New and Notable—National Museum of the American Indian Library

Here are selected new books from the National Museum of the American Indian Library.

The book of symbols: archetypal reflections in word and image.

AZ108 .B66 2010

Imprint: Köln : Taschen, 2010.

Some 350 essays combine with 800 full-color images to evoke the hidden dimension of archetypal symbology. Each of the essays examines a given symbol's psychic processes and dynamics. Etymological roots, the play of opposites, paradox and shadow, the ways in which diverse cultures have engaged a symbolic image – all these factors are taken into consideration.

 

 

 

Barbarians and brothers : Anglo-American warfare, 1500-1865. Wayne E. Lee.

DA66 .L44 2011

Imprint: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2011.

"Barbarians and Brothers is a sophisticated, readable, and most important history of 'frightfulness' in Anglo-American war from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Lee makes clear that the level of violence in war-particularly the treatment of prisoners and civilians-was not just a matter of how soldiers and states perceived their enemies. Englishmen were more restrained in fighting brothers (other Englishmen) than barbarians (Irishmen or Native Americans). But violence also depended on complex and shifting relationships among the size of forces, the development of the state, the influence of international law and social norms, and the extent to which civilians were drawn into the fighting. This is an unusually rich and rewarding history."-Ira D. Gruber, Rice University

 

Broken circle : the dark legacy of Indian residential schools: a memoir. Theodore Fontaine. 

E96.5 .F66 2010

Imprint: [Surrey, B.C.] : Heritage House, c2010.

Theodore (Ted) Fontaine lost his family and freedom just after his seventh birthday, when his parents were forced to leave him at an Indian residential school by order of the Roman Catholic Church and the Government of Canada. Twelve years later, he left school frozen at the emotional age of seven. He was confused, angry and conflicted, on a path of self-destruction. At age 29, he emerged from this blackness. By age 32, he had graduated from the Civil Engineering Program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and begun a journey of self-exploration and healing. In this powerful and poignant memoir, Ted examines the impact of his psychological, emotional and sexual abuse, the loss of his language and culture, and, most important, the loss of his family and community. He goes beyond details of the abuses of Native children to relate a unique understanding of why most residential school survivors have post-traumatic stress disorders and why succeeding generations of First Nations children suffer from this dark chapter in history. Told as remembrances described with insights that have evolved through his healing, his story resonates with his resolve to help himself and other residential school survivors and to share his enduring belief that one can pick up the shattered pieces and use them for good.

 

Sacred games, death, and renewal in the ancient Eastern Woodlands: the Ohio Hopewell system of cult sodality heterarchies. A. Martin Byers.

E99.H69 B95 2011

Imprint: Lanham : AltaMira Press, c2011.

The book presents an account of the Ohio Middle Woodland period embankment earthworks, ca 100 B.C. to A.D. 400, that is radically different from the prevailing theory. Byers critically addresses all the arguments and characterizations that make up the current treatment of the embankment earthworks and then presents an alternative interpretation. This unconventional view hinges on two basic social characterizations: the complementary heterarchical community model and the cult sodality heterarchy model. Byers posits that these two models interact to characterize the Ohio Middle Woodland period settlement pattern; the community was constituted by autonomous social formations: clans based on kinship and sodalities based on companionship. The individual communities of the region each have their clan components dispersed within a fairly well-defined zone while the sodality components of the same set of region-wide communities ally with each other and build and operate the embankment earthworks. This dichotomy is possible only because the clans and sodalities respect each other as relatively autonomous; the affairs of the clans, focusing on domestic and family matters, remain outside the concerns of the sodalities and the affairs of the sodalities, focusing on world renewal and sacred games, remain outside the concerns of the clans. Therefore, two models are required to understand the embankment earthworks and no individual earthwork can be identified with any particular community. This radical interpretation grounded in empirical archaeological data, as well as the in-depth overview of the current theory of the Ohio Middle Woodland period, make this book a critically important addition to the perspective of scholars of North American archaeology and scholars grappling with prehistoric social systems.

 

Peru: a chronicle of deception: attempts to transfer the Awajún border territory in the Cordillera del Cóndor to the mining industry. Research Team of the Organization for the Development of the Border Communities of El Cenepa-ODECOFROC; [translation, Sylvia Fisher Carrasco].

F3430.1.A35 P478 2010

Imprint: Distrito de Cenepa, Provincia Condorcanqui, Amazonas, Peru : ODECOFROC ; Lima, Peru : Racimos de Ungurahui Working Group ; Copenhagen, Denmark : International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2010. 

 This report argues and demonstrates that the Peruvian government acted in bad faith by modifying the original proposal to create the Ichigkat Muja National Park agreed upon with the Awajún and Wampís indigenous communities of the District of El Cenepa, Department of Amaonas, Peru. The proposal to create a protected natural area in the Cordillera del Cóndor, the traditional land of these peoples, was prepared together with the environmental authority of the Peruvian government through a long negotiation process and detailed scientific studies, with the purpose of preserving an extremely vulnerable area at the headwaters of the Cenepa River, and as a result of the contribution made by the Awajún and Wampís communities to the establishment of long-lasting peace along the Peruvian-Ecuadorian border. 

The report also proves that the Peruvian government acted in this manner in order to benefit mining entrepreneurs, some of whom maintain strong political ties with senior government officials. As a result, the territory of these peoples has been threatened, and their rights, not to mention the national and international laws that protect them, have been challenged. 

The Awajún and Wampís communities and their representative organiations have continuously demanded the following: the reestablishment of the original proposal to create the National Park and the cancelation of mining concessions; neither have been granted by authorities. This situation serves as a basis for the claims made by the indigenous movement that led to massive demonstrations in 2008 and 2009, in addition to a prolonged strike, which culminated in the bloody events of Bagua (June 5, 2009), when the government violently intervened to evacuate the Awajún and Wampís contingents that had blocked a highway. 

 

Encyclopedia of American Indian removal. Daniel F. Littlefield Jr. and James W. Parins, Editors.

E98.R4 E63 2011

Imprint: Santa Barbara, Calif. : Greenwood, c2011.

In 1830, Andrew Jackson became the first U.S. president to implement removal of Native Americans with the passage of the Indian Removal Act. Less than a decade later, tens of thousands of Native Americans—Cherokee, Chickasaw, Muscogee-Creek, Seminole, and others—were forcibly moved from their tribal lands to enable settlement by Caucasians of European origin.

Encyclopedia of American Indian Removal presents a realistic depiction of removal as a complicated process that was deeply affected by political, economic, and tribal factors, rather than the popular romanticized concept of American Indians being herded west by military troops through a trackless wilderness. This work is presented in two volumes. Volume One contains essays on subjects and people that are general in scope and arranged alphabetically by subject; Volume Two is dedicated to primary documents regarding Indian removal and examines specific information about political debates, Indian responses to removal policy, and removals of individual tribes.

—Lynne Altstatt