Armstrong, Jeanette. 1996 “Sharing One Skin: The Okanagan Community.” Pp.460-470 in Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmiths (eds.), The Case Against the Global Economy, San Francisco, CA: Sierra Book Clubs.

Summary:

After reading “Sharing One Skin,” by Jeanette Armstrong I gathered some information I didn’t know about the Okanagan Community. Jeanette is from Okanagan, her mother is a river Indian from the Kettle Falls, while her father is mountain people in the Okanagan Valley. The Kettle River people were in charge of fisheries while her father’s people were hunters. Although she is associated with her father’s side she also had her rights and responsibilities to the river people through her mother. This story gives a bit of understanding of how she’s trying to bring the whole society to see the deeper connections to the environment and our role here on earth.

My understanding of the story is that identity plays a big role in her story. Identifying oneself can have multiple meanings. In her story she talks about the Four Capacities of Self; the physical self, the emotional self, the thinking-intellectual self, and the spiritual self. “These four capacities have an equal importance in the way we function within and experience all things. They join us to the rest of creation in a healthy way.”(463) In this section of her story I shared some connections to these capacities of self in a way that made me understand what makes us feel and see the things we encounter on a daily basis. Many times I question myself of these actions or sights seen and this section gave me a bit of understanding of how we function and experience all things. My interpretation of the four capacities of self starts with the physical self which is the whole self that depends entirely on the parts of us that’s beyond our skin. The emotional self is a capacity to form a bond with the certain aspects of our surroundings. The thinking-intellectual self is the part like the storage of memory that holds the traditional methods of education.

Scherer, Mark R. “Native Americans and Self-Determination.” Challenges of the Contemporary World, 1933 to the Present, Facts On File, 2016. American Indian History, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=18626&itemid=WE43&articleId=381626. Accessed 10 Feb. 2021.

Summary:

In this article by Mark R. Scherer “Native Americans and Self-Determination,” he discusses how self-determination was placed as a fundamental principle to help guide Indian relations. In 1968 President Lyndon Johnson acknowledged a new approach proposing self-determination as a framework in the course correction of the Native American policies. President Johnson administration’s put effort into generating greater Indian autonomy specifically developing and managing their own services and programs. Although with his term coming up this progress would have to be passed down to the next, Richard Nixon, given with his tarnished reputation it may be hard to see some progress with this approach. Nixon continued to make policies that marked a crucial importance to the development in Native American history. These policies continue to shape the relationship between the federal government and tribal nations till this very day.

My interpretation of this article is how the federal government continues to commit to strengthening of Native American political and cultural autonomy. Scherer says, although “tribes continue to deal with a host of other ongoing concerns, including housing inadequacies, insufficient economic development, chronic medical and health service deficiencies, still-inadequate educational facilities and practices, mismanagement and corruption in the handling of trust accounts, controversial child welfare and adoption issues, threats to hunting and fishing rights, and the pain of racial stereotyping resulting from non-native use of Native American imagery.” Many of these listed concerns are going on today among Native communities and it’s a struggle when the leader doesn’t remain vigilant and united to preserve, enhance and utilize our cherished sovereign rights. Ensuring that a community has a leader who will do everything in their power to show that they will do right by the community is hard when we have a system that appoints the governor. Maybe ensuring that the one who chooses views the person’s credentials before appointment because we wouldn’t want someone who we can’t trust, hold accountable, or won’t show community development.

Johnson, Troy R. "Red Power Movement." The American Mosaic: The American Indian Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2021, americanindian.abc-clio.com.sfis.idm.oclc.org/Search/Display/1388084. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021.

Summary:

In Troy Johnson’s article the Red Power Movement is used as the term “Red Power” to describe the Indian civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Explicitly it’s demands of Native American activists for equality, self-determination, and the restoration of the landed estate and traditional hunting, fishing, and movement privileges. Despite the fact that many non-Natives saw self-determination and the continuation of the trust status as mutually exclusive, self-determinationists were persuaded that Native communities needed the trust status to shield them from non-Native majority governments at the state and local levels.

In 1972, activists Hank Adams of the “fish-ins” and Dennis Banks of the American Indian Movement organized the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” traveled to D.C, to demand the complete revival of tribal sovereignty by repeal of the 1871 ban on future treaties, restoration of treaty-making status to individual tribes, along with other demands. To enforce these demands they invaded and trashed the BIA offices in Washington D.C. Self-determinationists hope that by improving reservation wealth economically, Native people would be able to enjoy a higher standard of life without jeopardizing their cultural identity or tribal unity.