India has witnessed a sea change in its social structure and political culture since Independence. Despite the developmental model that the country opted for, the hangover of the Raj continued to encourage fissiparous tendencies dividing the Indian populace on the basis of religion, ethnicity and caste hierarchy. This book argues for the need to develop a fresh approach to dismantling the stereotypes that have boxed the study of India’s tribal communities. It underlines the significance of region-specific strategies in place of an overarching umbrella scheme for all Indian tribes. The author studies tribes in the context of changing political and social identity, gender, extremism, caste dimensions, development issues, and offers a new perspective on tribes to accommodate the diversity and transformations within culture over time and through globalization. Lucid, accessible and rooted in contemporary realities, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of sociology and social anthropology, tribal studies, subaltern and third world studies, and politics.

Shadow Tribe offers the first in-depth history of the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River Indians -- the defiant River People whose ancestors refused to settle on the reservations established for them in central Oregon and Washington. Largely overlooked in traditional accounts of tribal dispossession and confinement, their story illuminates the persistence of off-reservation Native communities and the fluidity of their identities over time. Cast in the imperfect light of federal policy and dimly perceived by non-Indian eyes, the flickering presence of the Columbia River Indians has followed the treaty tribes down the difficult path marked out by the forces of American colonization. Based on more than a decade of archival research and conversations with Native people, Andrew Fisher’s groundbreaking book traces the waxing and waning of Columbia River Indian identity from the mid-nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries. Fisher explains how, despite policies designed to destroy them, the shared experience of being off the reservation and at odds with recognized tribes forged far-flung river communities into a loose confederation called the Columbia River Tribe. Environmental changes and political pressures eroded their autonomy during the second half of the twentieth century, yet many River People continued to honor a common heritage of ancestral connection to the Columbia, resistance to the reservation system, devotion to cultural traditions, and detachment from the institutions of federal control and tribal governance. At times, their independent and uncompromising attitude has challenged the sovereignty of the recognized tribes, earning Columbia River Indians a reputation as radicals and troublemakers even among their own people. Shadow Tribe is part of a new wave of historical scholarship that shows Native American identities to be socially constructed, layered, and contested rather than fixed, singular, and unchanging. From his vantage point on the Columbia, Fisher has written a pioneering study that uses regional history to broaden our understanding of how Indians thwarted efforts to confine and define their existence within narrow reservation boundaries.

An overview of Iowa's Native American tribes that discusses their history, culture, language, and traditions, and includes illustrations.

Winner of the 2021 Bancroft Prize and the 2021 Ridenhour Book Prize Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction Named a Top Ten Best Book of 2020 by the Washington Post and Publishers Weekly and a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2020 A masterful and unsettling history of “Indian Removal,” the forced migration of Native Americans across the Mississippi River in the 1830s and the state-sponsored theft of their lands. In May 1830, the United States launched an unprecedented campaign to expel 80,000 Native Americans from their eastern homelands to territories west of the Mississippi River. In a firestorm of fraud and violence, thousands of Native Americans lost their lives, and thousands more lost their farms and possessions. The operation soon devolved into an unofficial policy of extermination, enabled by US officials, southern planters, and northern speculators. Hailed for its searing insight, Unworthy Republic transforms our understanding of this pivotal period in American history.

First published in 1956, this book traces the progress of the Cherokee people, beginning with their native social and political establishments, and gradually unfurling to include their assimilation into “white civilization.” Henry Thompson Malone deals mainly with the social developments of the Cherokees, analyzing the processes by which they became one of the most civilized Native American tribes. He discusses the work of missionaries, changes in social customs, government, education, language, and the bilingual newspaper The Cherokee Phoenix. The book explains how the Cherokees developed their own hybrid culture in the mountainous areas of the South by inevitably following in the white man's footsteps while simultaneously holding onto the influences of their ancestors.

The reported population of American Indians and Alaska Natives has grown rapidly over the past 20 years. These changes raise questions for the Indian Health Service and other agencies responsible for serving the American Indian population. How big is the population? What are its health care and insurance needs? This volume presents an up-to-date summary of what is known about the demography of American Indian and Alaska Native populationâ€"their age and geographic distributions, household structure, employment, and disability and disease patterns. This information is critical for health care planners who must determine the eligible population for Indian health services and the costs of providing them. The volume will also be of interest to researchers and policymakers concerned about the future characteristics and needs of the American Indian population.

With a long history and deep connection to the Earth’s resources, indigenous peoples have an intimate understanding and ability to observe the impacts linked to climate change. Traditional ecological knowledge and tribal experience play a key role in developing future scientific solutions for adaptation to the impacts. The book explores climate-related issues for indigenous communities in the United States, including loss of traditional knowledge, forests and ecosystems, food security and traditional foods, as well as water, Arctic sea ice loss, permafrost thaw and relocation. The book also highlights how tribal communities and programs are responding to the changing environments. Fifty authors from tribal communities, academia, government agencies and NGOs contributed to the book. Previously published in Climatic Change, Volume 120, Issue 3, 2013.

Social stigmatization is a virtual curse imposed on certain Indian social sections by the colonial government as part of their contextual political strategies by late nineteenth century. The so-called denotified tribes (formerly known as ex-criminal tribes) in Indian society occupy this state-made category. According to the latest survey reports, India has 198 groups belonging to nomadic and denotified tribes: unorganized, scattered and utter nobodies. Social justice is alien to them and economic disempowerment eventually resulted in slavery, bonded labour and poverty. Public welfare measures pay scant attention to the issue of reform and rehabilitation of these sections and, they are made to suffer from an identity crisis today. Most of these communities are split under reserved categories: Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes. The work tries to present a narrative detailing the conditions of denotified tribes during colonial and post-colonial India. And the undeclared wish in doing so is to seek the attention of those in policy-making and decision-making bodies under the Indian government. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka