American Indian History

NATIVE MESSENGERS OF GOD IN CANADA?:
A TEST CASE FOR BAHA’I UNIVERSALISM (1996)

*** Christopher Buck, “Native Messengers of God in Canada?: A Test Case for Baha’i Universalism.” Baha’i Studies Review 6 (1996): 97–133.

*** Award for Excellence in Baha’i Studies. Association for Baha’i Studies, 1994.

EPILOGUE

Thereupon Tekanawitaˀ [Deganawida, the Peacemaker] stood up in the center of the gathering place, and then he said, “First I will answer what it means to say, ‘Now it is arriving, the Good Message.’ This indeed, is what it means: When it stops, the slaughter of your own people who live here on earth, then everywhere peace will come about, by day and also by night, and it will come about that as one travels around, everyone will be related. …

Now again, secondly, I say, ‘Now it is arriving, the power,’ and this means that the different nations, all the nations, will become just a single one, and the Great Law will come into being, so that now all will be related to each other, and there will come to be just a single family, and in the future, in days to come, this family will continue on.

Now in turn, the other, my third saying, ‘Now it is arriving, the Peace,’ this means that everyone will become related, men and also women, and also the young people and the children, and when all are relatives, every nation, then there will be peace as they roam about by day and also by night. …

Then there will be truthfulness, and they will uphold hope and charity, so that it is peace that will unite all the people, indeed, it will be as though they have but one mind, and they are a single person with only one body and one head and one life, which means that there will be unity.” …

When they are functioning, the Good Message and also the Power and the Peace, moreover, these will be the principal things everybody will live by; these will be the great values among the people.”

– Chief John Arthur Gibson, Concerning the League: The Iroquois League as Dictated in Onondaga, newly elicited, edited and translated by Hanni Woodbury in Collaboration with Reg Henry and Harry Webster on the Basis of A.A. Goldenweiser’s Manuscript. Memoir 9 (Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, 1992): 36–41. 

ABSTRACT

Academic and popular interest has lent prestige to native spirituality and has brought it into prominence. The United Nations proclamation of 1993 as the International Year of Indigenous People gave native peoples international recognition. A corresponding interest in native culture has “valorised” (brought respect to) native spirituality.

The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada took a position of advocacy on behalf of First Nations Canadians in its formal submission to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in the fall of 1993. The strong native presence in Canadian Bahá’í community life raises the question of the place of native spirituality within a Bahá’í worldview.

Homefront “pioneers” have extended Bahá’í universalism to a recognition of the richness and authenticity of native cultural values. Such recognition has been supported by local Bahá’í policy, as attested in teaching pamphlets addressed to native peoples, in which the concept of First World messengers of God has been validated. Although theoretically acknowledged, explicit recognition of native messengers of God has yet to be formalised in Bahá’í doctrine.

This study discusses the possibilities of incorporating the principle of “Messengers of God to Indigenous Peoples” within formal Bahá’í doctrine, reflecting a development that has already taken place in popular Bahá’í belief in the North American context. A hitherto under-studied Persian text of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá establishes the principle in such a way that its explicit enunciation is now possible.

The problem of historical attestation remains. The prophetic credentials of Iroquois culture hero and statesman Deganawida are critically examined as a test case. The legend of Deganawida has a kernel of historicity overlaid by hagiography, with admitted Christian influence. Nonetheless, if the Bahá’í principle of “Progressive Revelation” can assimilate the Amerindian spiritual legacy as distinct from and developmentally asynchronous with Irano-Semitic and Sino-Indic religious histories, then it might be possible to accord Deganawida a provisional status with Bahá’í prophetology, and still affirm Bahá’u’lláh’s unific role in world history, as oral cultures take their place alongside the more familiar “literate” traditions.

https://www.academia.edu/36294314/_Native_Messengers_of_God_in_Canada_1996_

Not-guilty verdicts, mistrials, and impunity for the Bundy family and many of their supporters in the armed confrontations over public land use in Nevada and Oregon. Expanded access for private oil, gas, mining, and logging industries and the downsizing of national monuments such as Bears Ears lead by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. A number of highly contentious debates and sensationalized events have again focused attention on land held in the public domain by the United States. This essay argues that federal land policy as a form of colonial administration has been constitutive for the logic of expectation as property in what is now the United States. From the state land cessions negotiated on behalf of the Articles of Confederation to the preemption acts (1830–1841) to the homestead acts (1862–1916) to present-day demands for land transfer, the acquisition and disposal of the so-called public domain have been central to westward colonization, the consolidation of the nation-state, and the promise of land ownership as the ostensible foundation of individual liberty. These dynamics are evident in contemporary conflicts over public lands and arguments for the transfer of public lands to either state or private ownership. Approaching the Bundy occupations as flashpoints that illuminate competing interpretations and claims to land within the history of westward colonization, this essay seeks to demonstrate the ways in which expectation emerges from particular economies of dispossession of indigenous peoples that have historically worked through and across the division of public and private property.

This report describes the results of plant surveys with Native American elders along designated District 7 highways. The surveys were intended to elicit information concerning culturally significant plant gathering sites and other sites with contemporary cultural significance to Native Americans who are indigenous to the Caltrans D7 Los Angeles County project area. The project roads consist of approximately 400 miles of county roadway. Along the corridors on both sides of the highways, the roads were surveyed for culturally significant plants and other Native American traditional cultural properties visible above ground, extending approximately fifty feet from the highway right-of-way. The survey team identified a total of 106 species of culturally significant plants growing along the project roadways. The culturally significant plants have been recorded and mapped as “Gathering Places” (GP) with information describing the highway and gathering site.

"Encounters at the Heart of the World" is a portrayal of Mandan survivance, in the face of Christian missionaries, proto-capitalist traders, Old World plagues, colonial usurpers, new technologies, and American military force. In Fenn's hands, the interwoven episodes of trade, war, and pestilence force the Mandan more than once to their last resources and yet fail to eradicate them as a People. Again and again, the Mandan suffer; but even as they reel with the various onslaughts, interventions, and devastations, they learn and improvise and carry forward their unique ways in new circumstances.  Fenn's energy and deep attachment to the Mandan as a living People inform the book from the first page to the last. She tells us in the first paragraph of the Preface that the Mandan "have lived here...for centuries." Not once does she slip into the past tense so often used by writers about Indians. In the Acknowledgements section at the end, she refers to "my little sisters in the Goose Society" and gives thanks "for gifts at once physical, spiritual, and intellectual." The reader of "Encounters at the Heart of the World" encounters the heart of the Mandan, and through their iconic history as a people of the plains learns something of the history of the world.

Under the Ottawa and Chippewa Treaty of March 28, 1836, a provision was made to pay certain sums to members of the mixed-blood individuals of the two tribes.  A commissioner was appointed to create a census register of these mixed-bloods and determine who was eligible to receive payment under this provision.  His census of 584 individuals is transcribed in this report along with his instructions from, and his report to, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

A transcription of the 1861 annual annuity payment roll for the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan under the treaty of July 31, 1855.  This roll includes bands from Sault Ste. Marie, Mackinac, Little Traverse, Grand Traverse and Grand River.

This document contains a copy of the original 1877 genealogical roll for the Red Cliff band of Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin. This roll was created by Isaac L. Mahan of the La Pointe Indian Agency. An index of names is included at the end of the roll.

This document contains a copy of the original 1870 annuity payment rolls for the Lake Superior Chippewa bands along with a transcription of the roll and an index of the names on the transcribed roll. The following bands are included on this roll:  Lac Courte Oreilles, Bad River, Red Cliff, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, L’Anse, Lac Vieux Desert, Lac du Flambeau, Ontonagon and Bois Forte.

Horace Durant completed a census roll in 1909 of the descendants of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan who were parties to the 1836 and 1855 treaties.  This census was made for the purpose of determining who was eligible for payment of a U.S. Court of Claims judgment.  This second document is an index of the names contained in Durant’s Field Notes.

“Unlawful acts, performed long enough and with sufficient vigor, are never enough to amend the law.” So reads McGirt v. Oklahoma, the most important reservation boundary case in the history of the Supreme Court. But before McGirt, courts often rewarded unlawful acts with reservation diminishment.  This Article first places McGirt in the context of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s century long fight to restore sovereign rights illegally denied after allotment, and the even longer fight by the Muscogee Nation and others to survive a trail of broken treaty promises.  It then corrects the false assumptions about the past and present of reservation boundaries that led the Court to turn lawbreaking into law.
As to the past, I show that the allotment-era Congress knew that reservations did not depend on land tenure, and that its statutes distinguished between allotment acts that diminished reservations and those that did not.  States, however, regularly broke the law, asserting jurisdiction in violation of federal Indian law rules.  Before McGirt, however, the Court falsely assumed that “[t]he notion that reservation status of Indian lands might not be coextensive with tribal ownership was unfamiliar at the turn of the century,” and so justified relying on state violations of tribal sovereignty as “evidence” of congressional intent.
As to the present, I show that reservation status is not disruptive for non-Indian communities, and often benefits tribal and non-tribal citizens alike. In high-profile cases in Tacoma, Washington and Pender, Oklahoma, life in those communities began to improve at the same time reservation boundaries were affirmed.  Throughout the country tribal governments contribute to the economies and social welfare of their surrounding communities. The Muscogee Nation, whose sophisticated law enforcement, health care, governance, and economic development arms already partner with non-tribal governments throughout its territory, exemplifies the benefits that strengthening tribal self-governance can provide.

The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians has been a part of Chicago since its founding. In very public expressions of indigeneity, they have refused to hide in plain sight or assimilate. Instead, throughout the city’s history, the Pokagon Potawatomi Indians have openly and aggressively expressed their refusal to be marginalized or forgotten—and in doing so, they have contributed to the fabric and history of the city.

Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago examines the ways some Pokagon Potawatomi tribal members have maintained a distinct Native identity, their rejection of assimilation into the mainstream, and their desire for inclusion in the larger contemporary society without forfeiting their “Indianness.” Mindful that contact is never a one-way street, Low also examines the ways in which experiences in Chicago have influenced the Pokagon Potawatomi. Imprints continues the recent scholarship on the urban Indian experience before as well as after World War II.

In the early 1850's, following the first outbreak of the Oregon Indian wars in Southern Oregon, the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation [G.R.I.R.] was set aside for the relocation and protection of Native Americans.  Townships  along the South Yamhill River in the Oregon Territory  were designated by the U.S. Congress as reservation lands, and the Oregon General Land Office (G.L.O.) contracted with a pioneer explorer named Ambrose N. Armstrong, to survey the new reservation boundaries...  Armstrong was something of an ethnographer, as it turns out, and in 1857 published a little-known book about his adventures in Oregon.  However, an investigation of archives at the Oregon Historical Society , disclose that Armstrong's editors omitted from final publication, an interesting passage in which Armstrong discussed the existence of the remains of a lost Stone Fortress of the Yamhill  Indians -- or "Che-am-ills"  tribe -- for whom this same Yamhill river is named. 

Did Armstrong and the Oregon G.L.O. also leave indications in Armstrong's official record of survey  -- including his survey contract and field notes  --  of the precise location of this lost stone citadel?  The author believes he has found evidence of such an archaeological site, on one of the high peaks of the range of the  Oregon Coast Mountains. Did the Indians of the Pacific Northwest once also have an advanced  culture that included constructing defensive fortifications in stone?  This seems to be strongly suggested...

Finally, some major figures of the American Civil War were also stationed at Fort Yamhill on the G.R.I.R. during the period of Armstrong's surveys: namely, Lt. Phil Sheridan, and Lt. William Babcock Hazen.  Sheridan is well-known,  Hazen went on to become the professional conscience of the U.S.Army, and "the best hated man I ever knew."  Lt. Hazen also created a curious map of the G.R.I.R., which, in its strange details,  hardly seems characteristic of a man of his professional dedication ...

"Finally, Wood had a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the institution he so desperately wanted to dominate. While the U.S. Army has evolved greatly over the last century and is more tolerant of unconventional opinions and personalities, it will always be based on discipline and self-subordination. In Wood’s time, at least, there was some truth in the observation of the reviewer of Hermann Hagedorn’s classic biography that “there is a place in the world for rebels and for men with strong convictions; but that place is not the Army.” Whether this is still true—and what it means if it is—remains a question worth pondering."

Sovereignty is classically defined as supreme legal authority. The concept was formulated by sixteenth century legal philosopher Jean Bodin and elaborated by many theorists since then. One basic controversy has been whether to trace supreme authority to the people or to a "divine right" of rulers. Another has been about the relation between legal authority and political-economic power which may influence or dominate law. The definition of sovereignty in federal Indian law partakes of both ancient controversies. An ambiguous concept from the start, surrounded by disagreement, sovereignty is perhaps most cryptic in federal Indian law.

"All the Real Indians Died Off," a new book by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker, takes aim at what the authors call "myths about Native Americans."  The Authors' Note makes clear they are using the word in its negative sense. They refer to "myths and stereotypes," saying the "narratives behind those myths" are "lies" and "misperceptions." On the other hand, the antidote they offer to the false narratives involves "reclaiming stolen pasts through scholarship, storytelling, relationship building, and acknowledging our ancestry."  "All the Real Indians Died Off" thus posits countering stories with other stories, with one set of stories said to be "a more accurate history." This leaves us with a second definitional question: What do we mean by "history"? "All the Real Indians Died Off" will hit the market in time for this year's debates about celebrating or mourning the arrival of Columbus and his boat people from their ocean-crossing journey to this continent.

Jeffrey Amherst's name became tarnished by stories of smallpox-infected blankets used as germ warfare against American Indians. These stories are reported, for example, in Carl Waldman's Atlas of the North American Indian [NY: Facts on File, 1985]. Waldman writes, in reference to a siege of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) by Chief Pontiac's forces during the summer of 1763:

... Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort -- an early example of biological warfare -- which started an epidemic among them. Amherst himself had encouraged this tactic in a letter to Ecuyer. [p. 108]

Some people have doubted these stories; other people, believing the stories, nevertheless assert that the infected blankets were not intentionally distributed to the Indians, or that Lord Jeff himself is not to blame for the germ warfare tactic.

The documents provided here are made available to set the record straight. These are images of microfilmed original letters written between General Amherst and his officers and others in his command during the summer of 1763, when the British were fighting what became known as Pontiac's Rebellion.

European travelers to America from 1800-1860 observed and commented on the conflicts between Native Americans and whites in the United States. Generally they wrote about the causes of these conflicts within the context of life in America. Some displayed sympathy for the Natives, others saw them as hopeless savages, and nearly all predicted their rapid disappearance.

Swamps have played an important role in the lives of American Indians in Robeson County, North Carolina, for centuries. The county's Lumbee and Tuscarora remember hunting, fishing, trapping, and logging in the swamps, to supplement farm families' limited cash incomes. The draining of the county's vast Back Swamp in the early 20th Century lifted farmers out of poverty even while it extinguished a source of livelihood , recreation, and contemplation. Using ethnographic interviews, published documents, and archival sources, I trace the effects of the drainage project on the lives of Indian farmers. Taking the project as part of a fervent nationwide drainage movement that at times adopted the language of a religious crusade, I analyze the project as a biopolitical intervention in Indian farmers' lives. The Back Swamp drainage project sought to regulate not only human populations but also nature itself. Ethnographic interviews, documents, and archival sources reveal that the project helped to transform water from a substance with the power to envelop and contain into a substance that must be kept in a constant state of flow.

Most California histories begin with the arrival of the Spanish missionaries in the late eighteenth century and conveniently skip to the Gold Rush of 1849. Noticeably absent from these stories are the perspectives and experiences of the people who lived on the land long before European settlers arrived. Historian William Bauer seeks to correct that oversight through an innovative approach that tells California history strictly through Native perspectives. Using oral histories of Concow, Pomo, and Paiute workers, taken as part of a New Deal federal works project, Bauer reveals how Native peoples have experienced and interpreted the history of the land we now call California. Combining these oral histories with creation myths and other oral traditions, he demonstrates the importance of sacred landscapes and animals and other nonhuman actors to the formation of place and identity. He also examines tribal stories of ancestors who prophesied the coming of white settlers and uses their recollections of the California Indian Wars to push back against popular narratives that seek to downplay Native resistance. The result both challenges the "California story" and enriches it with new voices and important points of view, serving as a model for understanding Native historical perspectives in other regions.

From the early decades of the 17th century until 1701, the Great Lakes region and its vicinity were riven by wars their peoples largely for control of trade with European powers but also, in the case of the Haudenosaunee (Five Nations Iroquois), for assimilation to rebuild their population.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) has accomplished an amazing feat in her forthcoming book, "As We Have Always Done." She confronts colonialism from the perspective of Indigenous nationhood, but goes beyond arguing for changes in politics, writing in a way that enacts changes in our thinking about politics. Simpson articulates Indigenous nationhood as "a radical and complete overturning of the nation-state's political formations." This reiterates what others have found when they dig to the roots ['radical' comes from Latin 'radix': root]: Indigenous reality in and of itself challenges Western modes of thinking and acting. Simpson deploys the content of this insight in the process of her writing. She writes—rather than writes about—Indigenous nationhood.