Title: Piety, Pageantry and Politics on the Northern Great Plains: An American Indian Woman Restages Her People's Conquest during the Era of Assimilation (1879-1934)
Abstract: Abstract A study of early career of Dakota Sioux scholar Ella Cara Deloria (1889-1971). Better known male figures in her family, forced to relinquish their traditional leadership roles, strategically extended these by converting to Christianity during nineteenth century US federal policies of allotment of lands and assimilation. Deloria's first opportunities for professional leadership took place under auspices of YWCA and Episcopalian diocese of South Dakota. This paper argues that, despite paternalistic surveillance, and by surreptitiously adapting contemporary American community historical pageantry to their own agenda, Ella Deloria and Dakota actors she directed encoded resistance to church's official story of their conversion and salvation. The theatrical imperatives that normally prevail in situations of domination produce a public transcript in close conformity with how dominant group would wish to have things appear.... In short run, it is in interest of subordinate to produce a more or less credible performance, speaking lines and making gestures he knows are expected of him. The result is that public transcript is--barring a crisis--systematically skewed in direction of libretto, discourse, represented by dominant ... [A]ny analysis basedexclusively on public transcript is likely to conclude that subordinate groups endorse theterms of their subordination and are willing, even enthusiastic, partners in that subordination. James Scott, Domination and Arts of Resistance I think pageantry is great. You can show so much that you would not dare to talk about. Ella Deloria to Bishop Hugh Latimer Burleson, 16 December 1927 Introduction Native North American Indian peoples have been subjected to policies ranging from genocide to self-determination, first under British Crown and then federal government of U.S. The mostly dismal catalogue of solutions to the Indian Problem includes outright invasion, conquest and extermination; biological warfare and ecocide (e.g., intentional distribution of smallpox-infected blankets, deliberate destruction of buffalo herds necessary for Plains Indians' survival; sterilization of American Indian women, often without their knowledge or consent; nuclear colonialism, disposal of toxic wastes on Indian lands); forced removal from tribal lands east of Mississippi; treaties between tribes recognized as sovereign and federal government, Indians granting land cessions in exchange for becoming dependent wards of latter; assimilation/forced deculturation; Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887, which all but smashed tribes' remaining communal land bases after Treaty era; one-way relocation to urban areas; tribal termination ... The catalogue is endless and ongoing. Over several generations in historical record, Dakota Sioux scholar Ella Cara Deloria's family survived wildly varying and contradictory policies, including somewhat more benevolent ones such as Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (the Indian New Deal) and Bureau of Indian Affairs-managed self-determination. None of these policies, it is probably unnecessary to say, was initiated by Indians. Ella Deloria (1889-1971) was an outstanding scholar and cultural broker who came from one of best-known American Indian intellectual families. Her grandfather Saswe (1816-1876) was a renowned traditional healer and visionary, as well as a tribal headman, who converted to Christianity late in his life. For him there was little contradiction between adapting to some of mainstream culture's ways and also representing his tribe's interests to President Andrew Johnson in 1868, attempting to renegotiate 1858 treaty defining Yankton Sioux reservation land base. …
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-12-22
Language: en
Type: article
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