Born in Wisconsin, Philip Bergin Gordon—whose Ojibwe name Tibishkogijik is said to mean Looking into the Sky—became one of the first Native Americans to be ordained as a Catholic priest in the United States. Gordon's devotion to Catholicism was matched only by his dedication to the protection of his people. A notable Native rights activist, his bold efforts to expose poverty and corruption on reservations and his reputation for agitation earned him the nickname "Wisconsin's Fighting Priest." Drawing on previously unexplored materials, Tadeusz Lewandowski paints a portrait of a contentious life. Ojibwe, Activist, Priest examines Gordon's efforts to abolish the Bureau of Indian Affairs, his membership in the Society of American Indians, and his dismissal from his Ojibwe parish and exile to a tiny community where he'd be less likely to stir up controversy. Lewandowski illuminates a significant chapter in the struggle for Native American rights through the views and experiences of a key Native progressive.

Sherman Coolidge's (1860-1932) panoramic life as survivor of the Indian Wars, witness to the maladministration of the reservation system, mediator between Native and white worlds, and ultimate defender of Native rights and heritage made him the embodiment of his era in American Indian history. Born to a band of Northern Arapaho in present-day Wyoming, Des-che-wa-wah (Runs On Top) endured a series of harrowing tragedies against the brutal backdrop of the nineteenth-century Indian Wars. As a boy he experienced the merciless killings of his family in vicious raids and attacks, surviving only to be given up by his starving mother to U.S. officers stationed at a western military base. Des-che-wa-wah was eventually adopted by a sympathetic infantry lieutenant who changed his name and set his life on a radically different course. Over the next sixty years Coolidge inhabited western plains and eastern cities, rode in military campaigns against the Lakota, entered the Episcopal priesthood, labored as missionary to his tribe on the Wind River Reservation, fomented dangerous conspiracies, married a wealthy New York heiress, met with presidents and congressmen, and became one of the nation's most prominent Indigenous persons as leader of the Native-run reform group the Society of American Indians. Coolidge's fascinating biography is essential for understanding the myriad ways Native Americans faced modernity at the turn of the century.

Tadeusz Lewandowski presents the articles, stories, speeches, dispatches, letters, poems, and statements of Arapaho advocate Sherman Coolidge and his New York City society wife, Grace Wetherbee Coolidge.

Before there was an immigrant American Church, there was a Native American Church. The Native American Catholic Studies Reader offers an introduction to the story of how Native American Catholicism has developed over the centuries, beginning with the age of the missions and leading to inculturated, indigenous forms of religious expression. Though the Native-Christian relationship could be marked by tension, coercion, and even violence, the Christian faith took root among Native Americans and for those who accepted it and bequeathed it to future generations it became not an imposition, but a way of expressing Native identity. From the perspective of historians and theologians, the Native American Catholic Studies Reader offers a curated collection of essays divided into three sections: education and evangelization; tradition and transition; and Native American lives. Contributors include scholars currently working in the field: Mark Clatterbuck, Damian Costello, Conor J. Donnan, Ross Enochs, Allan Greer, Mark G. Thiel, and Christopher Vecsey, as well as selections from a past generation: Gerald McKevitt, SJ, and Carl F. Starkloff, SJ. These contributions explore the interaction of missionaries and tribal leaders, the relationship of traditional Native cosmology and religiosity to Christianity, and the role of geography and tribal consciousness in accepting and maintaining indigenous and religious identities. These readings highlight the state of the emergent field of Native-Catholic studies and suggest further avenues for research and publication. For scholars, teachers, and students, the Native American Catholic Studies Reader explores how the faith of the American Church’s eldest members became a means of expressing and celebrating language, family, and tribe.

Catholic Sisters, Narratives of Authority, and the Native American Boarding Schools, 1847-1918 brings to light a largely unknown of history of the Catholic Native American Boarding Schools run by Catholic Sisters. Elisabeth C. Davis examines four schools, the first one established by Catholic women in the United States in 1847 and the last ending in 1918. Using previously unexplored archival material, Davis examines how Catholic Sisters established authority over their students and the local indigenous communities. In doing so, Davis sheds new light on the role of women during the eras of American expansion, settler imperialism, and the boarding school era.

A celebration of achievement, accomplishments, and courage! Native American Medal of Honor recipients, Heisman Trophy recipients, U.S. Olympians, a U.S. vice president, Congressional representatives, NASA astronauts, Pulitzer Prize recipients, U.S. poet laureates, Oscar winners, and more. The first Native magician, all-Native comedy show, architects, attorneys, bloggers, chefs, cartoonists, psychologists, religious leaders, filmmakers, educators, physicians, code talkers, and inventors. Luminaries like Jim Thorpe, King Kamehameha, Debra Haaland, and Will Rogers, along with less familiar notables such as Native Hawaiian language professor and radio host Larry Lindsey Kimura and Cree/Mohawk forensic pathologist Dr. Kona Williams. Their stories plus the stories of 2000 people, events and places are presented in Indigenous Firsts: A History of Native American Achievements and Events, including … Suzanne Van Cooten, Ph.D., Chickasaw Nation, the first Native female meteorologist in the country Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, Wampanoag from Martha’s Vineyard, graduate of Harvard College in 1665 Debra Haaland, the Pueblo of Laguna, U.S. Congresswoman and Secretary of the Interior Sam Campos, the Native Hawaiian who developed the Hawaiian superhero Pineapple Man Thomas L. Sloan, Omaha, was the first Native American to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court William R. Pogue, Choctaw, astronaut Johnston Murray, Chickasaw, the first person of Native American descent to be elected governor in the United States, holding the office in Oklahoma from 1951 to 1955 The Cherokee Phoenix published its first edition February 21, 1828, making it the first tribal newspaper in North America and the first to be published in an Indigenous language The National Native American Honor Society was founded by acclaimed geneticist Dr. Frank C. Dukepoo , the first Hopi to earn a Ph.D. Louis Sockalexis, Penobscot, became the first Native American in the National Baseball League in 1897 as an outfielder with the Cleveland Spiders Jock Soto, Navajo/Puerto Rican, the youngest-ever man to be the principal dancer with the New York City Ballet The Seminole Tribe of Florida was the first Nation to own and operate an airplane manufacturing company Warrior's Circle of Honor, the National Native American Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, on the grounds of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian The Iolani Palace, constructed 1879–1882, the home of the Hawaiian royal family in Honolulu Loriene Roy, Anishinaabe, White Earth Nation, professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information, former president of the American Library Association Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Northern Cheyenne, U.S. representative and U.S. senator from Colorado Hanay Geiogamah, Kiowa /Delaware, founded the American Indian Theatre Ensemble Gerald Vizenor, White Earth Nation, writer, literary critic, and journalist for the Minneapolis Tribune Ely S. Parker (Hasanoanda, later Donehogawa), Tonawanda Seneca, lieutenant colonel in the Union Army, serving as General Ulysses S. Grant’s military secretary Fritz Scholder, Luiseno, painter inducted into the California Hall of Fame The Native American Women Warriors, the first all Native American female color guard Lori Arviso Alvord, the first Navajo woman to become a board-certified surgeon Kay “Kaibah” C. Bennett, Navajo, teacher, author, and the first woman to run for the presidency of the Navajo Nation Sandra Sunrising Osawa, Makah Indian Nation, the first Native American to have a series on commercial television The Choctaw people’s 1847 donation to aid the Irish people suffering from the great famine Otakuye Conroy-Ben, Oglala Lakota, first to earn an environmental engineering Ph.D. at the University of Arizona Diane J. Willis, Kiowa, former President of the Society of Pediatric Psychology and founding editor of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology Shelly Niro, Mohawk, winner of Canada’s top photography prize, the Scotiabank Photography Award Loren Leman, Alutiiq/Russian-Polish, was the first Alaska Native elected lieutenant governor Kim TallBear, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, the first recipient of the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Environment Carissa Moore, Native Hawaiian, won the Gold Medal in Surfing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Will Rogers, Cherokee, actor, performer, humorist was named the first honorary mayor of Beverly Hills Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations by Lois Ellen Frank, Kiowa, was the first Native American cookbook to win the James Beard Award Diane Humetewa, Hopi, nominated by President Barack Obama, became the first Native American woman to serve as a federal judge Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail, Crow, the first Native American nurse to be inducted into the American Nursing Association Hall of Fame Indigenous Firsts honors the ongoing and rich history of personal victories and triumphs, and with more than 200 photos and illustrations, this information-rich book also includes a helpful bibliography and an extensive index, adding to its usefulness. This vital collection will appeal to anyone interested in America’s amazing history and its resilient and skilled Indigenous people.

This volume foregrounds racial difference as a key to an alternative history of the Central and Eastern European region, which revolves around the role of whiteness as the unacknowledged foundation of semi-peripheral nation-states and national identities, and of the region’s current status as a global stronghold of unapologetic white, Christian nationalisms. Contributions address the pivotal role of whiteness in international diplomacy, geographical exploration, media cultures, music, intellectual discourses, academic theories, everyday language and banal nationalism’s many avenues of expressions. The book offers new paradigms for understanding the relationships among racial capitalism, populism, economic peripherality and race.

In the early nineteenth century, Protestant missionaries promoted the translation of evangelical hymns into the Ojibwe language, regarding this music not only as a shared form of worship but also as a tool for rooting out native cultural identity. But for many Minnesota Ojibwe today, the hymns emerged from this history of material and cultural dispossession to become emblematic of their identity as a distinct native people. Author Michael McNally uses hymn singing as a lens to view culture in motion--to consider the broader cultural processes through which Native American peoples have creatively drawn on the resources of ritual to make room for survival, integrity, and a cultural identity within the confines of colonialism.

Using archival and ethnographic research, Michael D. McNally follows the making of Ojibwe eldership, showing that deference to older women and men is part of a fuller moral, aesthetic, and cosmological vision connected to the ongoing circle of life and tradition of authority that has been crucial to surviving colonization.