We met to discuss chapters 3 and 4 in To Remain an Indian. Amy went through the two chapters explaining how the authors discussed how the arts and songs were "domesticated" to create the "safe zone" around notions of the Other as Native American. The chapters also discussed how N-A's carved out spaces of "Indian-ness' despite such efforts at domestication and cultural oppression.
We then talked a little about what methodology this book represented as an "exemplar." We talked about interpretivism, document analysis, and phenomenology before talking more at length about Foucauldian lenses- particularly the conscious weaving of story and "fact" to trouble an "official" history as well as the authors stated desire to "find the overlooked, recovering what has been suppressed, and recognizing the unexpected requires excavation, rehabilitation, and imagination. All history does." (pg 15).
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
March 6th Notes
March 6th Notes:
We began our review of To Remain an Indian today. Jay reviewed the
introduction. The text focuses on the ways in which we sue policy to make
things safe-in this case, Native American culture. The introduction
reviews the methodological underpinnings of the text. The authors use
archival records, life histories, indigenous cultural ethnographies,and
their information as partial insiders and outsiders of Native American
culture to weave together a narrative. The ultimate goal of the text is
to understand the ways in which policies have intersected with Native
American agency to determine the ability to which a Native American can
"remain an Indian." We split up the chapters and will be reviewing them
over the course of the next several weeks.
We also discussed the implications of post-structuralism and the idea of
the person as political. This week we talked about testimonios and
journals as qualitative inquiry. We questioned how far qualitative
inquiry can go before it is not longer considered valid. If a journal is
a cultural text, than everything is a cultural text. While we did not
disagree with this fact, we wondered where the line is in terms of actual
lived experiences. Examples in the text include fabricated
testimonios-the story was not actually experienced. Since it was not a
true event, is it really a valid text? Or is it valid based on its
ability to transform and empower individuals? We hope to explore this
further in class.
We began our review of To Remain an Indian today. Jay reviewed the
introduction. The text focuses on the ways in which we sue policy to make
things safe-in this case, Native American culture. The introduction
reviews the methodological underpinnings of the text. The authors use
archival records, life histories, indigenous cultural ethnographies,and
their information as partial insiders and outsiders of Native American
culture to weave together a narrative. The ultimate goal of the text is
to understand the ways in which policies have intersected with Native
American agency to determine the ability to which a Native American can
"remain an Indian." We split up the chapters and will be reviewing them
over the course of the next several weeks.
We also discussed the implications of post-structuralism and the idea of
the person as political. This week we talked about testimonios and
journals as qualitative inquiry. We questioned how far qualitative
inquiry can go before it is not longer considered valid. If a journal is
a cultural text, than everything is a cultural text. While we did not
disagree with this fact, we wondered where the line is in terms of actual
lived experiences. Examples in the text include fabricated
testimonios-the story was not actually experienced. Since it was not a
true event, is it really a valid text? Or is it valid based on its
ability to transform and empower individuals? We hope to explore this
further in class.
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