Enduring Nations: Native Americans in the Midwest

by R. David Edmunds (Editor), Bradley J. Birzer (Contributor), Brenda J. Child (Contributor)

Enduring Nations documents how tribal peoples have adapted to cultural change while shaping midwestern history. Examining the transformation of Native American communities, which often occurred in response to shifting government policy, the contributors explore the role of women, controversial tribal enterprises and economies, social welfare practices, and native peoples' frequent displacement to locations such as reservations and urban centers. Central to both past and contemporary discussions of Native American cultural change is whether Native American identity should be determined by genetics, shared cultural values, or a combination of the two.

Contributors are Bradley J. Birzer, Brenda J. Child, Thomas Burnell Colbert, Gregory Evans Dowd, R. David Edmunds, Brian Hosmer, Rebecca Kugel, James B. LaGrand, Melissa L. Meyer, Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, Alan G. Shackelford, Susan Sleeper-Smith, and Stephen Warren.

283 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

A specialist in the history of Native American people and the American West, R. David Edmunds is Professor Emeritus of American History at the University of Texas in Dallas. The author or editor of ten books and over one hundred essays, articles, and other shorter publications, Edmunds' major works have been awarded the Francis Parkman Prize, the Ohioana Prize for Biography, and the Alfred Heggoy Prize of the French Colonial Historical Society. Edmunds has written extensively upon Native American-White relations in the 18th and 19th centuries, and has served as a consultant in the production of over a dozen films or documentaries produced for PBS, the History Channel and commercial television. Edmunds has held advisory positions with numerous museums and federal agencies, and has served as an advisor to the Smithsonian Institution, The Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the National Park Service, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the ACT and LSAT testing services and The Newberry Library. During 1990-91 he served as the Acting Director of the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library. He has taught at the University of Wyoming, Texas Christian University, The University of California at Berkeley, U.C.L.A. and Indiana University.

Edmunds is the past-president of both the American Society of Ethnohistory (2002-03) and the Western History Association (2006-07). In 1998, he received the Award of Merit from the American Indian Historians Association, and in 2007 he received the Jeff Dykes Award for contributions to Western History from Westerners International. Edmunds serves as a "Distinguished Lecturer" for the Organization of American Historians. His current research focuses upon the history of Native American identity, Native Americans on the Great Plains and Native American biography.

Reviews

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my Native American History class.

I learned quite a bit about the Native American tribes that once lived in my area as well as the tribes that are still living here. I recommend this it's short academic articles on the tribes from the Midwest. I enjoyed reading this.

[Stephen Case · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Native American studies there is apparently no book-length treatment that examines the history of Indians in the Midwest up to the present day. (Though one of the strengths of this book—like any good doorway into a new subject—was the huge number of resources it offered for exploring further.) This collection of articles answers this need a patchwork way. There are articles on the pre-history of peoples in the Midwest and information on how the first tribes migrated to this region and who was here before them (notably the mound builders responsible for Cahokia Mound outside St. Louis). There are a few articles that explore the culture of the métis (individuals of mixed French-Indian heritage) that flourished in the area before the War of 1812, a largely Catholic culture that arose from contacts and exchange with French fur traders and that was mainly ignored by American settlers who poured into the region and recognized only the binary racial categories of red and white. It includes examinations of the lives of specific individuals and their role in the narrative of forced departure—what happened to the Miami of Ohio, for instance, and even down to modern times with discussion of Indian communities in Chicago and Obijwe (Anishinaabe) communities around the Great Lakes through the Great Depression. There is even a modern analysis of the role of gaming (gambling) in the Menominee reservation of Wisconsin.

It’s a collection of narratives by different scholars of different aspects of Indian life in the Midwest during different periods. Perhaps that’s its greatest strength, because the narratives of such peoples could not be unified—or at least not naturally and not easily. A single narrative is the danger of so much of our own history: progress, westward expansion, civilization. Such grand unified narratives efface complexities that this book helps unearth.