Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives

Edited by Susan Sleeper-Smith
This interdisciplinary and international collection of essays illuminates the importance and effects of Indigenous perspectives for museums. The contributors challenge and complicate the traditionally close colonialist connections between museums and nation-states and urge more activist and energized roles for museums in the decades ahead.
The essays in section 1 consider ethnography’s influence on how Europeans represent colonized peoples. Section 2 essays analyze curatorial practices, emphasizing how exhibitions must serve diverse masters rather than solely the curator’s own creativity and judgment, a dramatic departure from past museum culture and practice. Section 3 essays consider tribal museums that focus on contesting and critiquing colonial views of American and Canadian history while serving the varied needs of the indigenous communities.
The institutions examined in these pages range broadly from the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC; the Oneida Nation Museum in Oneida, Wisconsin; tribal museums in the Klamath River region in California; the tribal museum in Zuni, New Mexico; the Museum of the American Indian in New York City; and the District Six Museum in Cape Town, South Africa.

Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians

Edited by: Susan Sleeper-Smith, Juliana Barr, Jean M. O’Brien, Nancy Shoemaker, and Scott Manning Stevens

A resource for all who teach and study history, this book illuminates the unmistakable centrality of American Indian history to the full sweep of American history. The nineteen essays gathered in this collaboratively produced volume, written by leading scholars in the field of Native American history, reflect the newest directions of the field and are organized to follow the chronological arc of the standard American history survey. Contributors reassess major events, themes, groups of historical actors, and approaches–social, cultural, military, and political–consistently demonstrating how Native American people, and questions of Native American sovereignty, have animated all the ways we consider the nation’s past. The uniqueness of Indigenous history, as interwoven more fully in the American story, will challenge students to think in new ways about larger themes in U.S. history, such as settlement and colonization, economic and political power, citizenship and movements for equality, and the fundamental question of what it means to be an American.

Contributors are Chris Andersen, Juliana Barr, David R. M. Beck, Jacob Betz, Paul T. Conrad, Mikal Brotnov Eckstrom, Margaret D. Jacobs, Adam Jortner, Rosalyn R. LaPier, John J. Laukaitis, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Robert J. Miller, Mindy J. Morgan, Andrew Needham, Jean M. O’Brien, Jeffrey Ostler, Sarah M. S. Pearsall, James D. Rice, Phillip H. Round, Susan Sleeper-Smith, and Scott Manning Stevens.

Occasional Papers in Curriculum Series

The Indians Versus the Textbooks: Is There Any Way Out?
Frederick E. Hoxie
36 Pages. OPCS-01

The Impact of Indian History on the Teaching of United States History
Chicago Conference 1984. Sessions I-II
1985. 159 Pages. OPCS-02

The Impact of Indian History on the Teaching of United States History
Chicago Conference 1984. Sessions V-IV
1985. 111 Pages. OPCS-03

The Impact of Indian History on the Teaching of United States History
Washington Conference 1985
1986. 268 Pages. OPCS-04

The Impact of Indian History on the Teaching of United States History
Los Angeles Conference 1986
1987. 270 Pages. OPCS-05

Native Views of Indian-White Historical Relations
Edited by Don Fixico
1989. 193 Pages. OPCS-07

Twenty-third International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages
Eugene, Oregon. August 1988
Compiled by Jay Miller
199 Pages. OPCS-08

Overcoming Economic Dependency
Papers and Comments from the First Newberry Library Conference on Themes in American Indian History
1988. 233 Pages. OPCS-09

Teaching American Indian History
A Selection of Course Outlines
1988. 257 Pages. OPCS-10

The Struggle for Political Autonomy
Papers and Comments from the Second Newberry Library Conference on Themes in American Indian History
1989. 195 Pages. OPCS-11

Treaties: A Source Book
Frederick Hoxie
165 Pages. OPCS-12

Oral Literature
Jay Miller
107 Pages. OPCS-13

Sacred Texts
Paul G. Zolbrod
100 Pages. OPCS-14

America in 1492
Selected Literatures from the Quincentenary Program
189 Pages. OPCS-15

Teaching and Writing Local and Reservation History: The Ojibwas
Lac Courte Oreilles Community College
Edited by Brenda K. Manuelito
235 Pages. OPCS-16

Indian Leadership and Indian Identity: A Tension Through Time
Edited by Brenda K. Manuelito
1995. 161 Pages. OPCS-17

Teaching and Writing Local and Reservation History: The Crows
Little Big Horn College
Edited by Brenda K. Manuelito
1995. 198 Pages. OPCS-18

Teaching and Writing Local and Reservation History: The Navajos
Navajo Community College
1996. 154 Pages. OPCS-19

The Construction of Gender and the Experience of Women in American Indian Societies
Edited by Harvey Markowitz
1996. 315 Pages. OPCS-20

Occasional Papers Series

Breaking Barriers
Perspectives on the Writing of Indian History
Edited by David Beaulieu
1978. 72 Pages. OPSR-01

Indian Sovereignty
Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference on Problems and Issues Concerning American Indian Today.
Edited by William R. Swagerty
1979. 160 Pages. OPSR-02

Bibliography of the Tribes of the Covelo Indian Community in Round Valley of Northern California
William Oandasan
1980. 57 Pages. OPSR-03

Urban Indians
Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference on Problems and Issues Concerning American Indians Today
1981. 185 Pages. OPSR-04

Indian Water Rights in the Concluding Years of the Twentieth Century
William H. Veeder
74 Pages. OPSR-05

The American Indian and the American Revolution
Papers Written for a Conference of the Newberry Library Center for the History of the American Indian
Edited by Francis R. Jennings
1983. 106 Pages. OPSR-06

Non-Recognized American Indian Tribes: An Historical and Legal Perspective
Frank W. Porter III
1983. 118 Pages. OPSR-07

Towards a Quantitative Approach to American Indian History
Papers and Commentaries from a Research Conference Held at the Newberry Library.
1987. 328 Pages. OPSR-08

Reports of the American Indian Family History Project
Part 1. Introduction – Part 2. Marriage – Part 3. Households – Part 4. Fertility
Frederick Hoxie and Richard Satler,
1992 282 Pages. 2 vol. OPSR-09