UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
10 results
Search Results
Item "These Songs will Save our Language": Reclaiming Kiowa Language and Music through Kiowa Sound Resurgence(2023) Yamane, Maxwell Hiroshi; Rios, Fernando; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the intersection of Indigenous language reclamation and music, primarily among the Kiowa Tribe. Through multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, music/language analysis, and participatory action research, I show how music plays a key role in the resurgence of Kiowa language and identity. I begin in Washington, D.C. by revealing how Kiowas (and other Indigenous Peoples) strategically use their own modes of storytelling and music making to resist the imposition of settler colonial narratives. Indigenous performers reclaim stories about their language initiatives and challenge problematic congressional language planning and policy. The dissertation then moves towards Oklahoma and examines the language efforts of a community-based institution: the Kiowa Language and Culture Revitalization Program (KLCRP). I show how KLCRP used Kiowa Christian hymns—which are performed in the Kiowa language and musical style— as a pedagogical approach to revive and strengthen forms of Kiowa sound and audibility, including speech, music making, storytelling, and listening. I frame the recovery of these practices as Kiowa sound resurgence. I explore the multiple ways in which Kiowas engaged in Kiowa sound resurgence through traditional and non-traditional pedagogies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This dissertation contributes to interdisciplinary dialogues in ethnomusicology, Native American and Indigenous studies, and linguistic anthropology on Indigenous language reclamation and music scholarship. The case study of Kiowa sound resurgence illuminates how Kiowas creatively reclaim, revive, and resurge sound through Kiowa ways of knowing, doing, and being. The findings of this dissertation have relevance to both academia and Indigenous communities who are actively engaging in efforts of cultural reclamation and resurgence.Item Acknowledging Survival: Political Recognition and Indigenous Climate Adaptation in the United States(2021) Cottrell, Clifton; Bierbaum, Rosina; Sprinkle, Robert; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Indigenous peoples in the United States are already disproportionately experiencing the impacts of climate change. Closely related to tribal efforts to manage climate effects are historical endeavors to assert indigenous sovereignty and govern tribal lands, but deficiencies in the process used by the U.S. government to acknowledge tribal sovereignty have left hundreds of indigenous communities unrecognized and especially vulnerable to climate harm. My dissertation aims to determine whether a tribe’s recognition status affects its capacity for climate adaptation. To make this determination, I utilize a case study methodology wherein I analyze the circumstances of one non-federally recognized tribe, the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, in three critical areas related to adaptation and tribal recognition — access to key species and cultural resources, utilization of federal funding opportunities, and participation in climate decision-making. Tribal access to resources is often predicated by historical treaty rights, so I applied a theme identification technique to extrapolate important strategies on easing barriers to resource access and regulatory authority. I then used the themes to compare the likelihood of the Burt Lake Band and nearby federally recognized tribes to maintain connections to key species in the future. I next employed a comparative statutory analysis methodology to differentiate eligibility for non-federally recognized tribes accessing federal funding. I also assessed tribal climate adaptation plans and interviewed tribal climate plan managers on the barriers to successful implementation of adaptation actions. Finally, I developed criteria from a review of global literature on the inclusion of indigenous peoples in adaptation projects to assess participatory opportunities for the Burt Lake Band in state and regional climate governance. My findings show that the Band’s lack of federal recognition inhibits its adaptive capacity to access key cultural resources, federal funding, and climate governance opportunities. However, I also conclude that state and local perceptions of tribal identity could have a greater influence on the adaptation of non-federally recognized tribes, so I recommend that a more inclusive federal recognition system be implemented to avoid the unequal development of indigenous adaptive capacity based on disparate approaches to indigenous affairs by state and local jurisdictions.Item Revisiting the Reservation: The Lumbee Community of East Baltimore(2020) Minner, Ashley Colleen; Williams Forson, Psyche; Pearson, Barry L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Revisiting the Reservation” is an analysis of the relationship between Baltimore’s Lumbee Indian community and the neighborhood where the community settled following the second World War. It is an inquiry into the roles of memory and place in the formation of identity. Vestiges of the Lumbee tribal homeland in North Carolina have become part of the built environment in East Baltimore as a result of the presence of Lumbee people. Tangible aspects of East Baltimore now also exist in the Lumbee tribal homeland. Lumbee people of East Baltimore are the living embodiment of both places. Over time, the community’s connection to the neighborhood has changed due to a complex set of factors ranging from Urban Renewal to upward mobility. This dissertation asks how the community’s identity has been affected. American Indian identity, constructed through a colonial lens, necessarily diminishes over time due to changing connections. The Baltimore Lumbee community illustrates that identity is actually an additive, adaptive process; heritage is living and culture continually evolves. This dissertation utilizes an interdisciplinary framework synthesized from the fields of American Indian Studies and Public Folklore to consider questions of heritage using a decolonial lens. The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina is introduced via the tribal homeland and the social and economic conditions that prompted a mass migration to East Baltimore. East Baltimore is introduced via an abbreviated chronicle of the presence of American Indian people and other racial and ethnic groups leading up to the presence of Lumbee. Drawing primarily on oral history interviews and archival research, experiences of Lumbee arriving to Baltimore in the postwar years are highlighted, as are the safe havens they adopted, established and stewarded to exist freely and in community with one another away from “home.” The research process to map Baltimore’s former “reservation” and develop a walking tour to commemorate its sites is detailed as a project of reclamation of history, space, and belonging. An analysis of the expressive culture of subsequent generations of Baltimore Lumbee, including fashion, material possessions, food, and speech, reveals that memory and place play significant roles in the formation of identity. As connection to place changes over time, memory of place within identity prevails. Communities must share memory to understand how to engage in a future.Item “Intimate Entanglement: The Gendered Politics of Race and Family in the Gulf South"(2019) Bearden, Joshua L; Lyons, Clare; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Intimate Entanglement: The Gendered Politics of Race and Family in the Gulf South,” uses manuscript court records, newspapers, records of colonial administrators, and accounts of merchants and travelers to investigate the ways in which cross-cultural peoples practiced an adaptive gender culture in the Gulf South in the era between 1740-1840. “Intimate Entanglement” argues that a protean understanding of the gendered dynamics within the family allowed Anglo-Native peoples to eschew the racial categorization imposed upon them by Anglo-Americans while also self-fashioning identities that allowed for maximum autonomy and for the protection of their wealth and status within Native communities. Familiar with both the matrilineal/matrifocal familial arrangements of the Five Tribes of the Gulf South as well as the gendered norms associated with the Anglo-American patriarchal family, cross-cultural peoples decided which identities they presented for public consumption depending upon the needs of a particular situation. This practice became prevalent during the colonial era, when increased contact between Anglo and Native peoples created unstable gendered and racial identities. By the early nineteenth century, Anglo-Americans had embraced a rigid definition of white patriarchal identity that centered Anglo men’s ability to control subordinates, own slaves, and exploit property, enslaved persons, and other forms of wealth. At the same time, Anglo-Americans embraced a new racial hierarchy which sought to consign people of Native and African ancestry to the same inferior position. Cross-cultural people fought this new racialization by continuing to practice the flexible understandings of gender that had its roots in the colonial past.Item Vanishing Images?: Mediations of Native Americans in the Tradition of the Western(2019) Soeder, Janna; Maddux, Kristy; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the legacy of the Western, one of the most prolific genres in American popular culture. With its focus on the central conflict between Native Americans and white settlers, the Western has shaped Indian stereotypes that continue to influence how Americans look at Native Americans today. This dissertation interrogates how Western visual and narrative conventions continue to influence Indian images in current US public discourse, and how these conventions are renegotiated or replaced in contemporary texts. It concludes that, in both texts that seek to dismantle stereotypes and in texts that could be considered self-representation, dominant frameworks, such as the visual conventions of the National Geographic, media frames concerning Indianness, and national museums, nonetheless recirculate (revisionist) Western conventions. Therefore, visual tropes, such as the Noble and Ignoble Indian as well as the Indian Warrior, and narrative tropes, such as the Cowboy/Indian dichotomy, exist in non-Western popular texts in updated forms, as three case studies demonstrate. First, Aaron Huey’s National Geographic photos reflect Western conventions by depicting Native Americans in the duality of the traditional and spiritually-minded Noble Indian on the one hand, and the modern, poor, and decrepit Ignoble Indian on the other. Second, the press coverage of the Cowboy and Indian Alliance insisted on the narrative of the “unlikely alliance” between Native and non-Native activists. Third, the National Museum of the American Indian exhibit, Americans, reaffirms the visual of the Indian Warrior over other iterations. Two dynamics seem to effectively challenge Western conventions, as demonstrated in the Native criticism of Huey’s project, the Native self-representation in the CIA protest, and the NMAI. First, articulating modern Native American identities negates the Western’s generic Indianness and rejects a cultural conceptualization of Indianness. Emphasizing Native American sovereignty affirms Native political agency and rejects stereotypes such as the Ecological/Spiritual Indian. Second, embedding public constructions of Indianness in historical and social context challenges American master narratives of benign expansion.Item "Songs to Soothe a Mother": Intertextuality and Intertribalism in Kiowa War Mother Songs(2018) Yamane, Maxwell Hiroshi; Rios, Fernando; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)War Mother songs were first composed for the women of the Kiowa War Mothers Chapter 18 organization during World War II by two main composers, Lewis Toyebo and James “Jimmy A” Anquoe. These songs initially functioned to provide encouragement for both the servicemen deploying overseas and their mothers, and later were performed to honor returning veterans. Through musical and linguistic elements, War Mother songs serve as an intertext of multiple pre-reservation songs and dances (War Journey, Scalp, and Victory), but also reflect changes in warfare and post-reservation lifestyle in the twentieth-century. After World War II into the Korean and Vietnam Wars, War Mother song performances continued to honor veterans, both returning and fallen in battle, in a mix of Kiowa contexts and intertribal spaces.Item TOWARDS A TRANSANDEAN MAPUCHE POLITICS: RITUAL AND POWER IN CHILE AND ARGENTINA, 1792-1834(2017) Zarley, Jesse; Rosemblatt, Karin A; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Towards a Transandean Mapuche Politics examines how unconquered indigenous groups in the Southern Cone of South America impacted the transition from colony to nation (1792-1834), a moment when European and indigenous sovereignties were thrown in to question. It focuses on the intersection of indigenous politics and Latin America’s Age of Revolution. This project intervenes in the growing debates over transnational history and borderlands studies to demonstrate how the transandean Mapuche-Spanish frontier was both a political and an epistemological space. Mapuche sovereignty resisted categorizations by empires and nations, impeded the political and economic projects articulated by Europeans and creoles, and compelled foreign actors to participate in Mapuche diplomatic rituals much longer than previously thought. It begins by looking at a late colonial treaty negotiation in 1793 to reconstruct diplomatic rituals developed by Mapuche leaders to defend their sovereignty. This project then extends these insights on both sides of the Andes mountain range until a military campaign led by Argentine President Juan Manuel de Rosas against Mapuche and other indigenous groups inhabiting the Pampas in 1833-1834. By looking at military, ecclesiastical, and Mapuche correspondence from Chile, Argentina, and Spain, it demonstrates that groups like the Mapuche, who inhabited the seemingly marginal frontiers of Spain’s American empire, were in fact central actors in its transformation. Analyzing Mapuche diplomacy in southern Chile and western Argentina from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century demonstrates how indigenous relations in a border region provide different genealogies for our understanding of sovereignty in the Age of Revolution. Mapuche sovereignty ran parallel too, but intersected with the fraught end of empire and formation of nation states. These interactions along the old Spanish/Mapuche frontier, which stretched across the continent from the Pacific Coast of Chile to the mouth of the River Plate, were but the tip of the iceberg in the broader, transandean Mapuche political world that confounded the spatial imaginaries of empires and nations.Item The origin and meaning of the Indian place-names of Maryland(1950) Kenny, Hamill; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Item "The other side of the picture": Social History, Popular Culture, and the Idea of the Sand Creek Massacre(2015) Tanner, Kerry; Bell, Richard; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Competing schools of thought regarding American imperialism, American constructions of race, Native American experiences, and white settlers’ place within the American West can be seen in non-fiction and fictional accounts of the 1864 Sand Creek massacre in what is now eastern Colorado. Due to a range of factors including the emergence of social history methodology and Cold War politics, a shift in both American historiography and fictional representations of Native Americans and the West can be observed in certain scholarly works and Western films and novels during the period 1945-1970. Debates over the meaning of Sand Creek, often inspired by film representations, also reveal Coloradans’ and Americans’ attempts to reckon with shameful and embarrassing events of the past by contesting notions of race and imperialism presented by Western fiction.Item NATIVE CLASSICAL: MUSICAL MODERNITIES, INDIGENOUS RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES, AND A KANIENKÉHA (MOHAWK) CONCEPT OF NON:WA (NOW)(2014) Avery, Dawn; Witzleben, John Lawrence; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation I explore how Indigenous methodologies that foreground cultural advocacy, revitalization, and education can be articulated using Indigenous language and cultural metaphor in research on North American Indian composers. Toward this end, I apply the Kanienkéha (Mohawk) concept of "non:wa" or "now" that also refers to three modes of perception--the now of the past, the present, and the future--toward understanding the intersection of innovation and tradition in classical Native music. This research joins the existing discourse that critiques binary oppositions separating Indigenous tradition (as past) and innovation (as present and future). Through interviews, fieldwork, and musical analysis, I illustrate Native values of interconnectedness, relationality, continuity, politics, and soundscapes in the processes of Native composition as well as the resultant works, I explore how these, in turn, may be understood through the application of Indigenous research techniques. In collaboration with a cohort of contemporary musicians, I look primarily at two Navajo composers--Raven Chacon and Juantio Becenti--and examine my own work as a composer, performer, and ethnomusicologist of Kanienkéha descent to explore the following questions: How can the topic of classical Native music best be served by using Indigenous methodologies in fieldwork, research, and representation and What is classical Native Music and is it different from other contemporary classical music styles? Drawing on the teachings of Indigenous dotahs (elders/teachers), the scholarship of ethnomusicologists, and examining oral and written tradition while using language and cosmology as cultural metaphors, I present a variety of possibilities for looking at Indigenous music through Indigenous eyes. Rather than offering a set of conclusions, I offer a set of tools for discussion and reflection: 1) how we might understand a definition of classical Native music; 2) how we are part of a modern movement of artistry; 3) how our creative processes reflect Indigenous sensibilities; 4) how specific composers are contributing to that movement; and 5) how Indigenous language, metaphor and worldview are a powerful and applicable epistemology for research.