SAGE Journal Articles
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Abstract: This article explores the controversy that started in 2005 when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) announced that it would no longer allow schools with Native American mascots to display those images during NCAA events, and those schools would also be barred from hosting NCAA championships.
Abstract: This study looks at the differences between American Indian and Western styles of leadership, and doesn't see one as being "better" than the other, but simply "different."
Journal Article 3: D’Arcus, B. (2010). The urban geography of red power: The American Indian movement in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, 1968-70. Urban Studies, 47, 1241–1255.
Abstract: This article examines the role of urbanism and city life as a center of socio-political activism. Using as example the ‘Red Power’ movement, a significant period of indigenous rights activism between 1964 and 1973 in the United States, the author argues that while most scholars have focused on the rural aspects of this movement, it is the city that is “a crucial site in geographies of resistance” (1243), providing the critical factors and spaces necessary for mobilization, recruitment and sustainment of a social movement.
Journal Article 4: Gilley, B. (2010). Native sexual inequalities: American Indian cultural conservative homophobia and the problem of tradition. Sexualities, 13, 47–68.
Abstract: This article discusses the struggle for social acceptance and the restoration of a place of honor within the community by gay – Two-Spirited – American Indian men. The central strategy in this struggle has been the role of ceremonial and social practice, with the goal of proving themselves as culturally competent contributors. The alienation for these men, produced by a homophobia that was not a part of the American Indian cultural milieu, has pushed many into an activist stance focused on publicly questioning mainstream contemporary Native attitudes about gender and sexuality.
Journal Article 5: French, L. (2003). Wounded knee II and the Indian prison reform movement. The Prison Journal, 83, 26–37.
Abstract: This article maps out some of the most significant American Indian responses to judicial abuse and punishment perpetrated by the United States government, beginning with the occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969, moving through the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington in 1972, the taking of Wounded Knee in 1973, and culminating in some of the contemporary legal battles conducted by the Native American Rights Fund ant other reform efforts. One of the central issues that American Indian activism has focused on has been prison reform, particularly reform coupled with treatment for alcohol and substance abuse.
Abstract: This article discusses the role of standardization in American Indian education, with an eye towards postulating a more equitable educational system, not only for Indian students, but for all students. The authors present the history and “lessons” of American Indian education as “a grand experiment in standardization ,” making the argument that a system that makes diversity its central tenet creates a “just multicultural democracy” (279).
Journal Article 7: Hormel, L., & Norgaard, K. (2009). Bring the salmon home! Karuk challenges to capitalist incorporation. Critical Sociology, 35, 343–366.
Abstract: In this article the authors ask questions about “about the long term ecological sustainability of capitalism, and its relationship to culture, values, political participation and human well-being” (344). Using Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems theory, they argue that “Despite the impacts of 150 years of direct genocide, Karuk people continue to survive and are revitalizing culture and community, which supports the idea that capitalist incorporation is not fully complete but partial. Karuk resistance and revitalization is epitomized in the campaign to remove four dams on the Klamath River and thereby ‘Bring the Salmon Home’ to the upper basin” (352).
Journal Article 8: Matamonasa-Bennett, A. (2014). “A disease of the outside people”: Native American men's perceptions of intimate partner violence. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1–17.
Abstract: This article investigates “one of the most serious issues facing Native American women” – that of intimate partner violence. The author used qualitative and ethnographic methods to examine the beliefs of Native American men who had experience with intimate partner violence. Highlighting the participatory nature of ethnographic work, the author works to come to a consensus with her study participants about not only the root causes of this violence, but also culturally sensitive ways to approach both treatment and prevention.
Journal Article 9: Merskin, D. (2014). How many more Indians? An argument for a representational ethics of Native Americans. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 38, 184–203.
Abstract: This article explores the persistence of stereotypical representations of Native Americans as brand images and situates a call for change within an ethics of representation. American Spirit Cigarettes are used as an illustrative case study to demonstrate that these representations cannot be relegated to less enlightened times, rather endure because naturalization is part of commodified racism. The present essay argues for engagement in representational ethics on the part of communicators to interrupt the contribution of stereotypes to the maintenance of colonial ideologies.
This article discusses the persistence of stereotypical representations of Native Americans in advertising and branding of products. The author joins the increasingly loud calls for a reorientation in the ethics that govern the creation and use of such representations. Arguing that such branding is in fact commodified racism, the author argues for an ethical awareness intended to interruption and dissolution of these stereotypes.