This book explores the identity of American Indians from an Indigenous perspective and how outside influences throughout history, from the arrival of Columbus in 1492 to the twenty-first century, have affected Native people. Non-Native writers, boarding school teachers, movie directors, bureaucrats, churches, and television have all heavily impacted how Indians are viewed in the United States. Drawing on the life experiences of many American Indian men and women, this volume reveals how American Indian identity comprises multiple identities, including the noble savage, wild savage, Hollywood Indian, church-going Indian, rez Indian, urban Indian, Native woman, Indian activist, casino Indian, and tribal leader. Indigenous people, in their own voices, share their experiences of discrimination, being treated as outsiders in their own country, and the intersections of gender, culture, and politics in Indian-white relations. Yet the book also highlights the resilience of being Indian and the pride felt from being a member of a tribe(s), knowing your relatives, and feeling connected to the earth. Being Indian and Walking Proud is a compelling resource for any reader interested in Indigenous history, including students and scholars in Native American and Indigenous studies, anthropology, and American history.

A one-year devotional guiding readers through the entire Bible.

Forty-one individuals, from seventeen different tribes, representing eleven nations, tell their stories in Always a People. As descendants of people who shaped the history of the North American continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, the narrators herein continue to feel closely bound to the land from which most of them have been forcibly removed. The eleven nations represented in this volume are the Miami, Potawatomi, Delaware, Shawnee, Peoria, Oneida, Ottawa, Winnebago, Sac and Fox, Chippewa, and Kickapoo. All of the people interviewed here have a very deep and abiding commitment to their families and speak of great-great grandparents as intimately as they do of their parents. All see themselves as real people who do not fit the stereotypes often associated with ""native Americans."" All speak of the urgency for making room for multiple voices drawn from many traditions.

Author Roberta Capasso explores the way generations of Native American children were forcibly taken from their families and subjected to the federal government's Indian boarding school experiment in order to assimilate them. As a direct descendant of a woman victimized by this experiment, the author tells with raw emotion and diligent archival research the story of the historical and emotional bonds between her deceased relatives and herself. Like a detective cracking a murder mystery, discrepancies between the Carlisle Indian School's accounts and a great-grandmother's real life story are exposed, with fascinating and fortuitous twists and turns along the way. This story of her great-great-grandmother Elizabeth and her great-grandmother Sophia must be told to everyone. Becoming a voice for Oneida Turtle Clan as a descendant of Sky Woman, in the Oneida Creation Story, the author hopes to spread truth and knowledge to all cultures in a captivating narrative of a tragic period in United States History.

Seeking recognition presents an important driving force in the making of religious minorities, as is shown in this study that examines current debates on religion, globalization, diaspora, and secularism through the lens of Hindus living in the French overseas department of La Réunion. Through the examination of religious practices and public performance, the author offers a compelling study of how the Hindus of the island assert pride in their religion as a means of gaining recognition, self-esteem, and social status.

Throughout the ages heroes have come and gone, yet a common thread weaves its way through their tales - the battle between good and evil. None exemplifies this more than what the four Messengers of the Gods and their formidable guardians have to face during their journey of eighteen hundred years. Jacob - Walk of the Messengers - is the second book in an exhilarating series of five. It tells the story of the messengers, tasked with spreading Jacob's message, all in the hope of assembling the mightiest army ever known, all while travelling through the centuries and reaching all corners of the globe. Will they survive the relentless attacks by the forces of Hell? Will they succeed in the task set for them? Will Jacob keep his promise and intervene when all seems lost?

North Florida's proud folk music heritage reaches back more than half a century. The region claims many talented artists and song writers, including Frank Thomas, Bob Patterson and Charlie Robertson, while hundreds of solo, duo and group performers regularly inspire audiences at local venues. The Stephen Foster State Park in White Springs is the home of the Florida Folk Festival, the longest continuous state-sponsored folk festival in the country, held every year on the banks of the Suwannee River. Join author and folk musician Ron Johnson as he shares some of the stories and insights into the folk music of North Florida and those who define the tradition.

Illustrated throughout with over 80 full colour images, Empowering Visions explores the role of images and mass media in Hindutva, the cultural-nationalist movement that moved to the forefront of politics in India in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The author investigates when, why and in what way the moving image, and videos in particular, came to play a central role in the process of self-representation and self-constitution of Hindu nationalist groups and organizations in the overlapping domains of politics, religion and economics.The videos analysed here have been included in massive public political spectacles such as election rallies and patriotic pilgrimages. They have also been employed for in-house indoctrination and emotive mobilization of militant cadres for temporary, often violent, agitation. With the help of these media, different political and cultural-religious organizations, subsumed under the umbrella of Hindutva, have attempted to constitute notions of 'Indianness' as 'Hinduness', to challenge and provoke both the government in power and specific minority groups such as the Muslims in India. How this was done, who stood behind the making of the videos and how they were made up and distributed, are questions that lie at the heart of this study. At a time when public attention is focused on transnational, and mostly Islamicist movements, "Empowering Visions" argues that both transnationalism and nationalism have to be treated with equal attention, and to some extent ought to be seen as intertwined processes. This book is unique in its presentation and discussion of profound ethnographic data through interviews with a variety of spokesmen for the Hindutva movement. It also offers an in-depth analysis of visual and audio-visual material that has so far been unrecognized and unexplored in scholarly works.