Scholarly Work - Indigenous Research Initiative
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/15852
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Item A turbulent upriver flow: steamboat narratives of nature, technology, and humans in Montana Territory(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2019) Kelly, Evan Graham; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mark FiegeFor a 25 year period in the second half of the 19th century, steamboat travel was a critically important transportation technology which influenced the material, social, and cultural existence of people and landscapes in the Montana region. Building on methodological approaches developed in New Western History and Environmental History, this study argues that steamboats in Montana played a significant role in shaping cultural, demographic, and environmental changes in the area. Steamboats and their crews shaped the dynamic exchange of cultures, materials, and energy between people, landscapes, and technologies. This project stresses that the changes in human-environment relationships in the region influenced people in different ways depending on their race, class, gender, and ethnicity. This thesis argues that steamboats and their crews tapped-into and altered existing systems of material and energy exchange, reshaping energy regimes and augmenting environmental realities in the region. At the same time, steamboats influenced human actions and perceptions of the world around them. The layout of this project begins with an introduction chapter articulating methodological approaches and frameworks used in this analysis. The second chapter provides background on the changing natural and human geographies of the region, while the third chapter provides a history of steamboat technology as well as an overview of the labor, materials, and auxiliary technologies required to operate steamboats. Chapters four through seven present four chronologically organized case-studies and these narratives are used as lenses through which the broader implications of steamboat transportation in the region are examined. The final chapter briefly examines the steamboat Montana and the decline of steamboat travel in the early 1880s before offering a summary and conclusion of findings.Item The erosion of the racial frontier: settler colonialism and the history of black Montana, 1880-1930(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Wood, Anthony William; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mark FiegeFrom 1880-1910, Montana was home to one of the most vibrant and diverse African American communities in the Rocky Mountain West. By the onset of World War II, however, the black population had fallen by over fifty percent, and Montana was well on its way to being the least black state in the US by the twenty-first century. In The Erosion of the Racial Frontier, I argue that scholars of African American studies and the American West must consider the sedimented afterlife of US settler colonialism if those fields are to articulate a distinctly western narrative of African American history. My approach draws on colonial and settler colonial theories to examine the history of African Americans in Montana from 1880-1930. As a non-indigenous, non-white, community of color--or what Lorenzo Veracini would call 'subaltern exogenous others'--black westerners fall into an uncertain space in settler colonial theory. As an ongoing structure, settler colonialism continues after the violent appropriation of Indigenous lands appears to culminate. The thesis of The Erosion of the Racial Frontier is two-fold: The logic of settlement together with the logic of anti-blackness created distinctly western categories of racial exclusion that is evident in the archive of black Montana. This western, colonial racism acted as an erosive force across the state, targeting the stability and place identity of western black communities. Moreover, the society that developed in tandem with colonial erosion necessarily continues to live with the sedimented afterlife of settler colonialism. As such, the history of Black Montana can be understood as individual and collective experiences of thousands of black Montanans struggling against and subverting the settler colonial project in western North America.Item The Grand Union Hotel, Fort Benton, Montana ; a symbol of an age(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1971) Ellingsen, John DavidItem Making the west malleable : coal, geohistory, and western expansion, 1800-1920(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2015) Zizzamia, Daniel Francis; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Michael ReidyHistorians have long understood the West as a region shaped by aridity. Yet by analyzing scientific imaginations as they interacted with the materiality of western landscapes, this dissertation argues that the history of the American West was equally influenced by the discovery of the watery deep past of its paleo-landscapes. The physical geography and remnant resources generated through geologic time in the American West decisively influenced western settlement and the advancement of American science in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Through government reports, scientists breathed new life into the ancient denizens and environments of the West. Where others saw an eternal and timeless desert, many scientists saw a plastic and ever-evolving environment. Boosters absorbed the authority of their science to lend credence to visions of a plastic West that would once again become a verdant paradise. Imagined vibrant paleo-environments portrayed once-and-future fertile landscapes that overrode the dominant perception of the American West as arid and hostile to life. With the power granted by coal paired with new technologies, and the Eden-like scientific visions of a former fertile West, vast human-induced climatological changes became an empowering possibility to a nation driven to settle the West. A "paleo-restorative dream" emerged in which the West--by the agency of humans--would return to ancient Edenic landscapes. Indeed, the geoengineering that pervades contemporary discussions concerning climate change and drives hopes to terraform Mars had their origins in the nineteenth century drive to recreate the American frontier.Item Before the 'big dogs' : an environmental history of bison and Plains Indians in the Yellowstone River Basin(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2001) Haynes, Thomas Piper; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Susan R. NeelOur understanding of the history and ecology of bison in association with the history of Plains Indians has undergone an extensive review during the latter part of the twentieth century. The role Plains Indians played in the demise of bison has been central to many of these studies. These histories are usually associated with horses and the arrival of Europeans. Bison and Indians have, however, a long history of interactions. This thesis attempts to lay the historical background to these pre-horse relationships for one particular region in the Great Plains: the Yellowstone River Basin. Using the interdisciplinary tools of environmental history to explore these relationships, this narrative spans roughly 18,000 years of known bison use and 12,000 years of known human use. Such a narrative is uncommon for the northwestern plains, and specifically for the Yellowstone River Basin it has not been done. Five major premises underline this story. The first is that the environmental conditions of the Yellowstone River Basin have been in a continual process of change. Second, bison and people have continually adapted and evolved to these changes. Third, the cultural mechanisms for procuring bison were well in place before European ideas and manufactured goods influenced the way people lived in the Basin. Fourth, Indian people were responsible for the deaths of millions of bison before the horse arrived on the northwestern plains. And fifth, far fewer bison roamed over the Basin’s grasslands prior to the arrival of the horse then once was thought. Changing climate conditions resulted in bison and people developing unique strategies for survival. For bison, this meant evolving into a smaller animal. For people it meant adapting to available resources. Through processes of adaptation, bison and people endured dramatic changes in environmental conditions, including complete vegetational transformations of the landscape, the extinction of numerous mammals, and periods of widely fluctuating weather patterns. Around 5,000 years ago bison evolved into the familiar species known today, Bison bison. Over time, bison and human populations increased. However, bound by the vegetative productivity of the Basin’s landscape, bison numbers were smaller than previous estimates have suggested. The evolution and cultural development of a Plains Indian lifeway was well established by the time horses arrived in the Basin, with these traditions forming the foundations of a horse culture. The increase in human population and procurement of bison implicates Plains Indians as an active contributor in controlling herd size before the arrival of horses to the Basin.Item Remaking American Indian histories : recognizing their voices, stories, lives(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2003) Buckmaster, Miranda M. F.; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Billy G. SmithMainstream histories often do not include detailed and effective narrations about the lives and experiences of American Indian women in North America from the era of contact to the twenty-first century. This thesis critiques historical methodologies that ignore American Indians, their histories, and their roles in the evolution of North American societies. The body of the text focuses on historiography and methodology. It also offers solutions historians and other scholars may consider when writing American Indian histories, including the use of interdisciplinary methods and ethical research of American Indian oral traditions. This thesis is concluded with a brief study of popular culture to illustrate how applying alternative methodologies to mainstream scholarship could help scholars to create more inclusive historical texts.Item The evolution of a frontier town : Bozeman, Montana, and its search for economic stability, 1864-1877(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1973) Putnam, James BruceItem Midwives in Montana : historically informed political activism(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2013) Hill, Jennifer Janna; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mary MurphyStates contiguous to Montana legalized direct-entry midwifery only in the 21st century, while the Montana legislature exempted lay midwives from the Medical Practice Act during the 1989 legislative session and approved a licensing protocol for Certified Professional Midwives in 1991. Midwives in Montana examines the historical context of the legalization of midwifery in Montana and identifies significant individuals, groups, and events in the confrontation over home birth in the state. Based on oral histories of legislative participants and drawn from primary and secondary source materials held by individuals and institutions throughout the state, this research compiles scattered documentary evidence to present the history of Montana midwives from territorial days through the legislative events of 1989 and 1991. The efforts of midwifery supporters in the Montana legislature prevailed over organized and well-funded opposition from individual physicians, medical organizations, and hospitals, and resulted in statutory changes that enabled the licensing of homebirth midwives. With a strong rural representation, the 1989 legislative body supported the availability of midwifery care for constituents unable to access urban medical centers. The lobbying strategy employed by midwifery advocates embodied a sophisticated understanding of the conflict between midwives and institutionalized medicine and utilized beliefs about gender and Montana identity to enable legislative success. Additionally, the individuals most closely involved in the lobbying process remained committed to a clearly defined agenda. As a result of their efforts, Montana became the ninth state in the nation to legalize and license homebirth midwives and remains a national leader in homebirth midwifery care.