Front cover image for Citizen Indians : Native American intellectuals, race, and reform

Citizen Indians : Native American intellectuals, race, and reform

"Lucy Maddox examines the work of American Indian intellectuals and reformers in the context of the Society of American Indians, which brought together educated, professional Indians in a period when the "Indian question" loomed large. These thinkers belonged to the first generation of middle-class American Indians more concerned with racial categories and civil rights than with the status of individual tribes. They confronted acute crises: the imposition of land allotments, the abrogation of the treaty process, the removal of Indian children to boarding schools, and the continuing denial of birthright citizenship to Indians that maintained their status as wards of the state. By adapting forms of public discourse and performance already familiar to white audiences, Maddox argues, American Indian reformers could more effectively pursue self-representation and political autonomy."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2005
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 2005
History
205 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780801443541, 9780801473425, 0801443547, 080147342X
57392289
Introduction: going public
A mighty drama : the politics of performance
General principles and universal interests : the politics of reform
For the good of the Indian race : the reform of politics
The progressive road of life : writing and reform
Conclusion: a present and a future