Voices of American Indian Assimilation and Resistance

Download or read book Voices of American Indian Assimilation and Resistance written by Siobhan Senier and published by . This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1879 and 1934, the United States government made a concerted effort to dissolve American Indian tribes by allotting communally held lands and forcing them to adopt Euro-American practices. Yet women seized a wave of national fascination with American Indians to challenge the national drive to assimilate indigenous peoples. This book focuses on three women of this era -- the white writer and activist Helen Hunt Jackson, whose 1884 bestseller Ramona has been dubbed "the 'Indian' Uncle Tom's Cabin; " the Paiute performer Sarah Winnemucca, whose Life Among the Piutes is believed to be the first Native woman's autobiography; and Victoria Howard, the Clackamas Chinook storyteller, who worked with Melville Jacobs in 1929 to transcribe hundreds of narratives, ethnographic texts, and songs. Senier is the first to offer a reading of the texts of these three women together and her unique presentation of American Indian oral narrative alongside written narrative recovers a discourse of resistance to assimilation in general and allotment in particular in the voices of American Indian and women artists.