1823 - Johnson v. McIntosh
Precedent-setting case between two white parties about property rights to land in America--no Native speaks, though Native interests are affected by the ruling.
1830s - William Appess
who delivers “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” and Eulogy on King Philip
in which he states, “And while you ask yourself, ‘What do they, the Indians, want?’ you have only to look at the unjust laws made for them and say, ‘They want what I want.’”
1827 and 1839 - Cherokee constitutions
1879 - Thomas Tibbles
who arranges an East coast lecture tour for the Ponca leader, Standing Bear.
1879 - Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins
who lectures to criticize Agency mistreatment of Paiutes.
1881 - Constitution of the Osage Nation
The Osage constitutional democratic government is not recognized after 1898 by the U.S.; the cause is taken up again (with mixed results) throughout the twentieth century until it is finally ended in 1997. See Warrior, The People and the Word.
1881 – Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor
“The first pro-Indian book to make a significant impact on the American reading public” ( Frederick W. Turner, “The Century after ‘A Century of Dishonor:’”)
An appeal to the heart and conscience of the American people for repairing broken treaties, theft, and institutional termination.
1928 – Meriam Report
Institute for Government Research report that denounces the Dawes Act, and criticizes the BIA.
1946 - Indian Claims Commission created
1953 – Thomas Banyacya
who writes a letter on behalf of the Hopi to President Dwight D. Eisenhower to request recognition for their claims for being conscientious objectors. Mr. Banyacya helped win an understanding with local Selective Service officials that any Hopi who requested classification as a conscientious objector would receive it.
1955 - Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States
1961 - The American Indian Chicago Conference
Ninety separate communities meet at the U Chicago to critique US termination policies, and draft the Declaration of Indian Purpose.
1966-1995 - Blackbird Bend litigation
In a long and bitter series of legal battles, the Omaha nation seek to regain land along the edge of their reservation. They regain a small amount. See Scherer, Imperfect Victories.
1969 - Alcatraz Occupation
Mobilized by ethnic studies programs at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley, Bay Area Indians allied with the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupy Alcatraz island, invoking the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868 for surplus federal land to claim it for a cultural center.
1970 - N. Scott Momaday
who gives “Man Made of Words” keynote at the First Convocation of American Indian Scholars. See Warrior, The People and the Word.
1973 - Maria Campbell
who publishes Halfbreed, the first book by a Native Canadian women since the death of Pauline Johnson in 1913.
1977 - Charles Aubid
who testifies before US District Court Judge Miles Lord. Aubid appeals to use the memory of the deceased Old John Squirrel in a case about Anishinaabeg control of the annual wild rice harvest. (Vizenor, “Aesthetics of Survivance,” Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence).
1980 - Russell Means “Fighting Words on the Future of the Earth,” Mother Jones
Means critiques Marxism and calls for Lakota tradition. Importantly, he does so through the writing of someone who has recorded his speech.
1994 - Gerald Vizenor Manifest Manners
Vizenor formulates the concept of cultural survivance--survival and resistance--to describe Native signification.
1997 - U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
1997 - Delgamuukw v. British Columbia
The Supreme Court of Canada gave greater weight to oral history as a form of legal evidence.
1997 - Robin Ridington and Dennis Hastings, Blessing for a Long Time
Ridington and Hastings write an ethnography of Umon’hon’ti, which involves them in the story of the subject they document. They work with the Omaha to return their sacred pole from the Harvard Peabody Museum.
1998 - “Statement of Reconciliation”
which Canada makes to its Native peoples, collected within Gathering Strength, Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan.
2005 - Statement on Native American Languages in the College and University Curriculum: MLA Committee on the Literatures of People of Color in the United States and Canada
JSTOR 25595817
2007 - Ward Churchill
who is fired from Colorado University for allegations of plagiarism after publishing “"Some People Push Back": On the Justice of Roosting Chickens” (2001)
2008 - Malea Powell, “Dreaming Charles Eastman: Cultural Memory, Autobiography, and Geography in Indigenous Rhetorical Histories”
A short mixed-genre (narrative, theory, poetry) essay in which Powell grapples with being “an Indian talking about what it means to be an Indian engaged in the archive, what it means to be the object looking back, the objectified engaged in the process of making knowledge about the processes that led to my objectification” (117).
