Modern Indian Identity

Twenty-first century Indian people face a particular and peculiar dilemma with history and time. Novelists and filmmakers have had extraordinary success in romanticizing the Western past, and one result is this: in the minds of many non-Indians, the only "real Indians" are nineteenth-century Plains horsemen riding after bison and circling around emigrant wagon trains. This stereotype leaves no room for two crucial facts: first, Indian people, in the past and present, made their livings in hundreds of different ways, from corn-farming to salmon-fishing, from the gathering of acorns to the trading of goods from one region to another; second, Indian people in our times both carry on ancient cultural traditions and live, with familiarity and ease, in the modern world.

Hoping to make at least a small contribution to the cause of better understanding between Indians and non-Indians, the Center now launches a series of contemporary Indian speakers telling their stories in ways that confirm the compatibility of tradition with innovation. The speakers have a profound tie to their peoples pasts, and they have also adapted with agility and enterprise to the conditions of our times. They have, in other words, triumphed over the stereotypes of "real Indians" as people sequestered and set apart in a lost past.

This event would not be possible without the help of Nancy and Gary Carlston.

Speakers

Click the title of each speech to view a pdf of that speech

Eva Marie Garroutte

"My father's stories: Remembering Oklahoma"

Professor Garroutte is the author of Real Indians: Identity, Community, and the Survival of Native America. In this talk, Professor Garroutte blends her father's stories of growing up in the Cherokee Nation of the 1930's with her own recent experiences as a tribal citizen working in the field of American Indian health.

Phil Deloria

Crossing the (Indian) Color Line: A Family Memoir

Professor Phil Deloria taught at CU-Boulder for more than six years before joining the history faculty at the University of Michigan in 2001, and also earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from CU-Boulder. He is a professor and director of the Program in American Culture on the Michigan campus and has been instrumental in building a Native American Studies program. His 1998 book "Playing Indian" was the winner of an outstanding book award from the Gustavus Myers Program for the study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. In that book, he traced "Indian play" from the Boston Tea Party to Boy Scouts and Campfire Girls to the New Age movement, arguing that white Americans have consistently acted out "Indianness" in order to imagine and proclaim national and modern identities.

He also is president-elect of the American Studies Association and received the 2006 John C. Ewers Award from the Western History Association for his latest work, "Indians in Unexpected Places," which examines the ideologies surrounding Indian people at the turn of the 20th century.

"Phil Deloria is a lively and engaging public speaker with an original mind, a gift for storytelling and a robust sense of humor," said Professor Patty Limerick, a noted historian and board chair of the Center of the American West.

The Modern Indian Identity series aims to dispel the perception among many non-Indians that the only "real Indians" are 19th century Plains horsemen riding after bison and disappearing from history after the arrival of white Americans, Limerick said. "Contrary to stereotypes of a people lost in the past, Indian people in the 21st century both carry on long-lasting traditions and play central and consequential roles in American life," she said.

Mark Trahant

Peace Chiefs at Work: Stories About Remarkable American Indian Leadership in this Generation

Mark Trahant is a Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist who for many years was the author of "West by Northwest," a twice weekly column for the Seattle Times. Prior to his position at the Times, he served as Editor and Publisher of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News and at the Executive New Editor of the Salt Lake Tribune. Trahant was the owner and publisher of a small weekly, Navajo Nation Today, when he lived with his wife's tribe in Window Rock, Arizona. Trahant also served as the Public Information Officer at the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C.

Trahant's awards and honors include Best Columnist from the Native American Journalists Association and the Society of Professional Journalists, a Ruhl Fellowship, and co-winner of the Heywood Broun Award.

As a Native American and a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe of Fort Hall, Idaho, Trahant will bring a unique perspective to the Sun Valley Center's The Whole Salmon project. As a young boy Trahant grew up in the Northwestern United States and has watched as the relationship between the people and the land has evolved and changed. He can remember fishing the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River with his family. As an adult he understands and has written about the conflicts and contradictions inherent in the preserving the past and the realities of the present. He finds hope in these contradictions and the interface between rural and urban life, the historic and contemporary uses for the land, and the weight of memories and that of the law.