Pet-Keeping Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define the pet as a cultural artifact. Trace the historical development of pets in Western societies. Provide examples of pets in Indigenous societies. Identify major behavioral and morphological characteristics of pets. Describe the economic impact of pet keeping in Western societies. One of the most familiar and intimate roles that animals play in the lives of contemporary Western people is that of pets. Pets are animals that are either domesticated or tamed with whom humans have developed a long-term social bond. Pets are part of many human cultures. Pets as Cultural Artifacts Although specific pets are actual beings (many of us can think of the face of one or more pets we live or have lived with), pets in general can be understood as a cultural artifact. This means that the ways in which pets are treated and what is expected of them vary a great deal from one culture to another. Most pets live in or around human households, are considered the possessions of their human owners, and have limited ability to make freewill decisions. Chinese geographer and early scholar in human-animal studies Yi-Fu Tuan (1984) has studied the ways in which humans have dominated the living environment and their pets, with approaches varying between extremes of dominance and affection, love and abuse, cruelty and kindness. He argues that pets in Western societies are defined by emotion and nostalgia, an approach likely related to increasing distance between people and the natural world. Even within a culture that treats certain animals in a sentimental way, relationships with other animals can still be characterized by cruelty and dominance. Tuan writes, “Animals are slaughtered for food and clothing without a twinge of conscience. A few specimens and species, however, catch the fancy of people in a playful mood and are made into pampered pets or fervently supported causes” (1984, 162). What we would recognize as modern pet keeping in the Western world—an approach characterized by keeping animals for no other purpose than to be companions for humans—emerged during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Prior to that time, animals cared for by humans had functions or tasks within the household. As communities and towns became increasingly urban and people lost interaction with wild animals, the relationship between people and animals shifted in various ways. Many families were smaller and had more time to care for a pet. Animals had fewer assigned duties and responsibilities and were more available as companions. Improvements in medical and veterinary sciences lowered the risk of zoonoses , or diseases transmitted between animals and humans, although zoonotic infections continue to threaten human populations (consider COVID-19, for example). Lastly, a growing middle class with more affluence could afford the luxury of keeping pets. Modern pet keeping is marked by a relationship of demonstrative affection between people and their animals as well as by the economic development of pet industries, such as pet food companies, veterinary services, and even cremation and burial services. Pet Keeping in Indigenous Societies There is extensive evidence of pet keeping in Indigenous societies. In many hunter-gatherer societies, children keep numerous pets, most often birds, small rodents, and monkeys. These animals, often taken directly from the forest or wilderness area when they are still young, are considered valuable companions for children. Caring for the animals is thought to teach children to understand animals’ movements and personalities and help them develop a sense of stewardship for the natural world. Animal ethicist James Serpell (1988) has found wide-ranging pet keeping throughout Indigenous societies in North and South America. The Waraõ in the Orinoco region of Venezuela keep birds, monkeys, sloths, rodents, ducks, dogs, and chickens as pets. The Kalapalo of central Brazil have a particular affection for birds and treat them as members of the family. The Barasana of eastern Colombia keep pet rodents, birds (especially parrots and macaws), peccaries (piglike mammals), and even young jaguars. And North American Indigenous groups are known to have tamed raccoons, moose, bison, wolves, bears, and especially dogs. A Guaraní family with their dog in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, in 2004. Pets are part of many human cultures. (credit: “Agrotoxico Ti Guarani Kaiova_Foto_Ana Mendes (23)” by Ana Mendes/Amazônia Real/flickr, CC BY 2.0) While many Native Americans are very affectionate with their dogs, their style of “keeping” these dogs as pets differs a great deal from what most American are familiar with. In a 2020 article titled “What Rez Dogs Mean to the Lakota,” Lakota tribal members Richard Meyers and Ernest Weston Jr. explain: In our culture, people traditionally don’t own animals the way other cultures have pets; the animals are left wild, and may choose to go to a home to offer protection, companionship, or even to become a part of a community. People feed the dogs and care for them, but the dogs remain living outside and are free to be their own beings. This relationship differs from one where the human is the master or owner of an animal who is considered property. Instead, the dog and people provide service to one another in a mutual relationship of reciprocity and respect. The roles of pets in human societies are very complex and depend on specific cultural traditions and ways of relating to animals, both wild and domesticated. It is important to note that pets play different roles across different cultures and cannot be easily defined. The Making of Pets In Western societies, domesticated animals have increasingly been subjected to extreme genetic manipulation in order to manufacture ever more novel and attractive pet animals. In Europe, the earliest kennel clubs , designed to develop and maintain breeds and record pedigrees, began as dog show societies in England in 1859 and were later established as governing bodies and official institutions, starting in 1873. Although dog breeds now come from all over the world and continue to be developed—a recent addition to the list of breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club (AKC) is the Biewer terrier, first recognized in January 2021—the majority of modern pet breeds were first developed in Victorian England, where pet keeping flourished and was adopted by all social classes. Sometimes, this selective breeding of pets is detrimental to the health of the animal breed. In the English bulldog, for example, 86 percent of litters must be delivered by cesarian section because the pups’ large heads and mothers’ narrow pelvises have made live, natural births very challenging (Evans and Adams 2010). In addition, as dog breeders create more and more specialized pets, the gene pool becomes narrowed and less diverse, producing animals that are more prone to conditions such as cancer, hip dysplasia, deafness, hereditary epilepsy, and allergies. In pedigreed cats, which are subject to the same selective pressures in breeding, there are both heart and kidney problems that are thought to be accelerated by selective breeding. One of the most commonly sought set of characteristics by people selectively breeding animals for pets is the appearance of a permanent juvenile state. Neotony , the tendency for an animal to maintain both physical and behavioral juvenile characteristics into adulthood, has been highly sought after in many domesticated animals. Some of the most commonly desired juvenile physical traits are larger and wider-set eyes, a smaller snout (or nose), a more globular (or rounded) skull, and fewer and smaller teeth (which leaves many dogs with crowded teeth and dental problems). Social neotony involves a cluster of traits relating to a strong and submissive attachment to humans and increased attentiveness to human behavior. The overall size of animals is also a consideration when breeding pets. Consider the range of miniature animals we have selected for today: miniature horses, mules, and pigs; pygmy goats and hedgehogs; and others. Of all animals kept as pets, dogs have been the most manipulated in size. Today, there is a proliferation of “teacup” breeds that can be carried in the owner’s pocket or purse. Small dogs offer many advantages to humans living in urban environments and small apartments, but there are few advantages for the dogs themselves. Most teacup versions are created by breeding the smallest animals in a litter. There are many health risks that accompany this process of extreme miniaturization, such as collapsing tracheas, digestive problems, heart defects, liver shunts, slipping kneecaps, and a host of dental challenges. Pet keeping has deep roots in human societies and has changed over time. Interestingly, it has also been documented among some animals. Nonhuman animals have been known to form cross-species friendships and alliances and to take care of each other both in the wild and in captivity. One interesting example is the gorilla Hanabiko, called “Koko,” who was trained to understand spoken English and communicate using a form of American Sign Language that her keeper called Gorilla Sign Language. Koko became interested in cats and signed that she wanted a kitten for Christmas in 1983. Her keepers at first provided her with a stuffed cat, but Koko insisted that she wanted a living one. On her birthday the following July, her keepers allowed her to choose a rescue kitten, which she named “All Ball” because he had no tail and was very fluffy. The relationship between Koko and her kitten, documented in many articles and videos, was a nurturing one in which Koko treated All Ball like her baby and her pet. Pet keeping says a great deal about the human need to reach across species for companionship, dominance, and affection. Perhaps, though, this is not solely a human need. ecotourism an international conservation movement to preserve the flora and fauna of endangered natural environments through conscientious tourism. neotony a tendency for an animal to maintain both physical and social juvenile characteristics into adulthood. pets animals, whether domesticated or tamed, with whom humans have a social bond. zoonoses plural form of zoonosis , singular; diseases transmitted from animals to humans, usually involving a wild animal host. Many zoonoses mutate and become more virulent in their human hosts (e.g., COVID-19, measles, HIV, influenza).

Social Sciences


Animal Industries and the Animal Trade Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe the evolution of zoos. Recognize the benefits of ecotourism. Define the use value of animals in biomedical research today. In the past two centuries, Western societies have increasingly taken the approach of treating animals as a commodity —a raw material or resource for human use, a thing instead of a being. When we consider the relationships that many Indigenous societies have with animals, we can better realize how different the Western idea of animals is. Approaching the world and nature primarily as consumers rather than coequals, Western cultures face increasing environmental, socio-emotional, and resource-related challenges in all areas of life. Zoos Zoos have long been part of human societies. The earliest evidence of a zoo has been found in Hierakonpolis, the capital of Upper Egypt during the Predynastic period, today called Nekhen. Here, archaeologists have unearthed the mummified remains of a collection of wild and domesticated animals from about 5,000 years ago that included baboons, hippos, gazelles, crocodiles, a leopard, and cats and dogs. Some of the animals had injuries likely caused by being tied or enclosed in some way. Many of them were buried in the same way that humans were buried, and some were found inside human burials (Boissoneault 2015). Another famous historical zoo was that of the Aztec king Montezuma . When the Spaniards arrived in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in 1519, they were surprised by the vast collection of animals housed in enclosures and rooms within the king’s palace complex, including jaguars, bears, eagles, deer, fowl, ocelots, and little dogs. According to the Spanish chroniclers, the zoo had some 300 keepers to care for the animals. Similar to early pet keeping, zoos were typically associated with wealth and status. Modern zoos emerged in the late 18th century during the period known as the Enlightenment, characterized by the development of science and the expansion of colonial empires. European zoos were filled with wildlife from new colonies and “foreign” lands and were considered places to see strange and exotic animals. The first modern zoos opened in Paris in 1793, London in 1828, and Philadelphia in 1874. These were all very popular public institutions that exhibited animals for entertainment and observation. The zoos were laid out like public parks, with small animal enclosures that allowed people to get up close to see. There have been many changes in zoos over the last 50 years. With the signing of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) in 1973 and the passage of the Endangered Species Act in the United States the same year, wild animal imports to US zoos declined sharply. This coincided with the development of breeding and conservation programs at zoos, some of which involve breeding rare and endangered species to be released back into the wild as part of a sustainable population. One species for which breeding efforts are currently underway is the giant panda. Animals are commonly moved from one zoo site to another and shared for breeding purposes in an effort to fortify the breed. Animals that are endangered may be part of a zoo preservation program. In some cases, critically endangered animals are cared for by zoos when they are young and vulnerable to predators and then reintroduced into the wild. The website of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) features a long list of animals whose populations have been preserved through the efforts of zoos, including the black-footed ferret, the California condor, the Ohio River basin freshwater mussel, the golden lion tamarin, and the Oregon spotted frog. Zoos also sponsor research programs with goals such as creating sustainable populations in the wild, conserving wildlife habitats, improving animal health, or even collecting endangered species’ genetic material (DNA) (DeMello 2012, 106). What should be the role of zoos in contemporary Western societies? Should the zoo be closer to a theme park or a museum? Should the goal of a zoo be animal conservation or human recreation? These questions guide us as we continue to rethink the mission of zoos today. Barbara J. King 1956– Anthropologist Barbara King with Cynthia Goat at the Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, New York (credit: Charles Hogg) Personal History: Born in New Jersey, King earned her BA from Douglass College (Rutgers University) and her MA and PhD from the University of Oklahoma, where she specialized in biological anthropology. Her doctoral field research in Amboseli National Park, Kenya, focused on foraging and social behaviors among yellow baboons. From 1988 to 2015, she served as professor of anthropology at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where she received numerous awards for outstanding teaching and mentorship. She is now a professor emerita, although she continues to have an active role in academia, research, publishing, and mentorship. Area of Anthropology: King’s research and contributions to the field are notable for their broad-ranging relevance across anthropological subfields and disciplines, among them linguistic and communication systems in primates, social relationships between species, the primate origins of religious thought, and the social and emotional lives of various animal species, including those being factory farmed. Her anthropological focus is often on the continuities between humans and other animals and the ethics of human-animal relationships. She has published seven books and numerous scholarly articles. Accomplishments in the Field: Given the four-field scope of much of King’s research, she has had considerable impact on many areas of academia. In 2002, King was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for “exceptional capacity for productive scholarship” and creativity. Two of her works, Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion (2007, Doubleday) and How Animals Grieve (2013, University of Chicago Press), have received prizes and awards as outstanding contributions to the field. King is also an active public anthropologist, bridging gaps between academic research and the public. A contributor to the National Public Radio blog Cosmos and Culture from 2011 to 2018 and a full-time science writer since her retirement in 2015, King, through interviews, articles, and blogs, communicates the importance of science for public good and social change. Her research on animal grief, How Animals Grieve , was highlighted in her 2019 TED Talk, “ Grief and Love in the Animal Kingdom .” King also regularly reviews books for various media outlets, including NPR, the Washington Post , and the Times Literary Supplement , and publishes in Sapiens , an online anthropology magazine devoted to public outreach. She is a self-described Twitter addict (@bjkingape). Importance of Their Work In her public role, King seeks to educate and incentivize people to make positive change for human and animal lives. In her newest book, Animals’ Best Friends: Putting Compassion to Work for Animals in Captivity and in the Wild (University of Chicago Press, 2021), King issues a call to cultivate compassionate action toward all the animals sharing their lives with us. She challenges us to widen our lens on the world around us and become animals’ best friends, whether they are in our homes, in the wild, in a lab, in a zoo, or destined to be thought of as food. “When we still ourselves and genuinely see the more-than-human-world, possibilities for helping animals bloom all around us—we may rescue rather than squish a spider in our home; resist an urge to crowd wild animals in order to snap selfies; advocate for non-animal models in laboratory science; refuse to support roadside zoos or swim-with-dolphin programs; and increase our plant-based eating” (Snipes, personal communication, 2021). For more on King’s recent work, see her interview with nature writer Brandon Keim on Earth Day 2021. Ecotourism Another way in which contemporary Western societies are attempting to address the damage caused by a commodified view of the natural world, including the animals living in it, is through ecotourism . This is tourism designed to be sustainable and to help preserve the flora and fauna of endangered natural environments. Often, the focus is on visiting threatened environments and observing wildlife in its natural habitat. Such tourism can earn money to aid in the conservation of these areas, provide employment for local residents, and raise awareness of the importance of biological, as well as cultural, diversity. Ideally, care is taken to ensure that tourists visiting natural areas do not disturb or damage the environment; however, there are no global standards for ecotourism, and some sites are more successful at protecting sensitive environments than others. The term greenwashing is sometimes applied to sites that promote the natural environment as an attraction while engaging in exploitative and environmentally destructive behavior. The Galapagos giant tortoise is found only in the Galapagos Islands. It is being preserved today through ecotourism and conservation efforts. (credit: “Pinta Island Giant Galapagos Tortoise” by Arturo de Frias Marques/flickr, Public Domain) An example of effective and increasingly responsible ecotourism is provided by the Galápagos Islands . The Galápagos island chain was made famous by English naturalist Charles Darwin , who used his observations of the diversity of the ecosystem’s animals to develop the theory of natural selection. Located 563 miles west of the coast of Ecuador, the Galápagos were listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1978. Prior to that, the islands were only partially protected. Some of the Galápagos Islands were designated as wildlife sanctuaries in 1934, and the island archipelago became an Ecuadorian national park in 1959. Around that time, a few wealthy tourists began to travel to the islands to view their extraordinary biodiversity. By the 1990s, tourism had become very popular and a tourist industry had developed, with hotels, restaurants, and transportation. Today, the Galápagos National Park Service, which manages 97 percent of the island lands (the other 3 percent are contained settlements where local people live), has strict policies limiting the daily number of visitors. Local people serve as employees in the park and teach the value of conservation to tourists. It is the hope of the Galápagos National Park Service and the local people that this island ecosystem and its living inhabitants—such as the Galápagos giant tortoise , the Galápagos penguin, the blue-footed booby, the flightless cormorant, and the waved albatross—will be preserved for future generations. Animals and the Medical Industry In 2015, there were estimated to be some 192 million animals being used in biomedical laboratories across 179 countries worldwide (Taylor and Alvarez 2019). These animals are used for medical experiments, drug testing, product testing, and psychological research. The most commonly used animals in US labs are mice, rats, and birds, though a range of other animals—including rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, farm animals such as pigs and sheep, cats, dogs, and nonhuman primates—are used as well (Humane Society of the United States 2021). These animals come from various sources, including breeding programs within the biomedical labs themselves. Although biologists, chemists, animal behaviorists, psychiatrists, and psychologists tend to be more frequently involved in medical research with animals, anthropologists—especially primatologists and linguistic anthropologists—also have a history of working with animals in laboratory settings. Primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh carried out long-term cognitive studies of two bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha , from birth. Savage-Rumbaugh was interested in understanding how bonobos, which are closely related to humans, learn communication. She developed a computer-based language program using lexigrams, or symbols representing words, printed on a keyboard. Although lacking the vocal apparatus of a human, Kanzi and Panbanisha demonstrated advanced cognitive linguistic skills by responding to human speech and generating language by pressing lexigrams. In one study comparing Kanzi’s language competence with that of a two-year-old human child, Kanzi scored significantly higher: 74 percent accuracy, compared to 65 percent accuracy for the two-year-old human (Savage-Rumbaugh et al. 1993). Studies such as this one shed light not only on animals’ abilities but also on the continuities that exist between humans and animals. There are two primary regulations in the United States that pertain to biomedical research animals: the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (PHS Policy). The AWA is a law passed by Congress in 1966 that originally covered the transport, sale, and handling of some animals and advocated for more humane animal practices in laboratories. The act has been amended several times (1970, 1976, 1985, 1990, 1991, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2014), including to add a requirement that researchers register their use of animals and also consider a database of alternatives if the procedure can cause any distress or pain. The act cover animals such as dogs, cats, rabbits, and nonhuman primates, but it does not cover those animals most commonly used in laboratory experiments: rats, mice, and birds. The PHS Policy applies to all research facilities that perform animal research and receive any type of federal funding; though not itself a law, its creation was mandated by the Health Research Extension Act, passed by Congress in 1985. This policy states that each institution conducting such research must have an institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) that reviews all proposed animal research experiments. This committee must include at least five members, one of whom must be a veterinarian and another a person not affiliated with the institution. When reviewing research proposals, the IACUC is expected to evaluate whether (1) basic standards are met, (2) the use of animals is justified, (3) the research is not duplicated, and (4) pain and discomfort for the animals are minimized. The United Kingdom and the European Union have similar measures to regulate and oversee animal laboratory research. Animal research has been critical to many advances in medicine, including the development of the first human vaccine to successfully eradicate smallpox, the polio vaccine, and treatments for HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, hepatitis, and malaria. Animals have played a crucial role in the development of many new drugs and therapies, and a significant amount of research conducted on animals also benefits veterinary medicine and other animals as well. However, the use of living animals for experiments and testing raises many ethical issues and has inspired a great deal of conflict and controversy. Animals in Our Lives Humans share their lives with animals in many ways, and how we think about ourselves as human beings rests primarily on the distinctions we see between ourselves and other species. English art critic and poet John Berger writes, “With their parallel lives, animals offer man a companionship which is different from any offered by human exchange. Different because it is a companionship offered to the loneliness of man as a species” ([1980] 1991, 6). Across cultures and across time, humans have looked toward animals as fellow participants in their lives. They actively participate in the ways we define ourselves. They feed us and accompany us. They work for us and protect us. They also serve as symbols and messengers that help us better understand our world. Our lives are intertwined in multiple ways. What is an animal? What is the value of nonhuman animals in our lives? How do our attitudes about animals define who we are as human beings? Anthropologists and other researchers increasingly see the value of bringing animals into their research because animals are critical to understanding what it means to be human. Summary Animals play essential roles in many areas of human life. While it may be difficult to define an animal, and sometimes controversial to speak the scientific truth that human are animals, too, the continuum between us and them is incontrovertible. In describing animals, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss said that they are “good to think” of (1963, 89) because they show up prolifically in our cultures. Human-animal scholars often use a research approach known as multispecies ethnography as a way of understanding the symbiosis between humans and animals. Of all animal species, the dog has played the most transformative role in human cultures historically. An early domesticate, dogs have served as guards, hunters, herders, transport, food, and (most commonly) companions in many different societies. Many human subsistence systems depend on animals; hunting, herding, fishing, and factory farming are the primary ways in which humans access meat. Indigenous hunters practice empathy and appreciation as ways of connecting as predators to prey, and many pastoralists have a symbiotic relationship with their herd animals, migrating periodically to provide pasture for their herds. Animals are also symbols. In totemic societies, animal species and relationships are used as ways of ordering human society; human groups have relationships of respect with their totemic emblem and identify with some of the qualities of the animal. Animals also play important roles in oral tradition and religious systems as teachers, messengers, and sacrificial tokens. Many religious systems reflect the awareness that life is not the exclusive domain of the human species and that our world is a shared community. Animals are also pets and cultural artifacts. Domesticated animals have been genetically reconfigured to meet the needs of human societies. This includes selectively breeding for neotony , a tendency for an animal to maintain both physical and behavioral juvenile characteristics. While many Indigenous societies practice pet keeping as companionship and sometimes also as a way to teach young children about animal behaviors, in modern Western societies, pet keeping has become an industry. There are also animal trades in Western societies, from zoos, aquariums, and circuses to wild animal reserves where ecotourism generates funds to preserve wild animal habitats. Often, these industries have both negative and positive attributes. In the medical industry, animals have long served as human stand-ins for research. Increasingly today, there are laws and regulations to improve the plight of animals in medical labs, but this continues to be a challenge, and the improvements are rarely adequate. Still, the contributions that animals have made to human health and welfare have been substantial, whether in labs, on farms, in forests, or in our homes. Animals have always mattered to human beings. Critical Thinking Questions Animal Familiarity Experience of Marjorie Snipes, chapter author A young female goat and her kid. (credit: “Nursing Kid” by swallowsan/flickr, CC BY 2.0) During fieldwork in northwestern Argentina, I lived with a community of herders who tended goats and sheep, interviewing every day and taking copious notes. After six months of research, I took a two-week break from the field to return to the United States to welcome my new niece. When I returned to the field site, I had an accidental breakthrough. However, let me back up. In this Andean community, herders believe that their flocks are gifts from Pachamama (Mother Earth), and women are the primary caretakers and shepherds for the animals. After I had lived in the community for about six weeks, one of the families gave me a small kid, or young goat, which I named Maisie. I suspected that this gift was a test to see if I was planning to be part of the community. I took care of Maisie every day, even though she remained a functioning member of another family’s herd. Goats normally reproduce toward the end of their first year, and Maisie was pregnant when I left for my two-week absence from the field. While I was gone, she gave birth to a male that the family named Vicente Beda, after a Catholic saint. When I arrived back at the household where I was staying, late in the day, Doña Florentina was eager for me to meet the newest member of my herd. We entered the corral, and the young kid came running up to me with no fear. When I commented about the familiarity, as young animals tend to be skittish around new people, Florentina responded, “But he knows you, Margo.” And so I learned about the librito (little book) that they believe is located in the stomach area of each of their herd animals. The librito contains information about an animal’s life: who loves it, where it belongs, and when it will die. It is the shepherd’s duty to discern the contents of the book through the animal’s behavior, as she cannot openly read it. Animals who get lost frequently or have trouble bonding with the herd will be traded, as families believe such animals do not belong to them. And when it is time to select an animal for slaughter, the shepherd chooses an animal whose behavior indicates that the time is appropriate. While the signs vary according to the animal’s disposition, it is normally a change of demeanor that the shepherd interprets as acquiescence. During slaughter, a woman typically holds the animal while a man cuts the throat. In all slaughters that I attended, the goat or sheep was killed peacefully, and butchering occurred quickly afterward—except one. The animal was a large ewe, and she was initially compliant with being handled, but at the moment that her throat was cut, her back feet scrambled and she tried to rise up. Everyone around me became very still and began to lower their voices, saying that it was not the right time for the ewe, that there had been a mistake. The shepherd had “made a mistake.” The ewe was not butchered. She lay there for about an hour while the family discussed where to take her for burial. She was buried far away from the corral and household. Multispecies Animal Observation Ethnography increasingly utilizes methods aimed at incorporating a multitude of diverse voices. The purpose of this is not diversity for diversity’s sake but to more accurately reflect and understand the various interactions that may occur within any field encounter. In this fieldwork activity, you will experiment with multispecies ethnography. Choose a wild animal (e.g., pigeon, duck, squirrel, insect, etc.), and observe it (with no interaction) for at least 15 minutes. During the observation, make consistent notes every 30 seconds to one minute, writing down the animal’s behavior incrementally and how it interacts with its environment. Note also whether the animal seems to notice your presence or interact with you. Following the observation session, write up a multispecies ethnographic account, using the data you have collected to inform you of the possible intentions and thoughts of the animal as well as your own thoughts and reactions. Your write-up should be 500 to 750 words and should end with a paragraph reflecting on the experience of trying to write from an animal’s perspective (based on human observation). Turn in the original timed notes along with the final paper. Bibliography Almagor, Uri. 1985. “The Bee Connection: The Symbolism of a Cyclical Order in an East African Age System.” Journal of Anthropological Research 41 (1): 1–17. Avieli, Nur. 2011. “Dog Meat Politics in a Vietnamese Town.” Ethnology 50 (1): 59–78. https://ethnology.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/Ethnology/article/viewArticle/6092. Berger, John. (1980) 1991. “Why Look at Animals?” In About Looking , 3–28. New York: Vintage Books. Boissoneault, Lorraine. 2015. “Leopards, Hippos, and Cats, Oh My! The World’s First Zoo.” JSTOR Daily. November 12, 2015. https://daily.jstor.org/leopards-hippos-cats-oh-worlds-first-zoo/. Boylan, Michael. n.d. “Aristotle: Biology.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/aris-bio/. Brightman, Robert. 1993. Grateful Prey: Rock Cree Human-Animal Relationships . Berkeley: University of California Press. Crocker, Jon Christopher. 1985. Vital Souls: Bororo Cosmology, Natural Symbolism, and Shamanism . Tucson: University of Arizona Press. DeMello, Margo. 2012. Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies . New York: Columbia University Press. Diamond, Wendy. 2011. “Thailand: Buddha’s Animal Kingdom.” HuffPost , September 19, 2011. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/thailand-buddhas-animal-k_b_969662. Evans, Katy M., and Vicki J. Adams. 2010. “Proportion of Litters of Purebred Dogs Born by Caesarean Section.” Journal of Small Animal Practice 51 (2): 113–118. Gadsby, Patricia, and Leon Steele. 2004. “The Inuit Paradox.” Discover , January 19, 2004. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-inuit-paradox. Harris, Marvin. 1966. “The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle.” Current Anthropology 7 (1): 51–66. Humane Society of the United States. 2021. “Animals Used in Experiments FAQ.” https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/animals-used-experiments-faq. Hurn, Samantha. 2012. Humans and Other Animals: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions . London: Pluto Press. Ingold, Tim, ed. 1994. What Is an Animal? Rev. ed. New York: Routledge. Ingold, Tim. 2000. “Hunting and Gathering as Ways of Perceiving the Environment.” In The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill , 40–60. New York: Routledge. Istomin, Kirill Vladimirovich, and Mark James Dwyer. 2010. “Dynamic Mutual Adaptation: Human-Animal Interaction in Reindeer Herding Pastoralism.” Human Ecology 38 (5): 613–623. Kirksey, S. Eben, and Stefan Helmreich. 2010. “The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography.” In “Multispecies Ethnography,” special issue, Cultural Anthropology 25 (4): 545–576. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Totemism . Translated by Rodney Needham. Boston: Beacon Press. McKie, Robin. 2011. “Love of Animals Led to Language and Man’s Domination of Earth.” Guardian , October 1, 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/oct/02/anthropology-pat-shipman-animals-language. Meyers, Richard, and Ernest Weston Jr. 2020. “What Rez Dogs Mean to the Lakota.” Sapiens , December 2, 2020. https://www.sapiens.org/culture/rez-dogs/. Mohnhaupt, Jan. 2020. Tiere im Nationalsozialismus . Munich: Carl Hanser. Morgan, Lewis Henry. 1868. The American Beaver and His Works . Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. Ostrander, Elaine A., and Robert K. Wayne. 2005. “The Canine Genome.” Genome Research 15 (12): 1706–1716. https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.3736605. Peterson, Anna Lisa. 2001. Being Human: Ethics, Environment, and Our Place in the World . Berkeley: University of California Press. Posey, Darrell A. 1981. “Wasps, Warriors and Fearless Men: Ethnoentomology of the Kayapó Indians of Central Brazil.” Journal of Ethnobiology 1 (1): 165–174. https://ethnobiology.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/JoE/1-1/Posey1981.pdf. Pringle, Heather. 2011. “Earliest American Dogs May Have Been Dinner.” Science , May 6, 2011. https://www.science.org/content/article/earliest-american-dogs-may-have-been-dinner-rev2. Ritvo, Harriet. 1988. “The Emergence of Modern Pet-Keeping.” In Animals and People Sharing the World , edited by Andrew N. Rowen, 13–31. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Sandweiss, Daniel H., and Elizabeth S. Wing. 1997. “Ritual Rodents: The Guinea Pigs of Chincha, Peru.” Journal of Field Archaeology 24 (1): 47–58. Savage-Rumbaugh, E. Sue, Jeannine Murphy, Rose A. Sevcik, Karen E. Brakke, Shelly L. Williams, and Duane M. Rumbaugh. 1993. “Language Comprehension in Ape and Child.” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 58 (3–4): i–252. Serpell, James A. 1988. “Pet-Keeping in Non-Western Societies: Some Popular Misconceptions.” In Animals and People Sharing the World , edited by Andrew N. Rowen, 33–51. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Shipman, Pat. (2015) 2017. The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction . Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Snipes, Marjorie M. 1996. “When the Other Speaks: Animals and Place as Social Space in the Argentine Andes.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison. ProQuest (AAT 9636601). Spröer, Susanne. 2020. “Hitler’s Dogs, Göring’s Lions: How the Nazis Used and Abused Animals.” DW. June 8, 2020. https://p.dw.com/p/3dJUC. Taylor, Katy, and Laura Rego Alvarez. 2019. “An Estimate of the Number of Animals Used for Scientific Purposes Worldwide in 2015.” Alternatives to Laboratory Animals 47 (5–6): 196–213. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261192919899853. Thompson, Marc. 2008. “Itzcuintle: Ancient Mexican Dog Food.” In “Dogs in the Southwest,” special issue, Archaeology Southwest 22 (3): 9. Tidwell, James N. 1948. “Frogs and Frog-Eaters.” American Speech 23 (3–4): 214–216. Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1984. Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Willerslev, Rane. 2004. “Not Animal, Not Not -Animal: Hunting, Imitation and Empathetic Knowledge among the Siberian Yukaghirs.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10 (3): 629–652. Yon, Sophia. 2002. A New Perspective on Barking in Dogs ( Canis familiaris ). Journal of Comparative Psychology 116(2):189-93. Zorn, Elayne. 1995. “(Re-)Fashioning Identity: Late Twentieth-Century Transformations in Dress and Society in Bolivia.” In Contact, Crossover, Continuity: Proceedings of the Fourth Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, September 22–24, 1994 , 343–354. Los Angeles: Textile Society of America. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/1057/. Suggested Films Cave of Forgotten Dreams . 2010. Directed by Werner Herzog. Creative Differences. Eduardo the Healer . 1978. Directed by Richard Cowan. Serious Business Company. People of the Seal . 2009. Directed by Kate Raisz. NOAA Ocean Media Center.

Social Sciences


Introduction David Lewis, the author of this chapter, with a Kalapuya canoe donated to Grand Ronde Tribe by the Willamette Heritage Center. The canoe was found preserved in the clay of the Calapooia River in Oregon. (credit: Dean Rhode, Public Domain) The author of this chapter, David Lewis, explains his deep connection to the material: I, David Lewis, am the author of this chapter and a Native scholar—a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I am a descendant of the original Santiam Kalapuya, Takelma, and Chinook tribes of western Oregon. I connect the real-world problems facing Indigenous peoples to the overwhelming lack of knowledge about Native peoples held by most non-Native people in American society. I have experience researching Indigenous peoples throughout the Pacific Rim, but in my PhD work, I have focused on the Native peoples of Oregon. Scholars of Indigenous peoples will normally focus on one or a few Indigenous cultures in their work, but in any region, a cross section can be found of the sociopolitical themes present in a global context. Because of my research focus, this chapter contains mainly examples from Oregon and the Northwest Coast, with the inclusion of a few other case studies and examples from other regions. This chapter privileges North American subjects over global Indigenous subjects. Regardless of this focus, be aware that most of the topics discussed here exist in some form in all global Indigenous cultures, especially those that have undergone colonization and a struggle for sovereignty and rights, which include nearly all Indigenous peoples today.

Social Sciences


Indigenous Peoples Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Name different terms used for Indigenous peoples and describe the history and current connotations of each. Explain what is meant by the statement that Indigenous peoples have become minorities in their own lands. Define blood quantum and explain its current application. Explain what is meant by the phrases “urban Indian” and “reservation Indian” and describe social and cultural characteristics associated with each. Provide two examples of 20th-century challenges experienced by Native peoples in the United States. Explain the need for Native perspectives in studies about Native peoples, using the debate over oral histories as an example. Indigenous peoples are those peoples who are the original human populations of a land. They are also referred to as Native peoples, tribal peoples, tribes, First Nations peoples, and Aboriginal peoples. In the United States, they are often referred to as American Indians or Native Americans. The terms used to refer to Indigenous peoples are contextualized by the nation or territory they are a part of. For instance, in the United States as a whole, the more general term is currently Native Americans, but in the southwest portion of the United States, American Indians is quite common, while in Alaska and Canada these peoples refer to themselves as First Nations. Hawaiian Indigenous peoples prefer the term Hawaiian. In Mexico, Indigenous peoples are called la gente indígena de México . In Australia, the commonly accepted terms are Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples, referring to two broad but distinct cultural groups, and Indigenous Australians, referring collectively to both. Terms used for Indigenous peoples often reflect political, social, and economic systems. Indians is a term that was once very commonly used in the United States to describe the nation’s original inhabitants. The word is a significant part of the legal and political history of these peoples, appearing in hundreds of treaties and thousands of federal documents pertaining to legal rights. But many “Indian” people do not like the word because it was first imposed by Christopher Columbus, who mistakenly thought that his journey across the Atlantic Ocean had landed him in India. Pointing out that the term Indian is a case of mistaken identity, many Indigenous peoples prefer to be labeled by their specific tribal names. There is not one mind about which terms to use for Indigenous peoples. There are scholars who refuse to use words such as Indian and scholars who embrace the word. Some scholars advocate changing the use of the term Indian in history books and historical documents. However, changing historic texts alters the original expression and the meanings associated with it. To change terms in this context would literally change history and mislead students of this history. There has been another tendency in American culture to misuse the term Native American to refer to a single monoculture. The majority of Americans have never spent time with Native individuals or engaged in any studies of Native peoples and thus do not have any true knowledge of actual Indigenous cultures. Until recently, Native cultures and Native history have not been accurately covered in educational institutions. Only in the past decade has there been significant movement toward offering accurate characterizations of Native peoples in public schools in the United States. While this is a positive development, stereotyping of and even racism toward Native peoples remain. The most accepted and appropriate way to refer to any Indigenous person is to use their actual tribal association, if known, rather than a general term such as Native American. The scholarly debate over these words is somewhat separate from the way the terms are used in Native communities. Many Indigenous communities have no issue with the word Indian and think the whole debate over word choice is a distraction from the real-world problems that affect their communities, such as poverty, substance use issues, poor health care, and inadequate education. Minorities in Their Own Lands Indigenous peoples have become minorities in most countries because many colonizing peoples sought to eliminate them and practiced various strategies to reduce their power to control land and natural resources and even to maintain their cultures and identities. Historically, adult Indigenous people, and even some young people, were forced to work for colonizers, often doing hard labor or other menial tasks, without any opportunities to accumulate wealth or claim a position of higher class. Christianity in various forms was forced on Indigenous peoples through government policies. Children were either not offered any education at all or forced into boarding schools where they were required to adopt the colonial culture. In this manner, many Indigenous people lost touch with their cultural heritage, and most Indigenous groups dwindled in number, some disappearing altogether. This trend was particularly pronounced in Latin American countries. Most people living in these countries today have some Indigenous ancestry, but as Indigenous identities have been so discouraged, few openly identify with this portion of their heritage, choosing to focus on their White and/or Spanish identities. It is evident that assimilation pressures, the process of changing the culture of a person or group of people to some other culture, through socialization or education, have largely succeeded when remaining peoples who identify as Indigenous become minorities within their own native territories. Chemawa Indian Training School in Salem, Oregon (left) and members of the Chemawa Indian School battalion in 1914. (right) This boarding school was created in 1885 and is still operating today. Education policy before the 1970s focused on assimilating Native peoples. Current policies are more supportive of Native culture. (credit: left, “Chemawa Indian School, Winowa Hall, 5495 Chugach Street Northeast, Salem, Marion, OR” by Steve Viale/Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain; right, The Chemawa American /Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) Many Native Americans, along with members of other Indigenous groups such as the Maori of New Zealand, do not like to be categorized as minority groups in their own homelands. Native Americans in the United States and the Maori tribes of New Zealand have treaties and sovereign rights that accord them access to and ownership of resources that other immigrant minority groups do not have. Some federal funding for programs is allotted to “minority groups” as a whole, including Native peoples. The Native peoples meant to benefit from this funding have commented that this approach does not recognize the special relationships the treaty-bound Indigenous peoples have with the state. The Maori especially have asked not to be considered a minority group. Instead, they wish to claim rights granted them by the Treaty of Waitangi to the services and resources of the federal New Zealand government. This illustration, done by Maori artist Ōriwa Tahupōtiki Haddon, depicts Maori chiefs signing the Treaty of Waitangi with representatives of the British Crown in 1840. This treaty is recognized as granting the Maori people rights to the services and resources of the federal New Zealand government. (credit: “The Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi” by Ōriwa Haddon/Archives New Zealand/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Membership in a Tribal Community Tribal relations among mixed-race Indigenous people in the United States are governed according to a series of rights first created through federal laws and policies, then later adopted by individual tribal nations. Tribal nations now have the right to manage their own membership laws and policies, with each tribe setting its own blood quantum rules for membership. Blood quantum refers to a genealogical relationship to one’s original tribal people. Full-blooded Native people issue from parents who are both full-blooded members of a tribe, while half-blooded Native people have parents or grandparents who have at least 50 percent Native blood. A person can even be a full-blooded Native, with parents from two tribes, but be considered half-blooded by the tribe they are enrolled in because the tribe only acknowledges the Indigenous blood from the enrollment tribe (Ellinghaus 2017). Some of the terms for people of mixed heritage in the Americas are mestizo (common in Latin America) and Métis (common in Canada). Some nations, such as Canada, assign different rights to people of mixed Indigenous heritage; Métis communities are accorded different rights from First Nations communities. Although Indigenous heritage is preferred in most Native communities, the rate of outmarriage is such that pure Indigenous bloodlines are becoming rare. In the United States, most Native people have mixed heritage. An exception is the Navajo Nation , which has a significant number of full-blooded Navajo members due to its large population of more than 300,000 members. Normally, individuals have to prove they have a blood quantum of a certain percentage to enroll in a tribe. Some tribal policies require a strict accounting of only the bloodlines that originate within that tribe. Other tribes allow for any Indigenous blood as counting toward membership requirements. The latter policy is closer to the cultural practices followed by many Native peoples before they became wards of the federal government. It was common for many tribes to adopt people who moved into their area and took up their culture. In addition, marriage customs of all tribes, which disallowed marriage between individuals too closely related, encouraged members to marry outside of their village or tribe. Spouses brought into a village would be adopted without discrimination. In tribes in Oregon, women would more commonly go to their husbands’ villages. In other cultures, such as that of the Seneca of the Northeast, men would move to their wives’ villages. Some scholars view blood quantum as a means for the United States government to prevent people from claiming tribal heritage, ultimately causing tribes to self-terminate. This view is not shared by all tribal peoples. Blood quantum was written into most tribal constitutions in the 1930s as a means of determining tribal citizenships. This policy has caused numerous problems in contemporary communities, where tribal members sometimes attempt to marry their cousins in order to “marshal” their blood—that is, raise or maintain the percentage of blood quantum in their offspring (Nenemay 2005). Scholars have noted that most tribes will continue to lose members due to outmarriage unless membership requirements are changed, even though most blood quantum requirements are currently well below one-half. Many tribal communities are shifting policies so that individuals can claim tribal membership by establishing descent from an enrolled tribal member (Thornton 1997). Membership in the Grand Ronde tribe of Oregon requires a 1/16 blood quantum of Grand Ronde blood and an ancestor or parent who was on a tribal roll or record in the past. The tribe counts only genealogical connection to original tribal residents of the reservation. Unfortunately, many people have moved on and off the reservation over the years, and records have not been accurately maintained. Proving past residence on the reservation is difficult. In addition, more restrictive changes to the membership requirements since 1999 have reduced the number of members. One controversial change made in 1999 requires that the parent of a potential new member must have been enrolled in the tribe at the time of the prospective member’s birth. This change denies membership to the children of those who became members after having children and the children of those born during the period between 1956 and 1983, when tribal rolls were not maintained. One result has been split families, in which younger children born when their parents were on the tribal roll are deemed members, while their older siblings are not eligible for enrollment. The issue has become politicized at the reservation, with some enrolled members fearing that a flood of new enrollments would impact services and funds and others wanting to expand enrollment to allow more descendants into the tribe. These questions of identity, both political and social, will likely continue to excite debate in the coming decades, as many tribes acknowledge that unless they change membership requirements, they may cease to exist in the future. Tribal Groups and Communities Most Indigenous communities are extremely poor and face a number of challenges resulting from centuries of colonization, settlement, and exploitation. In the United States, Canada, and Australia, Indigenous peoples were forcibly relocated to reservations , often marginal lands “set aside” for Native peoples after European settlers and colonists claimed their original homelands. Many North American reservation communities have been, and continue to be, kept in a state of perpetual poverty. Reservations typically have few employment opportunities, high substance addiction and alcoholism rates, and high morbidity rates caused by long-term persistent poverty. Some tribes have been successful in making good education available to young people through successes in casino development and effective management of federal education grants, but there is a significant disparity of completion rates at all levels of education. A 2011 report by the Higher Education Research Institute found that among those enrolled in four-year degree programs, approximately 17 percent of Native students completed the degree within four years, compared to 45 percent of Asian students, 43 percent of White students, 26 percent of Latinx/Latina/Latino students, and 21 percent of Black students (DeAngelo et al. 2011, 10; see also Al-Asfour and Abraham 2016). In the United States, tribal reservations were historically prevented from developing their own industries by the Nonintercourse Act sections of the Trade and Intercourse Acts . This legislation made it illegal to sell products beyond the borders of a reservation, which were viewed in the same way as state borders. Tribes can petition Congress to approve a reservation-based industry, but the petition can take decades to be approved. Many reservations have languished for two centuries with few or no jobs or opportunities for Native peoples (Miller 2012). Those who leave reservations for jobs rarely return as full-time residents. Still, Indigenous people on reservations in the United States enjoy the comfort of living within their own cultures and face less discrimination in their communities than they would in White-dominated communities. People of mixed Indigenous heritage who can “pass” as White have often done so, thus abandoning their Indigenous ancestry. Many took advantage of opportunities to move to cities and get jobs as “White” people, enjoying the pay and social benefits that went along with those jobs and social identities. This path was followed by many Native people in the United States beginning in the later 19th century. The exodus to the cities reached a peak in the 1950s and 1960s following the United States’ termination of the status of 109 tribes. Termination refers to a US federal policy adopted in 1953 that voided the treaty agreements between the federal government and Native peoples. The US government then repossessed and sold reservation property in a process called liquidation. Terminated tribal peoples were released from reservation lifeways with no money or resources. They were no longer federally recognized Native peoples and had no rights to ask for federal services or assistance. Most of the tribes that underwent termination were restored beginning in the 1970s. Many of those who underwent termination moved to urban environments in search of work, resulting on populations of “ urban Indian ” communities. During World War II, the Keiser Shipyards in Portland employed a number of Native people, many of them women , who left regional reservations for work. The twentieth century trend of Native peoples moving to cities creating has resulted in significant populations of “urban Indians.” Today, the majority of Native people in the United States live in urban environments. This movement has created tensions within Indigenous communities. The phrase “urban Indian” has taken on negative connotations within some Indigenous contexts. Some “reservation Indians” accuse urban Natives of willingly giving up their status, land, and culture. While some urban Natives struggle with feeling disconnected from their tribal identities, many maintain a connection with reservation communities by visiting on weekends and holidays and participating in special events such as tribal government meetings. Urban Native communities typically include groups to benefit Native people, such as educational and culture-based organizations and civic-minded business associations. Many of these groups include people from various tribes who work together to plan community spiritual activities such as powwows , support urban Indigenous food systems, or serve on culture-based committees. Tribal nations often have offices in urban communities that offer services to their citizens and serve as a site of sovereign activities of the tribe. Indigenous-language learning groups are now quite common in urban centers, especially at universities and tribal offices. Universities in many ways form cultural centers for urban Indigenous people, offering Native centers, employing Indigenous scholars, and funding cultural activities and events. There are several tribal offices in Portland, Oregon, which has one of the largest concentrations of off-reservation Native people in the United States, with an estimated 40,000 people of Native descent. On the west side of town is the Portland-area office of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. This office hosts weekly cultural education programs called Lifeways, which are free to tribal community members, along with classes in wood carving, drawing, storytelling, and the Chinuk Wawa language. Other services offered to tribal members living in the Portland metro area include jobs programs, food distributions, and a large boardroom equipped for hosting formal meetings. Also in Portland are the offices of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians , the Native American Youth and Family Center education organization, the Oregon Native American Chamber of Commerce , and the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission . Portland is the site of community organizations such as the Bow and Arrow Culture Club, which hosts annual cultural gatherings and the large intertribal Delta Park Powwow. The radio station KBOO (90.7) consistently features Native programming. The Native population of Portland is a broad mixture of enrolled tribal people and unenrolled descendant people from throughout the United States. There are also large numbers of Indigenous peoples from other countries, with concentrations of Latina/Latino and Pacific Islander peoples. In addition, the Hawaiian community has deep roots in the region due to the inclusion of Hawaiian labor in the 19th-century fur trade of the Pacific Northwest. 20th-Century Challenges In the 20th century, some tribes grew self-sufficient or even wealthy by harvesting or extracting the natural resources on their reservations. The land of the Osage Nation of Oklahoma was found to contain vast reserves of underground oil. Members of the nation who had oil under their allotments became wealthy, so much so that some were among the wealthiest people on the planet during the height of the oil boom. But soon after acquiring this wealth, White neighbors began marrying into the tribe. Tribal members began being murdered, and authorities were slow to launch any investigations. Eventually, White relatives ended up owning much of the Osage lands. The story of the Osage murders is documented in several books, including Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, which was made into a motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese. An oil field in the town of Denoya, on the Osage Reservation. Although the discovery of oil on their lands initially brought some members of the Osage Nation considerable wealth, it also made them the target of unscrupulous White neighbors. Many Osage were murdered, with their White relatives coming into possession of their land and the petroleum beneath it. (credit: Oklahoma Historical Society/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) In a similar story, the Klamath tribe of Oregon established a very successful logging operation on their reservation in the early 20th century. The reservation included a million acres of ponderosa pine. The Klamath people established sawmills and sold the timber off the reservation, becoming quite wealthy. They even built an airfield on the reservation. But their prosperity did not last. The federal government had been serving as the bank administrator of the Klamath money and managing their profits. It became apparent that some money had gone missing and that the land was being poorly managed by federal agents. The tribe successfully sued the government for mismanagement, but they only received a percentage of the money they were owed. In the 1940s, tribal liquidation/termination began to be discussed with the Klamath people. Some Klamath people initially liked the idea of termination because it would free them from control by the federal government. They were initially told they would receive their reservation land, but the government later told them the land would be sold. Termination began in 1954. In 1961, the remaining unsold reservation lands were turned into the Winema National Forest. Klamath members were forced to leave their homelands and find employment in regional cities. The result of termination was that the Klamath lost their land and many rights as Native people. Their population was dispersed, making it difficult to keep the culture alive. By the 1960s, most of the tribal languages were extinct, and many people had lost connections with their tribal past. In the 1970s, some of the tribal elders, many who had remained in the vicinity of the original reservation, began activating for restoration. The tribe was restored in 1983 (Lewis 2009). An extreme example of the disenfranchisement of Native people is the movement of Indigenous peoples who were part of the Okie migration of the 1930s. The Okie migration was to the movement of people out of Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl crisis, in which agriculture yields collapsed due to drought and poor land management practices. Topsoil blew away in large clouds, and thousands lost their land and their jobs. These thousands included a large percentage of mixed-blood Native people. Those who could no longer earn a living farming the degraded land moved west in search of work in Arizona, California, Oregon, and other western states. These migrants led difficult lives, working at low-paying jobs and moving constantly in search of seasonal work. One result of this movement westward was a shift of Native populations to the West and a related collapse of tribal populations in Oklahoma. Among the artifacts of the Okie migration are photographs taken by federal workers who visited the migrant encampments. Likely the most famous of these images is the one now known as Migrant Mother , taken in 1936 by photographer Dorothea Lange . The subject of Lange’s photo has been identified as Florence Thompson, a Cherokee woman. Migrant Mother , one of the most famous photographs taken by Dorothea Lange, features a Cherokee woman, Florence Thompson. Like many people during this period, she and her family moved from place to place following farm work during the Dust Bowl crisis of the 1930s. (credit: “Destitute Pea Pickers in California. Mother of Seven Children. Age Thirty-Two. Nipomo, California” by Dorothea Lange/Library of Congress, Public Domain) By the 1970s, most Indigenous people in the United States were still very poor. In this period, a number of laws were passed to help Native people. These laws gave tribes the rights to control their cultures, educate their people, and administer their own foster care. These rights were difficult to act on, however, without financial resources. In the 1980s, tribes began seeking new ways of making money to take care of their citizens. In 1988, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act . This law allowed Native peoples to establish casinos on their reservations. The caveat is that tribes must “compact” with the state they reside in to secure the right to operate a casino. Many Indigenous people have criticized this stipulation, stating that needing to ask permission places them at a lower level of sovereignty than the states. According to the federal government’s own laws, tribal reservations are federal trust lands with sovereignty on par of that of the states. Still, most tribes have compacted with the states they reside within, agreeing as part of the compact to cede a percentage of casino profits to the state to aid with funding for services such as education and road maintenance. Tribal casino profits have made it possible for many tribes to establish fully operational governments that offer services and programs for their members in areas such as health care, housing, education, and jobs. There have been challenges to tribes’ rights to establish casinos, the most notable occurring in California during Arnold Schwarzenegger’s tenure as governor. Governor Schwarzenegger refused for years to meet with Native representatives to discuss a statewide casino compact, even after voters overwhelmingly approved tribal casinos twice. The tribes felt that Nevada casino operators, who could lose significant revenue from the competition, were influencing the California government. The tribes won a lawsuit in 1999, and many tribes subsequently signed compacts with the state. There have been continued lawsuits against California stating that the compacts require too large a portion of casino profits. Still, tribes in California now have the right to establish casinos, and the income is greatly improving services to tribal members. Morongo Casino Resort and Spa in Cabazon, California, operated by the Morongo Band of Cahuilla Mission Indians, is one of hundreds of tribal casinos across the United States. Many have incorporated cultural elements into their design, such as Morongo’s woven net design. (credit: “Morongo Casino Resort & Spa Is an Indian Gaming Casino, of the Morongo Band of Cahuilla Mission Indians, Located in Cabazon, California” by Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress, Public Domain) Perspectives Indigenous peoples have undergone some five centuries of colonization. During this time, the societal structures of the colonial states have emphasized the perspectives of non-Indigenous peoples, broadly identified as White people. Histories have been written to benefit White people, to support their colonizing cultures and to legitimize their takeover of vast territories from Indigenous peoples. Minority perspectives, including Indigenous perspectives , have not been emphasized and have even been sometimes intentionally repressed. Indigenous peoples have struggled with disempowerment in their sovereign relations with state systems and in legal proceedings over their sovereign rights. Many Indigenous peoples still struggle to prove that they are part of a legitimate nation. State-sponsored erasure of Native culture and history has caused losses of and changes to tribal cultures and languages. Beginning the later 20th century, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars have noted that history has long been presented in a way that is biased toward a White perspective. This bias has been critiqued as a form of systemic racism . In most academic institutions, until relatively recently, most if not all professors were White. There were few opportunities for Indigenous people to establish positions of influence over the presentation and study of Indigenous history and culture. Native studies programs began to be developed at various universities in the United States in the 1970s, a movement that coincided with greater opportunities for Indigenous scholars to conduct research on their own peoples. Indigenous people are now actively working to write their own histories and describe their cultures and philosophies from Indigenous perspectives. Indigenous scholarship has made great strides, but there is still a hesitancy in academia to allow Indigenous people to establish positions of authority or introduce Indigenous ways of thinking. Among the academic disciplines, anthropology in particular has made strong progress in recognizing the value and validity of Indigenous perspectives. An interesting example of recent changes in approaches to Indigenous perspectives is the ongoing debate over oral histories . For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Indigenous “myth texts” were collected from tribes and studied by anthropologists, linguists, and folklorists. Studies of this material typically utilized a linguistic or philosophical framework. The texts were understood, much like Greek mythology, as supernatural stories with a special focus on the godlike animals appearing in them, such as Coyote, Raven, and Blue Jay. Also of interest to early scholars of such texts were their performative aspects and the metaphorical commentary they offered about human existence. A debate emerged between some scholars such as Dell Hymes , who noted that the texts were most valuable as “original texts” or direct ethnographic translations, and others such as Claude Levi-Strauss , who concluded that there was no original text and every version was plagiarized from a previous storyteller. In this authenticity debate, the texts were treated as literature, with little recognition of the historical events appearing in many of the stories (Hegeman 1989). This inability to see the historical value of these texts reflects a bias toward written material and against knowledge presented via oral tradition . Read about how translations of oral histories are analyzed and updated in the online journal Quartux . David Lewis, the author of this chapter, discusses the loss of many native languages and reads translations of " A Kalapuya Prophecy ". Many of these assumptions about myth texts have changed in the past 70 years. One study of Crater Lake in Oregon, conducted by geologists in the 1940s, determined that the lake was on the site of what once had been a large volcano, Mount Mazama, known as Moy Yaina by the Indigenous people of the area. When the volcano exploded, the top of the mountain fell inside the cone and formed a caldera, which in time filled with water, resulting in Crater Lake. This event happened some 7,000 years ago. This established geological event is reflected in Indigenous oral traditions. A Klamath tribal oral history tells the story of two mountains, Moy Yaina and Mlaiksi (Mount Shasta in California), having a fight. The Klamath oral history clearly delineates a double volcanic event, with Moy Yaina and Mlaiksi erupting at the same time, but Moy Yaina erupted with a larger explosion and therefore lost the fight. Geological evidence of the explosion spoken of in this myth indicates that Klamath oral history does indeed reflect actual history. Similar oral histories of thousands of Indigenous peoples are now acknowledged to reflect many natural events, especially those that significantly changed the earth in some manner. Oral histories of tsunamis, Ice Age floods, volcanic eruptions, catastrophic fires, and other events are now acknowledged in the stories of many peoples. New understandings of the legitimacy of Indigenous oral histories are leading to increased research into numerous areas of Indigenous knowledge systems. Crater Lake, Oregon, and the remains of Mount Mazama. Wizard Island in the center is the original top of Mazama, having fallen into the volcanic cone some 7,000 years ago. A record of these geological events is evident in the oral traditions of Indigenous peoples native to this area. (credit: “Crater Lake National Park, United States” by Amy Hanley/Unsplash, Public Domain) Kalapuyan Traditional Ecological Knowledge Written by David Lewis. The Kalapuya of the Willamette Valley were native to the interior lands of western Oregon. The Willamette River and its tributaries drained the Willamette Valley and joined with the Columbia River in the vicinity of present-day Portland. The river served as a highway of trade and travel about the valley and to the trading center at Willamette Falls. The Kalapuya had salmon runs, but not the concentration of salmon fishery sites seen on the Columbia River. They did have expansive prairies and oak savannas that supported a vegetable-rich lifeway. Hunting of deer and elk was always a part of their lives, but they followed a lifestyle of camping at root-digging sites through the summers. Root camps would be established in midsummer near a camas field. They would dig camas for a week, then cook the camas in pit ovens while in the camp. The camas bulbs would cook for three to four days in the underground ovens, changing to a brown color. The cooked bulbs became sweet and were highly desired by the Kalapuya. Cooked camas would be stored in cool underground storage spaces or hung in plank houses for wintertime use. The Kalapuya would store many types of roots and grains in this manner and would also prepare dried salmon and meat for winter storage. In the fall, acorns and hazelnuts could be gathered, and in marshy lakes or the Willamette slough, wapato could be gathered in great quantities. Wapato, or Indian potato, would be stored or traded to other peoples for other foods and trade items. The Tualatin Kalapuya, a northern Willamette Valley tribe of Kalapuya, especially had much wapato at Wapato Lake as well as large amounts of oak savanna on the Tualatin plains. Almost all foods were gathered and prepared in the encampments and then brought back to the villages later. Acorns would be gathered, shelled, and left to rest in cool creeks to let the tannins leach out, then dried and ground into a meal. From this, the Kalapuya would create a mush cooked in woven baskets. Hazelnuts would be shelled and dried on hot rocks in the sun, then eaten on the spot or saved for later. Hazel switches would be harvested from the bushes to make strong baskets. At other times of the year, some Kalapuya would travel into the mountains to pick berries or gather weaving materials for making baskets. Baskets, hats, and large woven mats made from tules and cattails for sitting or lying on would be used by the maker or traded for other items. Most weaving materials would have to be dried for a year before being rehydrated and woven into a useful basket. The Kalapuya were very community oriented. If other Kalapuya or neighboring tribal peoples were starving, they would help them and feed them. Trade could happen at any time of the year, but in the winters, Kalapuya might approach neighboring tribes to trade for additional food or wealth items they desired. Dried and smoked salmon could be acquired from the Clackamas and Multnomah, who would prepare plenty when the salmon ran. From the Coos, they acquired seashells. The Klickitat had exceptionally good baskets, and the Chinook had canoes and prepared salmon as well as items from throughout the trading sphere of the Columbia River. The Kalapuya specialized in camas and root digging and were dependent on other tribes for quantities of other products. assimilation the process of changing the culture of a person or group of people to some other culture, through socialization or education. blood quantum a term first applied by the US federal government to determine which people had rights to services and land at reservations. The term has become a characteristic to define who is eligible for citizenship in a tribe, with membership open only to those who have a minimum blood quantum of Indigenous genealogical ancestry. boarding schools educational institutions established by federal authorities to efficiently educate and assimilate Indigenous children through an immersive environment. Indians a commonly used term for Native Americans first applied by Christopher Columbus, who mistakenly thought the Indigenous peoples he encountered were people of India. Indigenous peoples the original populations of a land and those who carry culture and experiences from an Indigenous culture. Indigenous peoples may also be referred to as Native peoples, tribal peoples, tribes, First Nations peoples, Aboriginal peoples, or American Indians or Native Americans. Maori the Indigenous peoples of New Zealand. mestizo Latin American term for a person of mixed heritage, normally Indigenous and Spanish or Indigenous and another White ethnicity. Métis Canadian term for a person of partial Indigenous heritage. A Métis person has different rights from a First Nations person. Native studies an educational discipline that originated from the critiques of studies of tribal communities by non-Native scholars. Native studies programs seek to center Indigenous knowledge and experience in studies of Indigenous peoples and societies. oral histories spoken, rather than written, narratives of past events. oral tradition cultural knowledge that is passed on through oral, rather than written, form. reservations lands given to Indigenous tribes as supposedly permanent places for their communities to live and practice their culture, usually through treaty or executive order. termination a US federal policy adopted in 1953 that involved voiding the treaty agreements between the federal government and Native peoples, enabling the government to repossess and sell property that had been part of reservations in a process called liquidation. Terminated tribal peoples are no longer federally recognized Native peoples and have no rights to ask for federal services or assistance. Between 1954 and the 1970s, 109 tribes underwent termination. Most were federally restored between the 1970s and the 1990s. Trade and Intercourse Acts federal laws that administer trade between states and across federal borders. The law affects the ability of Native nations to establish industries and sell products or services beyond their borders. urban Indian a Native person who lives in an urban environment; sometimes a negative title used by those living on reservations to refer to Native people who are assumed to have willingly given up their culture, land, and Native identities.

Social Sciences