and to regain control of their future. The lessons they learned helped them through their greatest modern disaster?termination?and enabled them to reconstruct a government and a reservation as the twentieth century drew to a close. The Struggle for Self-Determination reinterprets that story and includes the viewpoint of the Menominee in the telling of it.

Hiding in a lake under lily pads after fleeing U.S. soldiers, a Dakota woman was given a vision over the course of four days instructing her to build a large drum and teaching her the songs that would bring peace and end the killing of her people. From the Dakota, the "big drum" spread throughout the Algonquian-speaking tribes to the Ojibwe, becoming the centerpiece of their religious ceremonies. This edition of "The Ojibwe Dance Drum, "originally created through the collaboration of Ojibwe drum maker and singer William Bineshii Baker Sr. and folklorist Thomas Vennum, has a new introduction by history professor Rick St. Germaine that discusses the research behind this book and updates readers on the recent history of the Ojibwe Drum Dance.

Making your own primitive instruments from simple materials such as coffee cans and flower pots. Includes 121 figures.

An indispensable introduction to the rich variety of Native leadership in the modern era, The New Warriors profiles Native men and women who have played a significant role in the affairs of their communities and of the nation over the course of the twentieth century. ø The leaders showcased include the early-twentieth-century writer and activist Zitkala-?a; American Indian Movement leader Russell Means; political activists Ada Deer and LaDonna Harris; scholar and writer D?Arcy McNickle; orator and Crow Reservation superintendent Robert Yellowtail; U.S. Senators Charles Curtis and Ben Nighthorse Campbell; Episcopal priest Vine V. Deloria Sr.; Howard Tommie, the champion of economic and cultural sovereignty for the Seminole Tribe of Florida; Cherokee chief Wilma Mankiller; Pawnee activist and lawyer Walter Echo-Hawk; Crow educator Janine Pease Pretty-on-Top; and Phillip Martin, a driving force behind the spectacular economic revitalization of the Mississippi Band of Choctaws.

A study of the shift in American Indian and white relations as both Presidents favored new policies that would have fostered the survival of American Indian cultures and heritages, yet they faced opposition from western senators who insisted on carrying out the so-called termination policies.