Blackbird's Song: Andrew J. Blackbird and the Odawa People by
For much of U.S. history, the story of native people has been written by historians and anthropologists relying on the often biased accounts of European-American observers. Though we have become well acquainted with war chiefs like Pontiac and Crazy Horse, it has been at the expense of better knowing civic-minded intellectuals like Andrew J. Blackbird, who sought in 1887 to give a voice to his people through his landmark book History of the Ottawa and Chippewa People. Blackbird chronicled the numerous ways in which these Great Lakes people fought to retain their land and culture, first with military resistance and later by claiming the tools of citizenship. This stirring account reflects on the lived experience of the Odawa people and the work of one of their greatest advocates.
Disputed Waters: Native Americans and the Great Lakes Fishery by
This disturbing study of the struggle of the Chippewa and Ottawa Indians for traditional fishing rights in the Great Lakes raises legal and public policy questions that extend far beyond that region. Who owns common-property resources in the United States? Who should manage those resources and for whose benefit? Should Native Americans be accorded rights which supersede those of other citizens and restrict their economic and recreational opportunities? Can federal courts successfully resolve conflicts over resource allocation? In the pages of this book Robert Doherty follows the conflict from the 1960s, when Native Americans renewed their struggle to maintain their treaty rights, through to the confrontations that persist to this day. During the 1.970s the Chippewas of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, through federal court decisions, secured recognition of Native American rights to fish without state control. An ugly campaign of protest ensued, with vigilante groups and local police attempting to intimidate Chippewa and Ottawa fishermen. With the help of the Reagan administration, Michigan officials eventually circumvented the courts and regained a large measure of their former power in a negotiated agreement. Robert Doherty writes about these events with knowledge gained from documentary and media sources and from firsthand experience. He has been in the courts and on the beaches where confrontations took place and has interviewed many of the participants on both sides. For a while he even operated his own fishing enterprise. The result of his involvement is a provocative book, not afraid to take the side of what Doherty perceives as an oppressed minority group and to make policy recommendations to correct injustice.
Expanding the Frontiers of Civil Rights by
Although historians have devoted a great deal of attention to the development of federal government policy regarding civil rights in the quarter century following World War II, little attention has been paid to the equally important developments at the state level. Few states underwent a more dramatic transformation with regard to civil rights than Michigan did. In 1948, the Michigan Committee on Civil Rights characterized the state of civil rights in Michigan as presenting "an ugly picture." Twenty years later, Michigan was a leader among the states in civil rights legislation. "Expanding the Frontiers of Civil Rights" documents this important shift in state level policy and makes clear that civil rights in Michigan embraced not only blacks but women, the elderly, native Americans, migrant workers, and the physically handicapped.
Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes by
The Great Lakes region was an important site of cultural as well as economic exchange between native and European peoples in the colonial period. This study focuses on an often overlooked aspect of these interactions - the role played by Indian women who married French traders.
The Legacy of Shingwaukonse: A Century of Native Leadership by
This book examines the careers of the Ojibwa chief Shingwaukonse, also known as Little Pine, and of two of his sons, Ogista and Buhkwujjenene, at Garden River near Sault Ste Marie. Theirs was a period in which the Great Lakes Ojibwa faced formidable challenges from entrepreneurs, missionaries, and bureaucrats, as well as from new policies set by the Canadian state. Shingwaukonse sought to establish links with the new government agencies, to preserve an environment in which Native cultural values and organizational structures could survive, and to devise strategies to enable the formation of band governments capable of assuming a degree of proprietorship over the resources on Native land. Using an impressive array of evidence from a huge range of government, church, manuscript, and oral sources, Chute reconstructs a period of energetic and sometimes effective Aboriginal resistance to pressures visited on the community. She demonstrates that Shingwaukonse and his sons were vigilant in their attempts to maximize the autonomy and security of the Garden River Ojibwa even while many other parties insisted on their assimilation. The Legacy of Shingwaukonse contributes greatly to anthropological debates about Ojibwa leadership and to a historical understanding of the relationship between Native peoples and newcomers throughout the nineteenth century.
Michigan Voices: Our State's History in the Words of the People who Lived it by
Joe Grimm of the Detroit Free Press has combined a fascinating collection of old family letters, diaries, journals, photos, and other memorabilia in this rare glimpse at Michigan's past. Based on a series of articles that appeared in the "Chronicles" column of the Detroit Free Press Sunday magazine from 1985 to 1987, Michigan Voices introduces the reader to a more personal side of the state's history. Excerpts from historical documents include Cadillac's proposal of 1700 to establish Detroit and Roger Andrews' crusade for an independent Upper Peninsula in 1916. Among the chronicles Grimm has uncovered are humorous letters from a World War I recruit, an engaging series of correspondences between a Flint schoolgirl and Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy during the Great Depression, and an interview with Kenneth C. Welch, the revolutionary architect and planner who developed the mall/shopping center concept in 1946.
Minong--the Good Place: Ojibwe and Isle Royale by
Minong (the Ojibwe name for Isle Royale) is the search for the history of the Ojibwe people's relationship with this unique island in the midst of Lake Superior. Cochrane uses a variety of sources: Ojibwe oral narratives, recently rediscovered Jesuit records and diaries, reports of the Hudson's Bay post at Fort William, newspaper accounts, and numerous records from archives in the United States and Canada, to understand this relationship to a place. What emerges is a richly detailed account of Ojibwe activities on Minong--and their slow waning in the latter third of the nineteenth century. Piece by piece, Cochrane has assembled a narrative of a people, an island, and a way of life that transcends borders, governments, documentation, and tidy categories. His account reveals an authentic 'history': the missing details, contradictions, deviations from the conventions of historical narrative--the living entity at the intersection of documentation by those long dead and the narratives of those still living in the area. Significantly, it also documents how non-natives symbolically and legally appropriated Isle Royale by presenting it to fellow non-natives as an island that was uninhabited and unused.
Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan's Native Americans by
A comprehensive and readable history of Native Americans in the Upper Great Lakes region
Team Spirits: The Native American Mascots Controversy by
Team Spirits is the first comprehensive look at the Native American mascots controversy. In this work activists and academics explore the origins of Native American mascots, the messages they convey, and the reasons for their persistence into the twenty-first century. The essays examine hotly contested uses of mascots, including the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians, and the University of Illinois's Chief Illiniwek, as well as equally problematic but more complicated examples such as the Florida State Seminoles and the multitude of Native mascots at Marquette University. Also showcased are examples of successful opposition, including an end to Native American mascots at Springfield College and in Los Angeles public schools.
