Reddit mentions: The best native american demographic studies

I would really like to read what others have to say! I even decided to look up in the book I use to teach Intro to Anthropology and there's no definition of wealth! Egad! Checked some of the other intro-like textbooks and there's no definition either!


In any case, I am even more interested in the "maximizing utility/fun".

It's been a loooong time since I took a full blown Economics class (we talk about Economics in Anthropology, but always from an anthro perspective).

>The more technology an individual has the more varieties of goods can be consumed and hence welfare would be better

This is assuming then that fun and utility lie within goods (and not just goods but a variety of them). I think this is a troublesome perspective, and centered in modern industrialized notions of an economy.

But, your question takes me to the notion of an "Original Affluent Society" by Marshall Salihns^1 ^2 . He defined affluence as having more than enough of what you need to satisfy your consumption needs (notice how "wealth", a modern notion, is avoided). You create affluence by either:

1. producing a lot (like Western capitalist society)
   or
   
2. desiring little (like many hunter-gatherer societies)
   
   So, for example, Robert Lee^3 studied the Ju/'hoansi --his study was one of the inspirations for Sahlins' "Original Affluent Society". Lee found that they spent around 20 hours per person per week collecting what they need to consume (food)-far less time than agricultural and industrialist societies (although you can argue that they don't spend as much time in collecting food, but in collecting what they need -money or goods-- to then get food and other foods).
   
   So, foraging societies use their culture to construct a niche where they desire less, but all they desire is fulfilled, in abundance, by their environment.
   
   
   To directly answer your questions:
   
   >What is the definition of wealth?
   
   It seems there is an idea that wealth follows the layman notion of having an excess of what is valuable in a society. So a variety of goods, although valuable in US culture, might not be as valuable as in other places. Although, we can talk about how that might be influenced through culture contact --that's for another post!
   
   >Is a technologically improved society better off than a hunter-gather/primitive one?
   
   I think this is a loaded question. "Better off" is qualitative and subjective. If you are placing value on the variety of goods and the consumption of goods, then I guess a "technologically improved" society is better off. If you take into consideration the cultural norms that dictate how the society values, then probably they are on the same playing field --each society in their own contexts.
   
   
   Disclaimer: Many have critiqued that Lee and others only considered food acquisition as work and did not take into consideration food processing and cooking. From wiki^4:
   
   >When total time spent on food acquisition, processing, and cooking was added together, the estimate per week was 44.5 hours for men and 40.1 hours for women, but Lee added that this is still less than the total hours spent on work and housework in many modern Western households^5.
   
   
   Edit: I think the last paragraph in the first link I provided nails it:
   
   Assuming poverty as a lack of wealth:
   
   >The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo.

First Nation? Second Thoughts by Tom Flanagan is probably the most representative book on the conservative (small c) view of Indigenous issues; I know some people have a negative opinion towards Flanagan, but this work is great by most academic standards and I think it's a must read for anyone interested in Indigenous issues.

Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State by Alan Cairns. This was Cairns response to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal's people. Again, I think it's a must read to learn more about the various perspectives about Indigenous issues.

Wasase: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom by Taiaiake Alfred. Alfred is probably the most "extreme" in terms of his vision for Indigenous peoples in Canada, but he's a must read.

Unjust Society by Harold Cardinal. This book provides the greatest insight into why the White Paper was met with opposition from Indigenous peoples and to Indigenous issues in general (it's a little older, but if you were to read one book out of all the ones I recommended this would be it)

Governing from the Centre: The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics by Donald Savoie. I haven't read this one yet (I hope to soon) so I can't speak to how it is, but I've been told it's a great book. It basically looks at how the federal government has become increasingly centralized into the PMO

EDIT: If you go to university/college and have free access to academic journals you should look in those. There are so many interesting articles and are less time consuming than books. Here's a directory of open access journals, but keep in mind not all of these journals are of "top quality"

My first year in the Master's program I took a seminar in Culture and Economy. We had a pretty good stack of books we read through out the semester. I highly recommend these.

Stephen Gudeman- The Anthropology of Economy

Wilk and Cligget- Economies and Cultures: Foundations of Economic Anthropology 2nd Ed

Marshall Sahlins- Stone Age Economics

Karen Ho- Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street

Colloredo-Mansfeld- The Native Leisure CLass: Consumption and Cultural Creativity in the Andes

Nancy Munn- The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim Society

Michael T. Taussig- The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America

Taussig is a great writer. Wilk and Cligget's book is good for basic foundations Economic Anthropology. Karen Ho's book is also a great institutional ethnography as well. Happy Reading!

All right. Just went through my library and the following stood out to me:


Desert Solitaire (1968) by Edward Abbey: One of the best American voices for conservation spent some seasons as a park ranger in the desert southwest. Here are some brilliant, funny, and soundly critical musings inspired by his time there.


A Continuous Harmony (1972) & The Unsettling of America (1977) by Wendell Berry: In my opinion, Wendell Berry is the best cultural critic we've ever had. He's 86 now and still a powerful voice of reason in a chaotic society. Dismissed mistakenly by fools as someone who just wants to go back to the old days, he offers much-needed critiques on our decomposing relationship to the land and what it's been doing to our culture.


Night Comes to the Cumberlands (1962) by Harry M. Caudill: This Kentucky native saw what the predatory and morally bankrupt coal industry had done to the people and land (and the relationship between the two) in Appalachia and outlined how it all happened in powerful inarguable detail. This book serves as a stern warning about what chaos and destruction industries can bring forth when profit is their only concern. Anyone wondering why Appalachia is full of depressed drug addicts can find the roots of those issues in this book, which inspired The War on Poverty.

The Big Sky (1947) by A.B. Guthrie Jr. : A classic novel about a young kid who runs away to join the fur trade in the frontier days. It tells a very believable story, rather than chasing the overblown myths of the West like most novels dealing with that subject.

Shantyboat (1977) & Payne Hollow by Harlan Hubbard: He and his wife Anna built a truly rewarding and pleasant life together almost entirely independent of modern industrial society in the 1940s and 50s, first floating down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers on a shantyboat they built, living from temporary gardens and trading with people they met along the river, and then settling into Payne Hollow where they lived a realer-than-Thoreau existence together for decades. True love, and true meaningful living.

Of Wolves and Men (1978) by Barry Lopez: Rogan seems to think he's some kind of authority on wolves and I cringe every time I hear him start talking about them. It doesn't begin and end with "These are savage fucking predators that need to be controlled!" He seriously needs to read this book, which is a beautifully-written and exhaustive look at the history of the relationship between human and wolves. Like most interesting things, it is a complex issue.

My Life With The Eskimo (1909?) by Vilhjalmur Stefansson: The accounts of an ethnologist traveling through the arctic before much contact had been made between Europeans and Natives. Incredible stories of survival and the inevitable interesting situations that occur when two vastly different cultures meet.

The Marsh Arabs (1964) & Arabian Sands (1959) by Wilfred Thesiger: This dude went deep. Deep into the marshes of Southern Iraq and deep into the Empty Quarter of Arabia. Both books are amazing accounts of voyages through incredible parts of the world whose geography and people have since been changed forever.

The Mountain People (1972) by Colin M. Turnbull: This anthropologist lived with the Ik in Uganda as they went through a complete cultural disintegration brought on by starvation during a drought. Reading this, one sees how quickly complete tragic anarchy takes hold when basic resources are in desperate need. Humanity went out the window.

Let me know if you ever read any of these, and how you like them. I would bet they provide anyone with good food for thought and discussion.

You should read specifically about the Pubeloan cultures there! It's some really interesting stuff. Dine history is much more recent in NM, but their tribal government, land base and political stories are also great reading materials. My favorite college professor wrote The Navajo Political Experience, which is unfortunaly pretty expensive, but goes through Dine history and politics up until today.

I wish I was in NM right now... Green chili, mmmm.

I just got home, so I'm a little late finding this, but I do have a handy list of books that you might find useful. You might also try the library and used book stores in the area. If you're lucky, there might be a university library or an LGBT bookstore nearby, and these are good places to look for scholarly books.

Here's the list, Hidden From History is probably going to be most useful for you:

• Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way
  
• The Bisexual's Guide to the Universe
  
• Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past
  
• Trans-Gendered: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith
  
• Becoming Two-Spirit

> There's something wrong with you if you don't see what's wrong with that subreddit.

That's an easy way to marginalize my view without providing any substantial counter-arguments why your proclamation is true.

> You waste your time harassing people for making unPC comments you don't like

Maybe you need to read about the monstrous history behind those "unPC" comments.

> There's nothing nice or fun about you.

Yeah, there's nothing nice or fun about institutionalized, systematic rape, forced sterilization, and cultural genocide. It's beyond repulsive when the destruction of culture has been codified into law.

> That subreddit is worthy of study as a psychosis.

Questioning the sanity of people has been a long-time attempt to quiet people who challenge others' worldviews. I find it very ironic that you insinuate that partipants of that subreddit suffer psychosis. History shows us that white supremacy isn't some insane, extremist view--no, in fact, the supremacy of whiteness pervades our everyday life. As a minority, I can tell you how subtle forms of the ascendancy of "white" values trump many other cultures' values. The logic that white people/westerners use is circular. "Our values are better because we're better because our values are better because we're better because our values are better...so screw everyone else's way of life/cultural values and practices!" Believe that your values are better isn't wrong in and of itself--but asserting that and then forcing "lesser" people to conform to your way of life IS wrong.

I've attempted to address your properly, and all you've done is insult and call into question SRS's sanity. That doesn't sound very mature to me. In fact, it appears you are, to borrow your own words, "recoiling into a repugnant immaturity."

Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso is my recommendation. The first anthropology book that opened up my mind to just how different another culture can be from my own. Amazing journey through the language and culture of the Apache people.

On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WV9WV8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

If you're looking for inspiration, these two books are great places to start:

https://www.amazon.com/State-Native-Nations-Conditions-Self-Determination/dp/0195301269

https://www.amazon.com/Rebuilding-Native-Nations-Strategies-Development/dp/0816524238/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TF9GCDSDMVKDAX8FZ04B

Check your local library, they may also have those books. If you live on Rosebud Sinte Gleska should have them, or they can get them on loan from one of the other SD universities.

dehydratedpink and timdiggerm are right, I explained briefly above.

I don't know exactly how the question of impotence relates with the semen. It might, seeing how semen is a male lifeforce that make you "strong" but I don't recall exactly if it's part of the symbolism. On the other, I do tend to remember that speaking of bedroom woes in public is a huge no-no to them, and it's a tool sometimes used by women to shame their husbands, who on occasion will hang themselves if the woman goes too far.

Papua NG is amazingly interesting if you like to see how intricate and diverse human society can be. Even as a layman, just out of curiosity it's worth reading a couple of books. This one is really good for a general and accessible overview of the Baruya.

EDIT: Also, he is not always that much older. Sometimes the age difference is only a few years. The "uncle" thing can be deceiving because we are so used to the older uncles in our systems.

If you're looking for a good, accessible non-partisan book written by an actual lawyer, rather than something written by "Canada's leading public intellectual"(tm), I strongly recommend Resource Rulers: http://www.amazon.ca/Resource-Rulers-Fortune-Canadas-Resources/dp/0988056909 Level-headed, detailed presentation.

I respect your point of view, but I still disagree. People don't at some point reach an age where they are able to understand complex situations. They encounter complex situations and see how others deal with complex situations over and over until they are able to understand them. They learn by doing and copying, not by suddenly comprehending.

Ok, that paragraph doesn't make a huge amount of sense. Said another way: Anthropologists have learned that children who're given more responsibility at a young age are more responsible (myriad examples exist, but I'm thinking on Thunder Rides a Black Horse, an ethnography about the Apache people). Margaret Mead also studied this extensively, noting that cultures who have a single ceremony which signifies coming of age (sometimes as young as 8 or 9) have fewer generational problems. The ceremony distinguishes the person as an adult in every way, both with regards to responsibility and respect.

There are many adults, who cannot handle religious diversity. It is not because they're not old enough. It is because they have never been forced to think outside of their own belief structure. This should be done at an early age, in my opinion. Not only would I want my kids to be taught about religions early on. I want other people's kids to be taught the same!

These two ethnographies are easy/pleasant reads, frequently used in undergraduate courses:

• Marjorie Shostak, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman
  
• Jean L. Briggs, Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family
  
  Ethnographies written almost solely for the purpose of introducing hunter-gatherer societies to college freshmen/sophomores include ...
  
  
• Richard B. Lee, The Dobe Ju/'Hoansi
  
• Colin Turnbull, The Mbuti Pygmies: Change and Adaptation
  
• James F. Downs, The Two Worlds of the Washo: An Indian Tribe of California and Nevada
  
• E. Adamson Hoebel, The Cheyennes: Indians of the Great Plains
  
• N. A. Chance, The Iñupiat and Arctic Alaska: An Ethnography of Development
  
• Hart, Pilling, & Goodale, The Tiwi of North Australia
  
• Robert Tonkinson, The Mardu Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia's Desert
  
  These teaching ethnographies have been around for decades, so while they don't reflect current scholarship, it should be possible to pick them all up for a couple of bucks each, and I think you'd get a lot out of browsing them that's lost in comparative work.

I am a Native American Studies minor at the University of Maine. The books I have read so far and have enjoyed are

Native American Voices: A Reader https://www.amazon.com/dp/0205633943/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_tTEDCbVFEN1HC

Indians in Eden: Wabanakis and Rusticators on Maine's Mt. Desert Island https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BF8M54K/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_3TEDCbXPGCEXV

Women of the Dawn https://www.amazon.com/dp/080328277X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_KUEDCbY1AKYKK

These are more relative to Northeastern Tribes but I highly recommend the first book. It is an overview of Indigenous across both continents.

Carlisle School was only one of many similar schools. You might be interested in this book which goes into some of the first person experiences Native children faced in these schools.

The State of the Native Nations: Conditions under U.S. Policies of Self-Determination by Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development is a decent book with a large overview of the things you are looking for.

And Rebuilding Native Nations: Strategies for Governance and Development by Miriam Jorgensen is also a good choice.

Both of these books come from a policy position, but have Native voices within them and contain a variety of examples.

One excellent series is The Slaveholding Indians by Dr. Annie Heloise Abbel. It was written in 1915, but it hold up well as an excellent account of the different Southern tribes that owned slaves and fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

https://www.amazon.com/Slaveholding-Indians-Vol-Slaveholder-Secessionist/dp/1481259717

Here is one: https://www.mqup.ca/blog/secwepemc-people-land-laws/

Here is another one: https://www.amazon.ca/Unsettling-Canada-National-Wake-Up-Call-ebook/dp/B012XYFJHO

And another: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1632460688/?coliid=I9PKGROBS5P88&colid=3VO89QG4XNLG3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

More: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1632460688/?coliid=I9PKGROBS5P88&colid=3VO89QG4XNLG3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Additional: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1626566747/?coliid=I1BAWUWU32N6NC&colid=3VO89QG4XNLG3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Another: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1442614714/?coliid=I3P3FGFUIK7RFG&colid=3VO89QG4XNLG3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

One more: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0888646402/?coliid=I2843W2GF6U9NS&colid=3VO89QG4XNLG3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

More: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0814798535/?coliid=I30HZQ9D3V5O2W&colid=3VO89QG4XNLG3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Here: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1138585866/?coliid=I2UL77UTJ47BF0&colid=3VO89QG4XNLG3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Another: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1496201558/?coliid=I3BTQMC9LYCLHJ&colid=3VO89QG4XNLG3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

One: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0822330210/?coliid=I1SEHQBGT2K6CT&colid=3VO89QG4XNLG3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Another: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0803282869/?coliid=IHTY3OT3VU8CZ&colid=3VO89QG4XNLG3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Last one: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0773547436/?coliid=ITIW0V5V1H7TR&colid=3VO89QG4XNLG3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

There's a book called Heterogender Homosexuality in Honduras. That's where I got the term from.

http://www.amazon.com/Netsilik-Eskimo-Asen-Balikci/dp/0881334359

Check out this book. Read it in a foraging societies class. There are some videos that go along with it too, not sure where you could find those.

I don't understand this title. Why "as recently"? That's not recently at all... Nor was the 1969 White Paper aimed at "ending poverty" as much as it was to "abolish the Indian Act and dismantle the established legal relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the state of Canada in favour of equality." Which is directly from the Wiki page that you linked.

It was also a terrible idea. It was so bad that it spurred First Nations peoples to organize against it, leading to the publication of Harold Cardinal's Unjust Society and Harold Adams' Prison of Grass. These two books shaped a generation of First Nations peoples to fight against the actions of the federal government.

For starters: Wikipedia - Paleolithic Diet

I was really into anthropology a few years ago. Among other things I recall reading was that when humans first started eating grains 10,000 years ago, the average human lost a foot in height due to the lack of nutrients in neolitihic (grain-based) diets as compared to the paleolithic diet which their bodies had evolved to eat. This unhealthy diet, combined with sedentary living conditions (animal and human domestication) also led to either the introduction of - or massive increases of - almost every form of disease, including influenza, cancer, asthma, allergies, and heart disease, which continue to rise to this day.

Books I would recommend on the topic:

The Forest People by Colin Turnbull (study of a hunter-gatherer pygmy tribe, almost utopian)

The Mountain People by Colin Turnbull (study of an african tribe recently forced to adopt agriculture, truly horrific to read)

Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures by Marvin Harris

Twilight of the Machines by John Zerzan

My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization by Chellis Glendinning

I can't speak for what's going on here, but in the 1970's it was pretty common for First Nations women to be forcibly sterilized. It was a practice supported by the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare that was inspired by the population control movement. There are stories of women going in for tonsillectomies or to have an appendix removed and leaving with a lubal litigation. Doctors would also lead women to believe that the surgeries were reversible. Losing a license would only occur if the woman had access to means of filing a grievance. Oftentimes information and resources are hard to come by, and even if they are available undocumented women would likely avoid "causing trouble" for fear of deportation. *Also, just remembered that this article is about prisoners. Women in prisons have even less agency.

There are lots of books written on the subject, but anyone interested should check out Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide