1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910783670703321

Autore

Smoak Gregory E. <1962->

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2005

ISBN

1-282-36058-2

9786612360589

0-520-94172-1

1-59875-801-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (304 p.)

Classificazione

LC 33610

Disciplina

299.7/98/09034

Soggetti

Ghost dance - History - 19th century

Shoshoni Indians - Rites and ceremonies

Shoshoni Indians - Religion

Shoshoni Indians - Ethnic identity

Bannock Indians - Rites and ceremonies

Bannock Indians - Religion

Bannock Indians - Ethnic identity

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

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

Sommario/riassunto

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.