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Showing posts with label Native Americans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Native Americans. Show all posts

Thursday, July 11, 2019

Teaching the Important, Honest, and Troubling History of Native California

This blog is reposted from the California History-Social Scient Project's blog. The original post can be found here. 

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Editor's Note: As we travel around California, one of the most frequent concerns we hear from teachers is that they don’t feel prepared to teach students about the history of California Indians. Elementary teachers have explained that they don’t know enough about pre-contact California, especially the history of indigenous people in their local area. Eighth-grade teachers reflect that their current resources are incomplete and don’t fully document the perspective of native peoples during the 19th Century. And high school teachers often remark they don’t have anything on native history after 1900. We’ve heard these concerns and in response, we’ve brought together a new team of scholars and members of native communities to design a workshop specifically focused on teaching the history of California Indians. Historians Shelley Brooks and Michelle Lorimer will lead the workshop, aided by the important scholarly contributions of Benjamin Madley, Steven Hackel, Clifford Trafzer, Khal Schneider, and Gregg Castro. This workshop will debut at our new Framework Conference series, which starts on September 10 at UC Irvine. Read below for a special blog post about the workshop, and learn more about the Framework Conference series here.

Native Americans on Alcatraz Island during the 1969-1971 occupation to reclaim native land. 
In West Sacramento last month, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to apologize for California’s treatment of its Native population. As the governor explained, “That’s what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books.” In our new workshop, “Highlighting Native Californian History through the Framework,” we hope to guide teachers through this important, honest, and troubling investigation of California’s history.

California’s History-Social Science Framework calls for more complex examinations of California Indian history across grade levels and time periods. Our workshop will focus on ways to incorporate the history and culture of Native Californian peoples into lessons at both primary and secondary levels. Lessons that explore California Indian history provide teachers with unique opportunities to connect students with local history and contemporary Native communities that, historically, have been frequently misrepresented and not consulted in public representations of their groups.

Teaching about the history of California Indians also allows students to explore interdisciplinary themes that span the various fields of social and behavioral sciences, including history, geography, economics, civics (political science), anthropology, religious studies, and psychology. Investigations that focus on the lives of Native Californians both before and after foreign contact highlight important historical thinking strategies. Students learn to understand diverse perspectives, evaluate historical evidence, recognize continuity and change, assess cause and consequence, and unpack ethical considerations of the past.

We will investigate the experiences of Native peoples during transitional times in California’s history—guided by the major instructional shifts in the Framework. We will use inquiry to investigate primary source content from pre-contact, the California mission era, the Gold Rush, and the modern civil rights era. Teachers will receive classroom-ready materials for grades 3 (local history), 4 (California history), 8 (19th-century U.S. history), 10 (modern world history), 11 (modern U.S. history), and 12 (government). Many of these resources will come from our partnership with the California Historical Society and our shared Teaching California project, which will debut later this year.

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Written by Michelle Lorimer, Ph.D., an historian and lecturer at California State University, San Bernardino, Shelley Brooks, Ph.D., and Beth Slutsky, Ph.D., who are both  Program Coordinators at the California History-Social Science Project.

Monday, April 1, 2019

Railroads Public Programs Preview: 5 Not-to-Miss Exhibition Related Events at CHS


With each new exhibition comes a flurry of public programs designed to help guests dive deeply into the core concepts within them.  Each exhibition provides new opportunities for conversation and interaction between our audiences and our organization, the exhibitions, and each other.  In order to better understand the final programmatic product let’s go back a bit and share how we design our exhibition-related public programs.

Around six to eight months before an exhibition opens, departments from across CHS sit down and discuss the exhibition and its core concepts. The curator(s) will present on the conceptual framework, key themes, and topics. Staff have the opportunity to pose questions as well as provide suggestions and insights. The Public Program Manager (me) then begins drafting program ideas to present to curators in a follow-up meeting. During that follow-up meeting, drafted ideas begin to harden and afterward I am able to begin reaching out to speakers and partners, further developing those ideas based on what the speakers’ expertise is and how they envision their place within the event. The collaborations between partners, speakers, and CHS staff are integral to the vibrant final product.

On March 21st, we opened two complimentary exhibitions, Mark Ruwedel: Westward the Course of Empire and Overland to California: Commemorating the Transcontinental Railroad. Below is a brief rundown of some of our upcoming exhibition-related programs. We hope that you mark them on your calendar, as they are not to be missed!

Thursday, April 4th, 6:00PM
Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the California Railroad

Professor of American Studies at Barnard University, Manu Karuka, will present on his new book Empire’s Tracks while focusing on indigenous experiences in relation to the transcontinental railroad. He and Professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, Joanne Barker (Lenape), will be in conversation about indigenous history and counter sovereignty. A book signing will close the event. Learn more.



Thursday, April 18, 6:00PM
Chinese and Chinese American Genealogies and the California Railroads
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Wednesday, July 24, 6:00PM
Labor Strikes and Fights and the Transcontinental Railroad

In 1969, during the 100th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad, Chinese American communities and descendants of railroad workers felt a disconnect and articulated that there was a lack of focus on their ancestors’ history and contributions. This year, during the railroad’s 150th anniversary, organizations and individuals from across California will be highlighting the important contributions of Chinese and Chinese Americans to the building and maintenance of the railroads.

CHS will be hosting several events to honor this important history, the first being on April 18th with presentations by Al Cheng, Grant Din, Sue Lee, and Paulette Liang. They will focus on how and why Chinese and Chinese Americans are seeking to find their connection to this work, examples of individuals who have found genealogical connections, as well as those who have sought out but did not find a connection. Learn more.


The second event will be held July 24th and focuses on key labor battles which involved Chinese railroad workers, including the historic eight-day strike in 1867. Gordon Chang and Lawrence Shoup will present on this event and other important labor battles in celebration of Laborfest, which occurs each July.

Wednesday, May 15th, 6:00PM
Exploring the Gilded Age in California and its Reverberations Today

On May 15th we will explore the Gilded Age in California and its relationship to the Big Four, labor, and the railroads. How has the Gilded Age influenced what California is today? Learn more with moderator, William Frances Deverell (USC), panelists Richard White (Stanford), Margarite Shaffer (Miami University), Barbara Berglund Sokolov (Presidio Historian), and Jack Kelly (historian and author of Edge of Anarchy). Learn more. 



Thursday, June 27th, 6:00PM
Women and Their Role on the Rails

On June 27th, we explore the role women played (or did not play) in the railroads. How did imagery of wealthy white women tell a particular story about the railroad? How were women of color and people of color generally excluded from the transportation system? Professor Amy Richter of Clark University and Julia H. Lee of U.C. Irvine will present on these questions and be available to discuss other related topics after their presentations. Learn more.



As we move deeper into the summer we will add additional programs, so continue to follow our Society Happenings e-newsletter and check out our online calendar at my.californiahistoricalsociety.org for more information.

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Written by Patty Pforte, Programs & Visitor Experience Manager at CHS. 

Friday, November 25, 2016

Modoc Chief Kintpuash (Captain Jack): A California Indian Hero


Modoc Chief Kintpuash (“Captain Jack”) in 1864
Creative Commons 
As Native American Heritage Month draws to a close, so, too, do our related exhibitions, Sensational Portrayals of the Modoc War, 1872–73 and Native Portraits: Contemporary Tintypes by Ed Drew. The Modoc War connects these two shows: one features the intense interest the war created throughout the United States and the other displays contemporary portraits of native peoples of the Klamath region—some of them descendants of those who fought in the war.

This blog post commemorates a hero of the Modoc War, Kintpuash, known as Captain Jack (1837–1873). In 1872–73, this Modoc resistance leader led his people from the confines of the Klamath Indian Reservation back to their homeland to fight for the right to live as free people on their ancestral land in the Tule Lake area of northern California.


Klamath Indian Reservation, 1879
US Bureau of Reclamation, Klamath Basin Office

The Klamath Indian Reservation had its beginnings in the Treaty of 1864, in which the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin peoples agreed to live together as what was referred to as the “Klamath Tribe” on a reservation in the Klamath Basin of southern Oregon. In exchange for their land—almost 20 million acres—they would be provided necessary provisions on land about one-tenth the size.


Klamath and Modoc Territories and Subgroups in the 19th Century with Modern Town Locations
Courtesy College of the Siskiyous

In the annals of the militarization of the West in the nineteenth century, many promises were made by the federal government, and many were not honored. For one band of Modoc Indians living in the Klamath Reservation the arrangement became untenable.

After a number of years without help and provisions, and under the leadership of Kintpuash with Jim Schonchin, a small group of Modoc men and their families left the reservation and returned to their ancestral lands in today’s Lava Beds National Monument in northern California. Federal troops attempted to push them back to the reservation. As Indian Commissioner Thomas J. Morgan, acknowledged about the government’s long-standing policy, “The Indians must conform to ‘the white man’s ways,’ peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must.” But the Modocs refused to abandon their homeland.

Louis H. Heller, Modoc Leaders Jim Schonchin and Captain Jack, 1873
California Historical Society

Louis H. Heller, Captain Jack’s Family, 1873
California Historical Society

War erupted in November 1872 between the Modocs—about 55 men and their families—and the United States Army. The volcanic landscape of the 47,000-acre lava beds (called the Land of Burnt Out Fires), with its nearly 700 caves, became a natural fortress that the Modocs reinforced to give them an upper hand in battles.



Eadweard Muybridge, The Lava Beds, 1872–73
California Historical Society

In January 1873, as U.S. troops from Fort Vancouver and Fort Klamath pressed the first major assault on Captain Jack’s Stronghold (the Modoc fortress), fog rolled in from nearby Tule Lake, blinding the soldiers as they inched across the rocky terrain. The Modocs moved unseen through lava tubes, killing or wounding dozens of soldiers from below while suffering no casualties of their own.

For about six months, the Modocs successfully fought off U.S. troops, capturing the attention and imagination of people across the country, many of whom were sympathetic to the Modocs for humanitarian reasons.

Captain Jack himself became somewhat of a folk hero. He was then “a man of 30 years of age, a man of square mold, 5 feet, 10 inches in height—a royal-blooded man of more than common heritage,” observed Col. Alfred B. Meacham of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

According to the May 30, 1873, issue of the New York Times, “Each mail brings also to camp an extensive correspondence for Capt. Jack . . . . One wishes Jack to come there and scalp the fellow who wants to win his girl away from him, another assures him he will get plenty of volunteers if he comes to his village, still again he is congratulated on his heroism and told to go on and conquer.”

But the adulation was short-lived. On April 11, 1873, the Army and Modocs held a peace commission. In his bid for a settlement, Captain Jack requested a reservation of 6 square miles on the lava beds. Indians could live there, he reasoned, white men couldn’t. When it became clear that the two sides would not come to terms, Captain Jack opened fire and a battle ensued, resulting in the deaths of General Edward R. S. Canby—the only U.S. general lost in an Indian conflict—and Reverend Eleazer Thomas.

With the tide now turned against the Modocs, the government renewed its attempts to drive the Modocs out of the lava beds. Joined by 70 Warm Springs Indian scouts, 675 U.S. soldiers with four batteries of artillery besieged Captain Jack’s Stronghold for two days, but as few as eight Modoc men continued to fend them off.



Eadweard Muybridge, Warm Springs Indian Scouts in Camp, 1872–73
California Historical Society

Add captioEadweard Muybridge, The Modoc Stronghold after Its Capture, 1872–73
California Historical Society

 
The Modocs were nevertheless driven from their advantageous position. A loss of morale led several men to desert Captain Jack and help the forces hunting him. It was not until the first of June, a remarkable six months after the conflict began, that Captain Jack and his closest allies finally surrendered. They were brought to Fort Klamath, where they were sentenced to death for the murders of General Canby and Reverend Thomas.

Fort Klamath Graves of Boston Charley, Black Jim, John [Schonchin] Schonchiss, and Captain Jack, Executed October 3, 1873
Courtesy Huntington Library, San Marino, California


Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager


Sources
Boyd Cothran, Remembering the Modoc War: Redemptive Violence and the Making of American Innocence (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press)
Cheewa James, The Tribe That Wouldn’t Die (Happy Camp, CA: Naturegraph Publishers, 2008)
The Oregon Experience: The Modoc War, documentary, Oregon Public Broadcasting and the Oregon Historical Society; http://www.californiaindianeducation.org/famous_indian_chiefs/captain_jack/  
Jeff C. Riddle, The Indian History of the Modoc War; http://www.archive.org/details/indianhistoryofm00riddrich
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Closing Soon!




Sunday, November 20, 2016

Native American Heritage Month: Occupying Alcatraz (1969–71)

Aerial View of Alcatraz Island during Indian Occupation, Teepee at Center, 1971
Courtesy National Archives, San Bruno
This month, the California Historical Society honors Native American Heritage Month with a look at the nearly 19-month-long Indian occupation of Alcatraz and the enduring outcome that came to fruition 40 years later. Through imagery and the voices of those who were there, we revisit this event, a defining moment in the Native American civil rights movement.
On November 20, 1969, a group of American Indians successfully breached a Coast Guard blockade and made landfall on Alcatraz Island, shut down by the government six years earlier. The group, which called itself Indians of All Tribes (IOAT) claimed the land by “right of discovery,” and, some said, earlier treaties between Indians and the federal government. Previous attempts to claim Alcatraz in 1964 and the spring of 1969 had led to the Coast Guard blockade.

American Indians Arriving on Alcatraz Island, 1969
Photograph by Vincent Maggiora, San Francisco Chronicle Collection
California Historical Society
"We hold The Rock" 
Richard Oakes, Mohawk, Occupation Leader
Issues around land—its meaning, the rights to it, and the abrogation of those rights—are frequently at the heart of modern land claims, as evidenced by current protests over the oil pipeline near North Dakota’s Standing Rock Sioux tribal lands. One hundred years before the occupation of Alcatraz, the Modoc War of 1872–73 in far northern California presaged the later occupation with a similar claim to native lands and a months-long standoff between the native peoples of the Klamath Basin area and the federal government. The site is now memorialized as part of the Lava Beds National Monument.

John Trudell, Spokesperson, American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz Island, August 1970
Photograph by Barney Peterson, San Francisco Chronicle Collection,
California Historical Society
“If you wanted to make it in America as an Indian, you had to become a hollow person and let them remold you. . . . Alcatraz put me back into my community and helped me remember
who I am. It was a rekindling of the spirit.”
John Trudell, Santee Sioux
At times during the occupation of Alcatraz, there were reportedly hundreds of members of more than 20 tribes on the island. The occupation focused worldwide attention on the ongoing grievances of American Indians and gained support from national celebrities, local residents, labor unions, and other organizations that helped supply the occupiers with food and medical supplies.

American Indian Woman and Child, Alcatraz Island, November 1969
Photograph by Dave Randolph, San Francisco Chronicle Collection,
California Historical Society
 “It was idealistic, and the generosity of the spirit of the people proved that we could change anything. People on the island were very strong about freedom of speech, freedom of dissent.
I saw the importance of dissent in government."
Wilma Mankiller, Cherokee Nation
Delivering Food, American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz Island, November 1969
Photograph by Vincent Maggiora, San Francisco Chronicle collection
California Historical Society
We're Indians, all of us, and we belong on Alcatraz. Indians never had prisons—yet here, in this white man's prison, we have found freedom for the first time.”
La Nada Means, Shoshone Bannock
By 1971 conditions on the island, which had been challenging from the start, deteriorated to the point where, on June 10, armed federal agents stepped in and removed the dozen or so people who remained. In 1972 the island became a national historic site as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Coast Guard Protecting American Indian Property, November 1969
Photograph by Vincent Maggiora, San Francisco Chronicle Collection, 
California Historical Society
"The occupation of Alcatraz exceeded our wildest dreams. It caused major changes in government policies toward Indians."
Adam Fortunate Eagle Nordwall, Chippewa
FBI and GSA Officers Reassert Federal Ownership of Alcatraz Island, June 11, 1971
Photograph by Vincent Maggiora, San Francisco Chronicle Collection, 
California Historical Society
"It’s easy to pass off the Alcatraz event as largely symbolic, but the truth is the spirit and dream of Alcatraz never died, it simply found its way to other fights.”
Benjamin Bratt, Actor and Alcatraz Occupier (tribe?)
In the aftermath of the occupation, federal policies toward Native Americans changed. Many tribal lands were returned. Native American activism continued, such as the occupation of Wounded Knee (1973). Of more enduring impact, in 2011 “We Are Still Here,” a permanent multimedia exhibition documenting the occupation, opened in the Alcatraz cellblock basement. The exhibition satisfies one of the demands of the occupiers: to establish a cultural center on the island.

“We Are Still Here,” 2011
Courtesy Richard Oaks Multicultural Center
“This exhibit is going to allow us to tell our story behind it. It’s going to allow us to express ourselves in a way that America hasn’t heard our voice. It’s going to give to a lot of tribes that have lost their ways and touch with their own culture, because of assimilation, lack of the language.”
Frankie Rivera, Navajo
Entrance, “We Are Still Here” Exhibition, 2011
Courtesy, San Francisco State News; photo by Philip M. Klasky
 “A lot of native kids don’t know the history of Alcatraz, they know a little bit about it, but they don’t know why we did it, and the reasons that we did it, and how it changed everything, how it started a whole new way of looking at yourself as an indigenous person.”
Michael Horse, Yaqui/Mescalero Apache

The exhibition, which opened on November 20, 2011, was produced by students and faculty at San Francisco State and California State University East Bay. It was esigned to mark the occupation that began on the same day of 1969.  In addition to the exhibition, signs of the occupation are still visible to visitors of Alcratraz today.

Alison Moore
Strategic Initiatives Liaison

Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager

Sources
Alex Arbuckle, “When Native American activists took control of Alcatraz for 18 months”; http://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/11/14/when-native-american-activists-took-control-of-alcatraz-for-18-m/21605574/

“Exhibit on historic 1969–71 occupation of Alcatraz Island Opens,” San Francisco State News; http://news.sfsu.edu/exhibit-historic-1969-71-occupation-alcatraz-island-opens

Meredith May, “American Indians get permanent exhibit at Alcatraz,” San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 21, 2011; http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/American-Indians-get-permanent-exhibit-at-Alcatraz-2288648.php

National Native American Heritage Month (2016); http://nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov/

National Park Service, Alcatraz Island, “We Hold the Rock”; https://www.nps.gov/alca/learn/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm

National Park Service, Lava Beds National Monument, “The Modoc War”; https://www.nps.gov/labe/learn/historyculture/index.htm

Lulu Orozco, “Alcatraz Exhibit Highlights Native American History, Golden Gate Express, May 1, 2014; http://goldengatexpress.org/2013/05/01/we-are-still-here/

San Francisco State University, Bay Area Television Archive, “Occupation and Ownership of Alcatraz Island”; https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/18779

Malia Wollan, “Antigovernment Graffiti Restored, Courtesy of Government,” New York Times, Dec. 24, 2012; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/us/alcatraz-american-indian-occupation-graffiti-preserved.html

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Now on View at the California Historical Society





Two exhibitions about Native Americans bridge the past and present:

Native Portraits: Contemporary Tintypes by Ed Drew features portraits of members of the Klamath, Modoc, and Pit River Paiute tribes, some of them descendants of Modoc War survivors.

A selection of Modoc War images by Eadweard J. Muybridge and Louis H. Heller from the California Historical Society collection are some of the objects displayed in Sensationalist Portrayal of the Modoc War, 1872–73.


Monday, August 29, 2016

This Day on August 29, 1911: A Survivor of American Indian Genocide Walks Out of the California Wilderness

Ishi, the Last Yahi Indian Speaker (center), at an Unveiling of an Indian Monument,
Lincoln Park, Alameda, California, 1914
California Historical Society

In the early part of the twentieth century—following the near annihilation of California’s Native Americans the century before—a singular event occurred. In many ways, Natives and non-Natives still experience the impact of this event on communities across the state.

In the summer of 1911, at a slaughterhouse corral near the town of Oroville in northern California’s Butte County, a middle-aged man—most likely of the Yahi tribe native to the Deer Creek region—was discovered in a state of exhaustion and emaciation. The sole survivor of a small band of Indians thought to have been extinguished during the California Indian Wars, he had come out of isolation in the mountains.

Ishi at Time of His Capture, Oroville, Butte County, September 1911
Published in Popular Science Monthly (March 1915)
Courtesy of Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, UC Berkeley


Bruce A. Hardy (Photographer), View of “Ishi Site,” Oroville, CA, 1963
Courtesy of Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, UC Berkeley


This “unprecedented behavior,” Theodora Kroeber observed in her book Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America (1916), had resulted from crossing “certain physical and psychic limits” from which Ishi—as he was simply called, from the Yahi word for man—made choices as courageous and enlightened as the scope of his opportunities permitted.”

Kroeber was the wife of the famous anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber, under whose care, along with that of Thomas T. Waterman, Ishi was placed. Ishi would live the remainder of his life adapting to the twentieth century at the University of California’s Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco. There he was closely studied for five years until his death in March 1916.

 (Left to right) Sam Batwai (Yahi translator), Alfred A. Kroeber, and Ishi, 1911
Courtesy of Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, UC Berkeley

To the museum’s anthropologists, staff, and visitors, Ishi imparted his language, survival and crafts skills, culture, and personal beliefs. To them—and to us even today—his life brought new understandings of Native American heritage in the context of and in contrast to twentieth-century urban life.


Ishi Salmon Fishing on Deer Creek, May 1914
Courtesy of Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley

Native and non-Native scholars, artists, cultural and educational leaders, and community members continue to explore these understandings. At the California Historical Society, for example:

  • ·         In conjunction with our year-long 2015 exhibition celebrating the 1915 San Francisco World’s Fair, the projected light artist Ben Wood examined Ishi’s life within the context of the fair, which Ishi attended. Wood’s piece Lopa Pikta (Rope Picture), a sound and light installation, was displayed in the windows of the California Historical Society after dark. See http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/past_exhibitions/illumination/.



Ben Wood, Lopa Pikta (Rope Picture), 2015
California Historical Society
  • ·         Beginning this July CHS offers two Native American exhibitions. One examines the impact of California’s only major Indian War (the Modoc War of 1872–73). The other features contemporary tintype portraits by photographer Ed Drew of members of the Klamath, Modoc, and Pit River Paiute tribes, some of them descendants of Modoc War survivors. See http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/current_exhibitions.



  • ·         This month in Los Angeles, and this October in San Francisco, CHS invites author Benjamin Madley to speak about his newly published book An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873. As the New York Times began its review, “The state of sunshine and pleasure is drenched in the blood of Indians.” See http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/events_calendar.html.



Benjamin Madley Discussing His Book (right) at Skylight Book in Los Angeles, May 2016
Courtesy of Shelly Kale


Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

Sources