Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Review Of Winnipeg: A Prairie Portrait By Martin Cash, Geoffrey C. Smith

Great Plains Quarterly

The purpose of this attractively produced book, a 125th anniversary project of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, is to celebrate the city at the threshold of the new millennium. Its author, a business writer for a local newspaper, is supported by a collaborative team that includes two writer-reporters and two photographers. The text, snappy and essentially journalistic in character, is organized into two main parts. The first ten chapters offer brief overviews of Winnipeg's history and contemporary aspects of the city's business activities, financial services, communications, arts, educational resources, healthcare facilities, recreational opportunities, and wider social fabric. The second part …

Review Of Visions Of Paradise: Glimpses Of Our Landscape's Legacy By John Warfield Simpson, Robert Thacker

Great Plains Quarterly

In this book's first pages, Simpson dissects its title and says his use of "glimpses" there "indicates that this is not the complete story of the landscape. Instead, it is a set of snapshots of formative forces over the past two hundred years that ... most shaped our contemporary setting." Readily conceding that "other academics provide the original scholarship" he offers here, Simpson holds nonetheless that his "snapshots synthesize that scholarship across many disciplinary boundaries to clarify and find general meaning in the landscape story .... " Simpson is as good as his word. Visions of Paradise is a lucid …

Message From The Director- Fall 2000, James Stubbendieck

Great Plains Quarterly

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

The Center for Great Plains Studies recently completed moving into its new building located between the south edge of the University of Nebraska campus and downtown Lincoln. For the first time in many years, all of the faculty, staff, and programs of the Center are in the same physical structure. The galleries of our Great Plains Art Collection are expanded in size and in a much more accessible location. Center office and work space are more than tripled providing many opportunities for new programs. Plains Song Review, an interdisciplinary undergraduate literary journal, will be published …

Index- Fall 2000

Great Plains Quarterly

Index

Great Plains Quarterly Fall 2000

A-Z (8 pages)

Contesting Tradition And Combating Intolerance A History Of Free Thought In Kansas, Aaron K. Ketchell

Great Plains Quarterly

Diversity is the hallmark of freethought in Kansas, for freethinkers were never a homogeneous body. The movement was not only religious, or for that matter, anti-religious, although the majority of social and political issues that it addressed had religious grounding. No one specific organized group dominated historical Kansas freethinking. Instead, individuals in the form of editors of various newspapers, journals, and book series became the landmarks by which the course of the movement's history may be most easily traced. Although the attitudes of freethinkers toward religion are the primary concern of this essay, it must be remembered that freethinkers had …

Great Plains Pragmatist Aaron Douglas And The Art Of Social Protest, Audrey Thompson

Great Plains Quarterly

Like most of the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance, its leading visual artist, Aaron Douglas, was not himself a product of Harlem.¹ Although Winold Reiss and Alain Locke were to guide Douglas in the development of his artistic vision once he arrived in Harlem, his early years in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska gave rise to both the communal values and the artistic sense of isolation that were to lead him to Harlem. It was in the black church and in Topeka's "cohesive and politically active" African-American community that Douglas first experienced black solidarity and embraced "the values of education …

The Picture Changes Stylistic Variation In Sitting Bull's Biographies, Barbara Risch

Great Plains Quarterly

Until the 1800s Indian warriors of the Plains recorded significant heroic events from their adventures and pursuits in pictographs, on hide. Then, during the nineteenth century, these pictographs began to be produced on paper as well. About the same time that paper was coming into use, canvas and muslin became available, and the drawings that had formerly been composed on hide began to appear on these new materials. Typically, Indian men made use of discarded or captured ledgers, memorandum books, or rosters to render their exploit narratives; the representation of such events on these materials is referred to as ledger …

Great Plains Pragmatist: Aaron Douglas And The Art Of Social Protest, Audrey Thompson

Great Plains Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Notes And News- Fall 2000

Great Plains Quarterly

Notes And News

Politics And Values On The Plains

Missouri Valley History Conference

Internet Resources On The Great Plains

Bibliography On North American Indians, For K-12

Call For Papers: "Rhetoric On The Great Plains"

Review Of The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity In The Press, 1820-90 By John M. Coward, Barbara Cloud

Great Plains Quarterly

John M. Coward's study of newspapers and Native Americans could have been just another "how the press covered" description of newspaper content. Fortunately, Coward has produced an expert analysis of the complex interactions among reality, culture, and the newspapers that influenced public perceptions of Native Americans in the nineteenth century.

Using the Trail of Tears, the Sand Creek Massacre, Sitting Bull, and other case studies, Coward illustrates how Native Americans were disadvantaged by the intersection of Euro-American community attitudes with the development of journalistic practices. He shows how white settlers' love-hate relationship with Indians was both reinforced and exacerbated by …

Review Of Landscapes Of The New West: Gender And Geography In Contemporary Women's Writing By Krista Comer, Brigitte Georgi-Findlay

Great Plains Quarterly

Claiming the New Western History as its most enabling context, Comer's study traces the genealogy of recent female regionalist writing, locating its roots in the civil rights movement, feminism, and postmodernism. This is an obvious challenge to those who claim Western regionalism as the very antidote to postmodernism. Moreover, by including writers of color in her discussion, Comer questions the idea that Western regionalism is only a "white thing."

Through issues of gender, landscape, and geography, Comer focuses in each of her chapters on a different kind of landscape-urban, wild, erotic, national. The Great Plains do not seem to fit …

Review Of Wild West Shows By Paul Reddin

Great Plains Quarterly

The latest historian to chronicle the phenomenon, Paul Reddin postulates a wild west show continuum from the artist George Catlin to Buffalo Bill, and then from the Miller Brothers' 101 Wild West Show to the early silent cowboy films of Tom Mix. With clear, precise writing, impeccable research in several languages, and voluminous endnotes, Reddin has produced a Wild West tour de force that sets a standard for interpretive history of the public presentation of the frontier, Native Americans, and the Great Plains to enthusiastic American and European audiences.

Wild West Shows is the work of a mature, contemplative historian …

Review Of Celluloid Indians: Native Americans And Film By Jacquelyn Kilpatrick, Michael Hilger

Great Plains Quarterly

So far as I know, Jacquelyn Kilpatrick is the first person of American Indian heritage to write a book about the portrayal of Indians in film. Her special commitment to the American Indian community manifests itself in her careful analysis of American Indian historical issues in the chapters on film history and in her attention to parallel images in literature, especially literature by Native Americans. Complementing her unique perspective is a strong knowledge of contemporary film theory and criticism, which enables her to read selected films in ways that diverge from readings found in previous books on this topic.

Beginning …

Review Of Roadside History Of Montana By Don Spritzer, Michael Malone

Great Plains Quarterly

Historians tend not to take "roadside histories" very seriously, even while the literate public appreciates them for their ready vantages on the accessible past. This volume, however, merits the attention of historians as well as "buffs" for its multifaceted insights based upon a broad array of state and local histories. It is, in short, a serious work.

Traversing the Highline region of the far north at the start, Don Spritzer moves into the mountain valleys of the west, then the more open valleys and plateaus of the southwestern and central areas, and concludes with a run eastward down the broad …

Review Of Traces On The Landscape By Kent Midgett, Harry W. Fritz

Great Plains Quarterly

Kent Midgett arrived with his family in Hibbard, on the Wind-swept Plains of eastern Montana, late in 1914. His father, a physician, packed up and moved to Bridger in 1924. Here is one man's account of growing up during the homestead boom and bust On the Northern Plains in the early twentieth century. All of the standard elements of the agricultural tragedy are here-the fulsome promotional campaigns; the bumper crops and commodity prices of wartime; drought and other disasters after 1917; the fading of hope. Today, the town of Sumatra (where the family of six moved in 1917) has disappeared; …

Review Of The Cherokees And Their Chiefs: In The Wake Of Empire By Stanley W. Hoig, Daniel Heath Justice

Great Plains Quarterly

A popular history of the Cherokees, Hoig's book recounts, through vivid prose and detailed research from Euro-American records and scholarly sources, the diverse and troubled relationships between the Cherokee people and varied agents of colonialist expansion. Those who are largely unfamiliar with the voluminous number of academic texts about the history of British/US/Cherokee interaction will find the volume quite compelling. Those looking for more contemporary research, however, or for a strong Cherokee presence among the sources chosen will find The Cherokees and Their Chiefs something of a disappointment.

Hoig's greatest strength is as a dynamic storyteller. Writing with clarity and …

Review Of Buckskin And Buffalo: The Artistry Of The Plains Indians By Colin F. Taylor, Paul M. Raczka

Great Plains Quarterly

The Great Plains has always been a unique ecosystem throughout whose history the various cycles of human habitation have had to adapt. In Buckskin and Buffalo Colin Taylor has provided us with a glimpse of how one period of human habitation, the zenith of Plains Indian culture from the early 1800s to reservation days, incorporated that ecosystem into its art forms.

It was a time when the rich artistic cultures of the Plains people were infused with new artistic materials and tools. The marriage of these new materials with already existing nature- orientated cultures produced an explosion of creativity and …

A Week Of Music And Dance An Introduction, Randall Snyder

Great Plains Quarterly

During the second week of April 1999, the Center for Great Plains Studies hosted The Great Plains Music & Dance Festival and Symposium. This undertaking, three years in the planning, co-chaired by Ron Bowlin and myself with suggestions of various committees of local advocates, resulted in a multidisciplinary event which showcased the diversity of our music and dance heritage in the Great Plains. Performances of Plains music and dance ranging from Northern and Southern Native Drums to Jazz, Folk, Gospel and Classical were featured at a variety of venues in Lincoln. This phase of the symposium culminated in a premier …

Title And Contents- Summer 2000

Great Plains Quarterly

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

Volume 20/ Number 3 / Summer 2000

CONTENTS

A WEEK OF MUSIC AND DANCE: AN INTRODUCTION Randall Snyder

THIS WEEK AT THE OPERA HOUSE: POPULAR MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENT AT GREAT PLAINS OPERA HOUSES, 1887-1917 D. Layne Ehlers

POWERFUL FEELINGS RECOLLECTED IN TRANQUILITY: LITERARY CRITICISM AND LAKOTA SOCIAL SONG POETRY R. D. Theisz

THE MUSICAL LANDSCAPE OF SINCLAIR ROSS'S AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSE Philip R. Coleman-Hull

THE OMAHA GOSPEL COMPLEX IN HISTORICAL: PERSPECTIVE Tom Jack

BOOK REVIEWS

George W. Lyon Community Music in Alberta: Some Good Schoolhouse Stuff! By FRANCES W. KAYE

Luke E. Lassiter The Power …

Review Of Reservation X: The Power Of Place In Aboriginal Contemporary Art Edited By Gerald Mcmaster, Kathleen E. Ash-Milby

Great Plains Quarterly

The reservation (or "reserve" in Canada) is a place with multi-layered meanings to contemporary Native People. As editor Gerald McMaster states, "the reserve has been both sanctuary and prison." While symbolizing community, home, family and tradition, by its very nature (government imposed confinement) it simultaneously represents repression, poverty, and the social ills that follow. For a reader interested in the Great Plains, or any other region, Reservation X: The Power of Place in Aboriginal Contemporary Art deftly illuminates these complex relationships through the work of seven artists and four authors.

The volume's first half is devoted to thought-provoking essays by …

Review Of The Lakota Ritual Of The Sweat Lodge: History And Contemporary Practice By Raymond A. Bucko, Martin Brokenleg

Great Plains Quarterly

Native Americans, including the Lakota of the Great Plains, are mistrustful of anthropologists. For four centuries, white explorers, settlers, and scholars have defined Native American life, culture, and values. Because these cultural records are kept in writing, people from western cultures regard them as authoritative. The result is the current tendency for readers to trust the records of a white investigator more than the spoken word of a Lakota. The mistrust Lakotas have of anthropologists is the result not only of inaccurate accounts but also the assumption that the recording authority has a "true" understanding that is more accurate than …

Review Of Spirit Capture: Photographs From The National Museum Of The American Indian Edited By Tim Johnson, Mick Gidley

Great Plains Quarterly

Spirit Capture, unlike all too many of the proliferating collections of photographs of American Indians, is a rich, attractively designed book with several distinguishing features.

First, it acts as a showcase for a judicious selection of images from the enormous archive of some 90,000 photographs held by the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and, as such, anticipated and paralleled the exhibition of the same title mounted during the spring of 1999 at the NMAI's George Gustav Heye Center in Manhattan. The NMAI inevitably possesses large numbers of famous pictures, but this collection's editor has avoided reproducing too …

Review Of The Invasion Of Indian Country In The Twentieth Century: American Capitalism And Tribal Natural Resources By Donald L. Fixico

Great Plains Quarterly

In his preface, Donald Fixico asserts that Native American "tribes had a special relationship with the earth." Through six case studies of individuals or groups (Part One), he discusses how his "ancestors and other Indian people ... suffered at the hands of American capitalists in this age of greed, the twentieth century." Five essays on recent efforts to defend resources (Part Two) cover institutional strategies among tribal governments. Fixico concludes that "until capitalistic attitudes are corrected and the preservation of the earth's diminishing resources become a priority, we will continue to destroy ourselves." Most chapters examine experiences of Plains Indian …

Review Of Jazz Of The Southwest: An Oral History Of Western Swing By Jean A. Boyd, Cary Ginell

Great Plains Quarterly

In her preface to Jazz of the Southwest, Jean Boyd explains that she was only introduced to western swing in 1990. A musicologist at Baylor University's School of Music, Boyd is well-schooled in music theory, as evidenced by her frequent lapses into musicological jargon. But she is painfully unschooled not only in western swing's history, but the record industry in general during the period in which the genre thrived. Boyd's assumption that western swing is an offshoot of jazz is simplistic, yet she spends the entire book trying to prove this point rather than coming to a conclusion based …

Review Of A Sense Of Place: Re-Evaluating Regionalism In Canadian And American Writing Edited By Christian Riegel And Herb Wyile, Heidi L. Jacobs

Great Plains Quarterly

In their introduction to A Sense of Place: Re-Evaluating Regionalism in Canadian and American Writing, the editors assert that for most North Americans, identity is "a complex mix of a feeling of community, a shared cultural, ethnic and social background, and an attachment to place-a mix that is much more localized than the feeling of being Canadian or being American." Great Plains studies rely upon regionalism and the assumption that national, provincial, and state boundaries can be transcended through a shared geographical region. As the editors write, "current global trends are investing the term [regionalism] with new significance, necessitating …

Review Of Chokecherry Places: Essays From The High Plains By Merrill Gilfillan, Douglas Unger

Great Plains Quarterly

For fifteen years, poet Merrill Gilfillan has been driving "in long misshapen circles" through the High Plains of the American West. The result is Chokecherry Places: Essays from the High Plains, a collection not so much of essays as of poetic meditations on prairie landscape and fauna recalling in its intentions passages of Ezra Pound, Rainer Maria Rilke, and John Donne.

What is also impressive about this book winner of the 1999 Western States Book Award for non-fiction-is its lack of pretense, its avoidance of highly politicized cause or preservationist polemic so common in recent prose explorations of a sense …

Review Of Community Music In Alberta: Some Good Schoolhouse Stuff! By George W. Lyon, Frances W. Kaye

Great Plains Quarterly

If you have any Alberta connections, you will not be able to resist paging through this engaging, photo-full book looking for people and places you know. I found my grandfather on page 43, but still can't make out if my grandmothers are in the background of some of the other scenes.

Most of Community Music in Alberta is given over to photographs of a stunning variety of music groups from the 1880s to the present. Not only are there the fiddlers, dance bands, brass bands, pipers, CFCN and CKUA radio groups, cowboy singers (including Wilf Carter), powwow drums, little theater …

Review Of Charles M. Russell, Legacy: Printed And Published Works Of Monwna's Cowboy Artist Text By Larry Len Peterson, Martha H. Kennedy

Great Plains Quarterly

Larry L. Peterson has for many years collected art by Charles M. Russell (1865-1926) as well as printed and published works of the "cowboy artist." A native of Montana where the artist lived most of his life, Peterson is highly knowledgeable about Russell's work and has published numerous articles on the subject in Russell's West, a periodical of the C. M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana. As Peterson traces examples of the printed appearances of Russell's work in varied forms, he underscores how the artist's vision of the American West was not limited in its appeal to an …

Review Of State Of Mind: Texas Literature And Culture By T Om Pilkington, Jose E. Limon

Great Plains Quarterly

Those of us who teach college courses in Texas literature have need of a scholarly study-a critical survey-that would closely attend to its subject in a learned, critical, and theorize well-written manner; deal with this literature in an ample historical and cultural context; and the connection between literature and context in a manner that would at least gesture in the direction of recent developments in literary critical theory. Pilkington's book is superb in the first instance, disappoints in the second, and is almost wholly unresponsive in the third.

This is a clearly written, intelligent, and relatively comprehensive account of the …

The Omaha Gospel Complex In Historical Perspective, Tom Jack

Great Plains Quarterly

In this article, I document the introduction and development of gospel music within the African-American Christian community of Omaha, Nebraska. The 116 predominantly black congregations in Omaha represent twenty-five percent of the churches in a city where African-Americans comprise thirteen percent of the overall population.¹ Within these institutions the gospel music genre has been and continues to be a dynamic reflection of African-American spiritual values and aesthetic sensibilities. By focusing the research on perceptions and descriptions provided by the music's practitioners, an examination of this genre at the local level will shed insight into the development and dissemination of …