Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
unique and thought provoking, November 30, 2004
Indians in the Making is a comprehensive study of the complicated and ambiguous development of ethnic identity among Indian groups in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. The scope of this work is approximately the early 1800s to 1975, and examines the social, economic, religious, and political developments and entities that attempted to define the native population of this region. Before European contact, Indians saw no need to categorize themselves, and had no basis for comparison. With the influx of traders and, more importantly, immigrants to the region in the mid 19th century, Americans saw the need to sort Indians into groups and separate them from non-Indians. For the first time, Indians found themselves ascribed a certain identity from outside forces. Americans believed it was this ascribed identity that would determine what place Indians would have in the American world. However, due to factors such as constant mobility, intermarriage, intermingling, and dispersed settlements, the distinction between Indians and non-Indians became blurred. Ironically, since the 1880s, U.S. officials "set the parameters of Indian identity for purposes of political and property relations, but they have never monopolized the process of defining `Indian' or `tribe.'" (247) Indians in the Puget Sound region have historically refused to define themselves solely in the terms suggested by their American colonizers. Thus, the historically divergent interests and beliefs of various Indian groups in this region have made efforts to consolidate a Puget Sound Indian identity extremely difficult. In the 20th century, the debate about century old treaty fishing rights helped forge a historical and cultural link between these diverse groups. The "treaty-reserved right to fish became the best expression of their relation to non-Indians, and thus, a cardinal symbol of their own Indianness." (218) However, the idea of what it is to be Indian in this region remains a dynamic process.
Indians in the Making presents a unique study on the idea of "identity." Harmon allows the reader to process events as they were processed by the Indians of Puget Sound. The differences between the ways in which Americans viewed certain actions or relationships and the Indian interpretation are clearly spelled out. This approach provides the other side to the story that is so often missing in Indian History. One aspect that could have been explored further was gender relations. Harmon focused on the interaction between groups of men far more than women, except when discussing intermarriage. Harmon conducted extensive research for this book, and offers almost 100 pages of notes after the text. The historical factors that contributed to Puget Sound Indian identity are thoroughly explored, but the account isn't too laden with details. Harmon examines the Indian identity for what it is, as well as for what it is not. Too often, ethnic identity is defined by the policy makers, but in this case, the author examines the ways in which a group has sought to define themselves.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Interesting, but not for the uninitiated, August 29, 2006
What makes an American Indian and Indian, and why is it important? These are the two overarching questions which inform Professor Harmon's study of the tribes of the Puget Sound region in Washington State from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. Combining a narrative description of the events which led to the relative subjugation of tribes and their negotiation of their members status as government wards and American citizens with a legal and economic analysis of the part that native peoples played in Washington state, Harmon goes a good way towards showing how the Amer-Indian identity came to be, why it did. Furthermore, Harmon's study goes a long way in showing how interplay between natives and whites created the situation in which most Indians live today.
This is not only a book about the interplay between whites and Indians though. By showing the intermingling of the various tribes before, during and after their subjugation by the American government, Harmon goes a long way in explaining how Indian identity was created not only by the dominant white societies over generalizing of difference and government sponsored attempts to assimilate most natives, but by the overlapping kinship between tribes (and later with whites). This fact, besides having important legal ramifications that Harmon found herself dealing with as an attorney for the Suquamish tribe in a boundary dispute with the state of Washington in 1980, has extreme relevance for the study of how native peoples in the west have negotiated their existence as both groups and individuals. Also, by exploring the cultural norms of the tribes as they came into contact, Harmon shows how native peoples were able to take advantage of opportunities which the economic development brought in its wake to advance many traditional values associated with having wealth and status. For the natives of the Puget Sound region, as opposed to those on the Prairies or in the East, the expansion was not an unmitigated disaster--though it certainly was not a dinner party either.
Harmon's analysis of Indian history involves creative use of anthropology and historical documentation. In her recreation of life in the Puget Sound region while it was still considered the frontier, Harmon shows a world in which of whites and natives from other areas of North America were seen through the lenses of opportunity, apprehension and simple curiosity. As Harmon explains with regard to the British fur traders--known among the tribes who would come into contact with them as King George men--who came to the region in early nineteenth century, "[a]ccording to local folklore, Europeans at first seemed so different from known humans that Indians supposed them to be animals or creatures from myth time," but, "by the 1820's, natives plainly recognized the King George men as fellow humans, candidates for incorporation into the regional network of human relations (17)." Harmon further demonstrates that for much of the nineteenth century, traders, and later settlers had to acclimate themselves to many of the expectations and values of the native peoples because of the lack of many institutional forms of coercion that would not invite retaliation. Differing attitudes about crime, work habits, spiritual matters, and what to do with the fruits of labor are among the many conflicts that shaped Indian and non-Indian relations during this period and helped to create an Indian identity.
During the twentieth century, most natives came into coercive contact with American institutions in ways that would further advance an Indian identity, and also advance its utility for natives. Most younger Indians found themselves at least for some time at federally backed schools and mission schools with government backing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though the goals of these schools was to assimilate natives, they had the unintentional effect of placing a large number of people together whose only unifying feature was their native descent. Harmon writes, "the pupils' interaction helped them formulate a common Indian identity. Diverse as they were, the children were at the schools because the administrators regarded them all as Indians (156)." As much as many of the children and their parents may have, rightfully, resented the treatment that was meted out at these schools, it was unavoidable that the children would gain a sense of identity as non-whites--possibly with divergent or oppositional interests.
It was not inevitable that native peoples' would form an identity that became in some important respects oppositional to the dominant culture. Harmon shows that the native peoples were largely integrated into the economy of Washington state and that discrimination against Indian workers was not a problem until the late 1920's. This was not actually what precipitated the creation of the myriad organizations which would come to represent native interests, nor the reactions of Bureau of Indian Affairs under the tutelage of John Collier--the so called "Indian New Deal"--but these three forces combined to further enforce an Indian sense of difference by way of the dominant society. With World War II uprooting thousands of Indian men for both military service and economic reasons and Washington state's post-war attempts to abrogate treaty rights of several tribes using the (often specious) argument that the tribal entities the treaties were negotiated with no longer existed, Indian identity further crystallized around an understanding of being unfairly exempted from the American dream and being further stripped of rights legally accorded them--rights that many depended on to earn or augment their livelihoods.
Harmon's study is not easy reading--not because of its subject matter or because of any fault of her's as a writer, but because of the amount of knowledge about native history it presumes on the part of the reader. For the reader unfamiliar with native history and western history more specifically, much of this book is difficult fare. Beyond that minor flaw, a flaw unavoidable to any specialized study, the work is an insightful look at what it is to be an Amer-Indian.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
|
