Ghost dances and identity : prophetic religion and American Indian ethnogenesis in the nineteenth century / Gregory E. Smoak.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smoak, Gregory E., 1962-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ghost dance--History--19th century.

Ghost dance.

Shoshoni Indians--Rites and ceremonies.

Shoshoni Indians.

Shoshoni Indians--Religion.

Shoshoni Indians--Ethnic identity.

Bannock Indians--Rites and ceremonies.

Bannock Indians.

Bannock Indians--Religion.

Bannock Indians--Ethnic identity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (304 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This innovative cultural history examines wide-ranging issues of religion, politics, and identity through an analysis of the American Indian Ghost Dance movement and its significance for two little-studied tribes: the Shoshones and Bannocks. The Ghost Dance has become a metaphor for the death of American Indian culture, but as Gregory Smoak argues, it was not the desperate fantasy of a dying people but a powerful expression of a racialized "Indianness." While the Ghost Dance did appeal to supernatural forces to restore power to native peoples, on another level it became a vehicle for the expression of meaningful social identities that crossed ethnic, tribal, and historical boundaries. Looking closely at the Ghost Dances of 1870 and 1890, Smoak constructs a far-reaching, new argument about the formation of ethnic and racial identity among American Indians. He examines the origins of Shoshone and Bannock ethnicity, follows these peoples through a period of declining autonomy vis-a-vis the United States government, and finally puts their experience and the Ghost Dances within the larger context of identity formation and emerging nationalism which marked United States history in the nineteenth century.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Maps

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Endings and Beginnings

Part One. Identity and Prophecy in the Newe World

Part Two. Identity, Prophecy, and Reservation Life

Conclusion

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9786612360589

9781282360587

1282360582

9780520941724

0520941721

9781598758016

1598758012

OCLC:

475955440