American Indian Culture and Research Journal

[P]hotographs become standard evidence for historical occurrences, and acquire a hidden political significance. They demand a specific kind of approach; free-floating contemplation is not appropriate to them. —Walter Benjamin The photographic image possesses an incredible amount of control. Photography has the ability to control the direction of one’s thinking by presenting itself as truth. Prejudices can be quickly confirmed by staged, manipulated, or misrepresented photographs. An imbalance of information is presented as truth. —Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie INTRODUCTION: “MR. BENNETT’S INDIANS” In the winter of 1883, the photographer H. H. Bennett decided to spice up his descriptive catalogue of stereo views with something new. Several years earlier, a simple listing of his photographs—mostly landscape views of the area surrounding the Wisconsin River Dells—brought the small-town studio photographer considerable renown and enhanced sales. Now, after a sluggish business year, Bennett sought to recapture some of the trade that he saw slipping west with the frontier. Perhaps his imagination was triggered by a visit with Buffalo Bill Cody who, as the local paper put it, was “attracted by Bennett, the man who shoots with a camera as well as Buffalo Bill does with a rifle."

Throughout the nineteenth century Anishinaabeg leaders from the Great Lakes, wearing eagle feather headdresses and elegantly beaded bandolier bags, met in treaty councils with U.S. commissioners. Trained for years as astute listeners and eloquent speakers, these diplomats put their skills to the test as they negotiated with their non-Indian counterparts, whose primary responsibility was to serve the interests of the federal government. The stakes were high, for Native territories and lifeways were often at risk. Like most Native nations, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa (collectively known as Anishinaabeg) had long made alliances for purposes of war or peace, but not to formalize a permanent exchange of land. Faced with growing non-Indian demands for land, Anishinaabeg bands negotiated multiple treaties with the United States to maintain their sovereignty, well-being, and place on the land. Although bands regularly crossed borders between the United States and Canada for both trade and social reasons, Anishinaabeg found that non-Indian governments shaped diplomatic concerns in bands’ home territories. As the doctrine and practice of manifest destiny swept through the Great Lakes and beyond, Anishinaabeg within the boundaries of the United States faced a different set of challenges than did their kin in Canada. Anishinaabeg negotiations of both land cession and peace treaties with the United States had long-term consequences for their bands. Council journals recorded the treaty-making process in detail, thus meticulously preserving the words and even the actions of the councils’ participants. Although council proceedings no longer survive for all Anishinaabeg treaties, a number of those extant reveal important continuities and shifts in American Indian diplomacy. Five of these are the focus of this study.

INTRODUCTION In October of 2001, the Leggatt Inquiry into salmon farming traveled to four small communities (Port Hardy, Tofino, Alert Bay, and Campbell River) close to the centers of operation for the finfish aquaculture industry in British Columbia (see fig. 1). In doing so, it gave local people, particularly First Nations people, an opportunity to speak about salmon farming using their own vocabularies, styles of speaking, and forms of knowledge. Their testimony, however, was about much more than salmon farming. In fact, most of the talk at the inquiry focused upon people’s sense of place and community, and their understandings of their way of life. In particular, the inquiry brought to light the legal and political context in which the salmon farming industry operates. This paper focuses on narratives that in technical and scientific circles would probably be considered rambling, anecdotal, and off the subject. Much of the background needed to make sense of these accounts of fish farming lies hidden in the colonial context of the industry and the ongoing struggles of Native people in British Columbia for recognition of their rights to land and resources. In particular, the material practices of the colonizers seem to produce Native identities quite different from the ones Native people themselves know and rely on. My analysis of the Leggatt Inquiry tries to give voice to the Native people who appeared at the inquiry by showing that, while they are certainly the victims of continued intrusions into their territories and ways of life—and, as I hope to demonstrate, salmon farming represents such an intrusion—they are not passive bystanders in the process. Instead, the aboriginal people who spoke about salmon farming at the inquiry creatively and strategically employed a variety of devices that would help others see the controversy over salmon farming as they themselves did.

INTRODUCTION The conquest of Chile and of America in general constituted an encounter between different and mutually unknown civilizations that discovered the existence of an “extreme otherness” which European civilization would generically call “Indians.” The Spanish encounter with the aboriginals was both violent and subtle. The conquistadors’ main aim was to collect the largest amount of gold and silver as quickly and easily as possible: a purpose that led their leaders to learn about the Indian “enemy,” get close to them, and win their confidence in order to subjugate and colonize them. Cortés, in Mexico, was the prototypical conquistador using communicative abilities and native language to interpret the behavior of Indians, and temporarily adapting to their structures in order to conquer them. The behavior of Cortés, and of the Spanish conquistadors, was based on a racist ideology in contemporary Europe with distinctive political, economic, and religious attitudes toward the “New World.” The Spanish crown backed Columbus’ enterprise in order to gain wealth (bullion, spices, etc.), create colonies, and convert the “pagan” Indians to Christianity. This article examines the development of this ideology in creating stereotypes and prejudices against the Mapuche (Native Americans) by the non-Mapuche who settled in Chile. We argue that the inhabitants of Temuco—a southern Chilean city in an area with a large Mapuche population—retain these stereotypes and prejudices in their everyday discourse: an attitude that is generally more explicit in lower-class individuals and more implicit among the middle and upper classes. This article analyzes comments in the regional press during the previous century and the everyday language of non-Mapuche inhabitants of Temuco.

The cautionary figure of windigo has lurked at the edges of Louise Erdrich’s writing since her first collection of poems in 1984. In The Antelope Wife it finally emerges into full view. A windigo is defined as a cannibalistic monster set loose by human greed, envy, and jealousy. Traditional Ojibwe windigo stories usually focus on the starving time of winter when food is in short supply and anyone taking more than their share effectively eats into the bodies of those around them. These cautionary tales strive to impress upon their listeners the absolute need for balance and self-restraint in human relations, as in human interaction with the natural world. Once the windigo is set loose, it might devour anyone and everyone, including the one who gave it life. In order to conquer the windigo, the protagonist in the tale frequently must take the form of a windigo in order to do battle with it. Family or friends stand prepared to restore the protagonist to normal, by making him drink boiling hot fat to melt his icy heart. Windigo behavior can become a source of power if used sparingly and with the assistance of those who can restore one’s proper self. If not, it is a curse that can affect multiple generations. Erdrich’s use of Ojibwe stories and symbols has attracted critical attention from the first. Most scholarly work in this area has focused on three main tasks. One task has been to examine the ways in which these stories enrich her novels, providing layers of narrative that ripple outward. Another task has been to look at how Ojibwe culture complicates the lives and identities of Erdrich’s characters. Still another has been to unearth the ways in which the stories and symbols orient readers to Ojibwe worldviews. Much of this scholarship seems to focus on tracking the sources of Erdrich’s Ojibwe content and on interpreting this content in light of contemporary narrative. Two essays in particular, Jean Strandness’ “When the Windigo Swept Across the Plains” and Elisabeth Mermann-Jozwiak’s “When the Grandfather Ate His Own Wife: Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine as a Contemporary Windigo Narrative,” establish precedence for looking at the role of windigo. Strandness addresses the ways in which Sister Leopolda functions as a kind of windigo and Mermann-Jozwiak examines the added chapters to the second edition of Love Medicine, which, she argues, develop Lulu Nanapush as a windigo character.

The recent publication of Native American Studies in Higher Education, edited by Duane Champagne and Jay Stauss, marks a milestone in American Indian studies (AIS). Not only does this volume commemorate the formal existence of programs focusing on this broadly (if vaguely) defined field at various academic institutions for more than thirty years; but the fact that there are so many long-standing Native/American Indian studies programs in North America indicates that the academic canon has changed, if only slightly and stubbornly. By the same token, virtually all of the authors who discuss their respective programs in this book describe less than perfect situations, in which institutional obstacles have often remained and questions about the extent and consequences of AIS programs constituting autonomous units or departments within these institutions remain unresolved. However, all the authors agree on specific guiding principles that make American Indian studies programs legitimate endeavors: that such programs must constitute holistic, praxis-oriented pursuits designed to serve and to work collaboratively with indigenous peoples in a way that complements and enhances tribal sovereignty, and that recognizes the legitimacy and value of indigenous knowledge. Native American Studies in Higher Education understandably focuses on those AIS programs that have endured the test of time and “that have developed and deepened their philosophy about American Indian studies and their commitment to students, community, scholarship, and in many cases, traditional knowledge and language.”