The Challenges of Native American Studies

The essays gathered in this volume celebrate the founding of the American Indian Workshop (AIW) twenty-five years ago as a European forum for Native American studies. We present this collection of ongoing debates on the interlaced and interlocking arena of Native American studies and its complicated relation with Native Americans themselves. These debates tie in with such questions as: can Native American studies shake off its past and deal with the complexity of political and academic issues in the present? Why, by whom and for whom is research conducted within this domain and who decides what the next step should be? This volume is a modest response to these questions, to the validation and substantiation of the cat's cradle of practices of the many disciplines that comprise Native American Studies, and an attempt to ask the right questions, to get past the imperial categories, and to thoughtfully mediate and reorientate perspectives.

"The Challenges of Native American Studies" was edited by Barbara Saunders and Lea Zuyderhoudt.

Yes, "The Challenges of Native American Studies" is part of the "Studia Anthropologica" series. It's book 8 in the series.

Introduction

The complexity of the moment
Barbara Saunders

Responding to Native Amercian Voices
Lea Zuyderhoudt

The contributions
Barbara Saunders

Appendix: AIW Themes

Framing the Topos

The Amercian Indian Workshop Origin Myth and Allied Relations
Christian F. Feest

Native Amercian Studies Beyond Neo-Liberal Relativism
Barbara Saunders

Negotiations

Feeling Implicated
Charlotte Townsend-Gault

Totem Poles and Contemporary Tourism
Aldona Jonaitis and Aaron Glass

Reconfiguring Gender in Contemporary Urban Powwowws
Massimiliano Carocci

Contestations

Indians as Mascots: Perpetuating the Stereotype
Alfred Young Man

Not a Cultural Relativist: The Legacy and Burden of Franz Boas
Barbara Saunders

Weaving Culture: Connecting Objects, Words and Memory in Southwestern Alaska
Molly Lee

Dialogues and Research

The Use of Inuit Qaujimatjaatuqangit in Modern Society: Elders from Kivalliq and Nattilik Present their views
Jarich Oosten and Frédéric Laugrand

Accounts of the Past as Part of the Present: The value of Divergent Interpretations of Blackfoor History
Lea Zuyderhoudt

George Catlin's Account(s) of the O-kee-pa in Concordance with Other Sources
Christer Lindberg

Brides of a Morning Star: The Petalesharo Legend and the Skiri Pawnee Rite of Human Sacrifice in Amercian Popular Fiction
Mark van de Logt

Rock Saline, a Pawnee Sacred Place
Patricia J. O'Brien

Appropriation, Adaptation and Recontextualisation

The public Faces of Sarah Winnemucca
Joanna Cohan Scherer

Mato-Topé's Knife and Crazy Horse's Shield: Use of Ethnographic Objects as Cultural Documents
Riku Hämäläinen

Encountering Native Americans in Unexpected Places: Slichtenhorst and the Mohawks
Charles Gehring

Wakan'yan. Powerful Reflections: Mirrors and the Plains Indians
Colin Taylor

Reknitting the World

Seeking Balance through History and Communtiy: the Presence of the Past in LeAnne Howe's Shell Shaker (2001)
Hans Bak

A Wounded Eagle Soars over the Hills of Mississippi! a Choctaw Story
Raeschelle J.Potter-Deimel