Pomo Basketmaking

This book offers twenty original scholarly chapters featuring historical and biographical analyses of Native American women. The lives of women found her contributed significantly to their people and people everywhere. The book presents Native women of action and accomplishments in many areas of life. This work highlights women during the modern era of American history, countering past stereotypes of Native women. With the exceptions of Pocahontas and Sacajawea, historians have had little to say about American Indian women who have played key roles in the history of their tribes, their relationship with others, and the history of the United States. Indigenous women featured herein distinguished themselves as fiction and non-fiction writers, poets, potters, basket makers, musicians, and dancers. Other women contributed as notable educators and women working in health and medicine. They are representative of many women within the Native Universe who excelled in their lives to enrich the American experience.

Presents a biographical dictionary profiling important Native American women, including birth and death dates, major accomplishments, and historical influence.

Discusses the history, uses, materials, making and designing of baskets by many Indian tribes.

Investigating the career of the French-born American artist Jules Tavernier (1844–1889), this issue of the Bulletin recounts the artist’s travels through the American West and examines his portrayals of some of the Indigenous communities he encountered. The story focuses on Tavernier’s masterwork, Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878), which depicts a ceremonial dance—known as mfom Xe, or “people dance”—performed by the Pomo community of Elem at Clear Lake, in Northern California. Robert Joseph Geary, an Elem Pomo cultural leader, eloquently describes his first reactions upon seeing Tavernier’s depiction of his ancestors and the significance of the mfom Xe ceremony. Elizabeth Kornhauser and Shannon Vittoria provide additional historical context for the painting and show how it recognizes the rich vitality of Elem Pomo culture while also exposing the threat posed to the community by White settlers. This Bulletin juxtaposes paintings, prints, watercolors, and photographs by Tavernier and other artists with examples of historic and contemporary Pomo basketry and regalia to celebrate the resiliency of the Pomo peoples and highlight their continued cultural presence.

This latest volume brings the project up to date, with entries on almost 500 women whose death dates fall between 1976 and 1999. You will find here stars of the golden ages of radio, film, dance, and television; scientists and scholars; civil rights activists and religious leaders; Native American craftspeople and world-renowned artists. For each subject, the volume offers a biographical essay by a distinguished authority that integrates the woman's personal life with her professional achievements set in the context of larger historical developments.

This A-Z reference contains 275 biographical entries on Native American women, past and present, from many different walks of life. Written by more than 70 contributors, most of whom are leading American Indian historians, the entries examine the complex and diverse roles of Native American women in contemporary and traditional cultures. This new edition contains 32 new entries and updated end-of-article bibliographies. Appendices list entries by area of woman's specialization, state of birth, and tribe; also includes photos and a comprehensive index.