Against Culture: Development, Politics, and Religion in Indian AlaskaU of Nebraska Press, 2001 M01 1 - 247 pages In a small Tlingit village in 1992, newly converted members of an all-native church started a bonfire of "non-Christian" items including, reportedly, native dancing regalia. The burnings recalled an earlier century in which church converts in the same village burned totem poles, and stirred long simmering tensions between native dance groups and fundamentalist Christian churches throughout the region. This book traces the years leading up to the most recent burnings and reveals the multiple strands of social tension defining Tlingit and Haida life in Southeast Alaska today. ø Author Kirk Dombrowksi roots these tensions in a history of misunderstanding and exploitation of native life, including, most recently, the consequences of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. He traces the results of economic upheaval, changes in dependence on timber and commercial fishing, and differences over the meaning of contemporary native culture that lie beneath current struggles. His cogent, highly readable analysis shows how these local disputes reflect broader problems of negotiating culture and Native American identity today. Revealing in its ethnographic details, arresting in its interpretive insights, Against Culture raises important practical and theoretical implications for the understanding of indigenous cultural and political processes. |
Contents
Politics on the Other Side of the Mountain | 19 |
The Ins and Outs of Village Social Organization | 43 |
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act | 63 |
Subsistence and the Cost of Culture | 83 |
The Spirit in Alaska | 115 |
Jesus Loves You | 141 |
Indianness and Conversion | 159 |
Other editions - View all
Against Culture: Development, Politics, and Religion in Indian Alaska Kirk Dombrowski Limited preview - 2001 |
Against Culture: Development, Politics, and Religion in Indian Alaska Kirk Dombrowski No preview available - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
Alaska Native Claims alcohol ANCSA corporations Angoon anthropology areas Assembly of God boats cannery Central Council chapter Christian church members church membership church practice Claims Settlement Act clan congregation contemporary critical dance group demons discussed drinking economic entirely ethnography Evangelical federal Fish and Game Flo Ellers Gerald Sider gifts of faith harvest Holy Spirit Hoonah households hunting Hydaburg identity important Indian Indian Reorganization Act indigenous individuals IRA Council issues Juneau Kake Kirk Dombrowski Klawock land lives logging marginal means Native Americans Native Claims Settlement native culture native villages non-native notion organization Owen participation past pastor Pentecostal church perhaps prayer group preacher programs regional corporation relations remain revival role salmon salvation Salvation Army seal shareholders social sort Southeast Alaska speaking in tongues subsistence term testimony timber Tlingit and Haida town traditional tribal University Press village corporations village residents