Bøger udgivet af University of Oklahoma Press

Few people today know that the forty-sixth state could have been Sequoyah, not Oklahoma. The Five Tribes of Indian Territory gathered in 1905 to form their own, Indian-led state. Leaders of the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Muscogees, and Seminoles drafted a constitution, which eligible voters then ratified. In the end, Congress denied their request, but the movement that fueled their efforts transcends that single defeat. Researched and interpreted by distinguished Native historian Donald L. Fixico, this book tells the remarkable story of how the state of Sequoyah movement unfolded and the extent to which it remains alive today. Fixico tells how the Five Nations, after removal to the west, negotiated treaties with the U.S. government and lobbied Congress to allow them to retain communal control of their lands as sovereign nations. In the wake of the Civil War, while a dozen bills in Congress proposed changing the status of Indian Territory, the Five Tribes sought strength in unity. The Boomer movement and seven land dispensations--beginning with the famous run of 1889--nevertheless eroded their borders and threatened their cultural and political autonomy. President Theodore Roosevelt ultimately declared his support for the merging of Indian Territory with Oklahoma Territory, paving the way for Oklahoma statehood in 1907--and shattering the state of Sequoyah dream. Yet the Five Tribes persevered. Fixico concludes his narrative by highlighting recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, most notably McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020), that have reaffirmed the sovereignty of Indian nations over their lands and people--a principal inherent in the Sequoyah movement. Did the story end in 1907? Could the Five Tribes revive their plan for separate statehood? Fixico leaves the reader to ponder this intriguing possibility.

"The single most destructive act ever perpetrated on any tribe by the United States," Vine Deloria Jr. called it. For the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara communities living on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, the construction of the Garrison Dam as part of the New Deal-era Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program meant the flooding of a third of their land, including their most fertile agricultural acreage, the loss of their homes, and wrenching relocation. In Damming the Reservation, Angela K. Parker, an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes, offers a deeply researched, unflinching history of the tribes' fight to preserve and rebuild their culture, shared history, common stories, sense of place, and sovereignty. With the richly informed and deeply personal perspective of a historian and descendant of those who survived these events, Parker tracks the riverine communities from 1920 to 1960, in the years before, during, and after the Army Corps of Engineers did its devastating work. By studying the inextricable link between on-the-ground conditions and national policy, she builds a cohesive narrative for twentieth-century Native American history that hinges on the assertion of Indigenous sovereignties. These battles over land, water, and resources that constitute the "territory" required to maintain a working sovereign body are at the very heart of the Native American past, present, and future. The author shows how Indigenous resistance to the Garrison Dam created a new generation of activists, including Tillie Walker, the focus of the book's epilogue. Damming the Reservation documents what can happen when a settler colonial nation tramples tribal rights while exerting control over rural hinterlands: in this case, the reservation community developed a praxis of self-determination and tribal sovereignty that trickled up to the national level so that tribal meanings came to saturate federal Indian policy. This is a history whose lessons echo through today's most pressing environmental justice crises.

In the late nineteenth century, the Mexican government, seeking to fortify its northern borders and curb migration to the United States, set out to relocate "Mexico-Texano" families, or Tejanos, on Mexican land. In Colonizing Ourselves, José Angel Hernández explores these movements back to Mexico, also known as autocolonization, as distinct in the history of settler colonization. Unlike other settler colonial states that relied heavily on overseas settlers, especially from Europe and Asia, Mexico received less than 1 percent of these nineteenth-century immigrants. This reality, coupled with the growing migration of farmers and laborers northward toward the United States, led ultimately to passage of the 1883 Land and Colonization Law. This legislation offered incentives to any Mexican in the United States willing to resettle in the republic: Tejanos, as well as other Mexican expatriates abroad, were to be granted twice the amount of land for settlement that other immigrants received. The campaign worked: ethnic Mexicans from Texas and the Mexican interior, as well as Indigenous peoples from Mexico, established numerous colonies on the northern frontier. Leading one of the most notable back-to-Mexico movements was Luis Siliceo, a Texan who, with a subsidized newspaper, El Colono, and the backing of Porfirio Díaz's administration, secured a contract to resettle Tejano families across several Mexican states. The story of this partnership, which Hernández traces from the 1890s through the turn of the century, provides insight into debates about settler colonization in Mexico. Viewed from various global, national, and regional perspectives, it helps to make sense of Mexico's autocolonization policy and its redefinition of Indigenous and settler populations during the nineteenth century.

Each fall, millions of monarch butterflies migrate from Canada to Mexico. Their incredible journey--nearly 3,000 miles long--takes them through Oklahoma, Texas, and other US states, where butterfly devotees eagerly await their arrival. The monarch migration is a brilliant demonstration of nature's ingenuity, but the delicate creatures face many perils, and the number of migrating monarchs is declining sharply. This compelling book weaves natural history, science, and personal experience to explore the rise and fall of one of nature's most spectacular phenomena. While monarch butterflies have been migrating for centuries, they seized public attention in 1976 when a National Geographic magazine cover story featured the "discovery" of their roosting sites in Mexico. The article rocked the world of lepidoptery, solved a scientific mystery, and opened the door to human meddling. The new revelations put a spotlight on the insects, and inspired the creation of butterfly sanctuaries in Mexico as well as myriad efforts to protect them. Almost 40 years later, many believe that monarch butterflies are in danger of extinction. How real is that danger? Journalist and butterfly advocate Monika Maeckle addresses this question and more as she delves into the rich history and current plight of the monarch butterfly. Through meticulous reporting, Maeckle offers unique insights on the butterflies as well as a nuanced portrait of the shifting and sometimes contentious community of scientists, enthusiasts, and "flutterati" who have emerged to support the monarchs' cause. A highly engaging book, The Monarch Butterfly Migration also focuses a wider lens on the effects of climate change and the tensions between advocacy and scientific accuracy. In addition to calling for environmental sustainability, this book reminds each of us to notice--and never take for granted--the natural wonders in our own backyards.

The explorations of Francisco Garcés, an intrepid Franciscan friar of the eighteenth century, led to the opening of the first overland route from Mexico to California, produced new knowledge of unmapped terrain and unknown peoples, and revived dreams of Spanish imperial expansion. Beyond the Devil's Road tells, for the first time, the full story of this extraordinary man's epic life and journey and his critical place in the history of the American Southwest. From the moment he took up residence at the lonely mission of San Xavier del Bac in 1768, Garcés stood out among his fellow Spaniards for both the affection he showed the region's Native peoples and his bravery. Traveling thousands of miles through modern Arizona, California, and Nevada to gather information for his superiors and preach to the unbaptized, he engaged the Indians of the Southwest with a respect for their ways and customs unprecedented among his peers, presaging a new--and better--model for cultural encounters. Along the way, he contacted more Indigenous groups than any other missionary of his time, often as the first European to do so. Garcés also paved the way and served as a guide for the famous expeditions of Juan Bautista de Anza in 1774 and 1775-76, bringing the first Spanish settlers to California--before the road he'd helped to open led to his death in the Quechan uprising of 1781. Consulting archives on three continents, including previously untapped sources and Garcés's extensive diaries and letters, long obscured by unyielding language and handwriting, Beer crafts a nuanced and thoroughly engaging account of this incomparable explorer, groundbreaking missionary, and central actor in New Spain's final sustained effort to expand its dominion into the lands that would become the American Southwest.

The Romans who established their rule on three continents as well as the Europeans who initially established new homes in North America interacted with communities of Indigenous peoples with their own histories and cultures. Sweeping in its scope and rigorous in its scholarship, Empires and Indigenous Peoples expands our understanding of their historical interrelations and raises general questions about the nature of the various imperial encounters. In this book, leading scholars of ancient Roman and pre-twentieth-century anglophone America examine the mutual perceptions of the Indigenous and the imperial actors. They investigate the rhetoric of civilization and barbarism and its expression in military policies. Indigenous resistance, survival, and adaptation is a major theme. The essays demonstrate that power relations were endlessly adjusted, identities were framed and reframed, and new mutual knowledge was produced by all participants. Over time, cultures were transformed across the board, at political, social, religious, linguistic, ideological, and economic levels. The developments were complex, with numerous groups enmeshed in webs of aggression, opposition, cooperation, and integration. Readers will see how Indigenous and imperial identities evolved in Roman and American lands. Finally, the authors consider how American views of Roman activity influenced the development of American imperial expansion and accompanying Indigenous critiques. They show how Roman, imperial North American, and Indigenous experiences have contributed to American notions of race, religion, and citizenship, and given shape to problems of social inclusion and exclusion today.

British and American commanders first used modern special forces in support of conventional military operations during World War II. Since then, although special ops have featured prominently in popular culture and media coverage of wars, the academic study of irregular warfare has remained as elusive as the practitioners of special operations themselves. This book is the first comprehensive study of the development, application, and value of Anglo-American commando and special forces units during the Second World War. Special forces are intensively trained, specially selected military units performing unconventional and often high-risk missions. In this book, Andrew L. Hargreaves not only describes tactics and operations but also outlines the distinctions between commandos and special forces, traces their evolution during the war, explains how the Anglo-American alliance functioned in the creation and use of these units, looks at their command and control arrangements, evaluates their impact, and assesses their cost-effectiveness. The first real impetus for the creation of British specialist formations came in the desperate summer of 1940 when, having been pushed out of Europe following defeat in France and the Low Countries, Britain began to turn to irregular forces in an effort to wrest back the strategic initiative from the enemy. The development of special forces by the United States was also a direct consequence of defeat. After Pearl Harbor, Hargreaves shows, the Americans found themselves in much the same position as Britain had been in 1940: shocked, outnumbered, and conventionally defeated, they were unable to come to grips with the enemy on a large scale. By the end of the war, a variety of these units had overcome a multitude of evolutionary hurdles and made valuable contributions to practically every theater of operation. In describing how Britain and the United States worked independently and cooperatively to invent and put into practice a fundamentally new way of waging war, this book demonstrates the two nations' flexibility, adaptability, and ability to innovate during World War II.

For many Latin students, the second year of study marks an exciting turning point. Having learned the basics of grammar and vocabulary, they are finally ready to encounter "real" Latin authors, usually Caesar or Cicero, for the first time. Yet these same students often grow frustrated when they realize their grasp of Latin grammar is not as solid as they would wish. This student-friendly handbook offers intermediate learners a targeted review of the essentials of Latin grammar, enabling them to read assigned texts with greater facility. The fifteen lessons in Latin Redux focus on topics that many students do not learn thoroughly in the first year, such as gerunds and gerundives, or that are sometimes omitted for lack of time, such as subordinate clauses in indirect discourse. The lessons are presented in order of difficulty, but they can be used in any order and can all be completed within a single semester. After reviewing these lessons in grammar and syntax, students will be more confident when they encounter the same structures in their readings. As the first book of its kind to supplement the curriculum of intermediate students, Latin Redux fills an important niche in Latin instruction. Classroom tested by the author, the handbook complements any Latin prose or poetry readings an instructor might select. Adding to its appeal, each chapter includes a fun "Lingua Latina Ubique" (Latin Language Everywhere) section that highlights how much Latin we use every day. The volume is further enhanced by Latin-to-English and English-to-Latin glossaries and a grammatical appendix.

In 1857, the Meskwaki Nation ("Red Earth People") purchased an eighty-acre parcel of land along the Iowa River. With that modest plot secured as a place to rest and rebuild after centuries of devastation and dispossession, the Red Earth People began to reclaim their homeland--an effort that Native nations continue to this day in what has recently come to be called the #Landback movement. Red Earth Nation explores the long history of #Landback through the Meskwaki Nation's story, one of the oldest and clearest examples of direct-purchase Indigenous land reclamation in American history. Spanning Indigenous environmental and political history from the Red Earth People's creation to the twenty-first century, Red Earth Nation focuses on the Meskwaki Settlement: now comprising more than 8,000 acres, this is sovereign Meskwaki land, not a treaty-created reservation. Currently the largest employer in Tama County, Iowa, the Meskwaki Nation has long used its land ownership and economic clout to resist the forces of colonization and create opportunities for self-determination. But the Meskwaki story is not one of smooth or straightforward progress. Eric Zimmer describes the assaults on tribal sovereignty visited on the Meskwaki Nation by the local, state, and federal governments that surround it. In these instances, the Meskwaki Settlement provided political leverage and an anchor for community cohesion, as generations of Meskwaki deliberately and strategically--though not always successfully--used their collective land ownership to affirm tribal sovereignty and exercise self-determination. Revealing how the Red Earth People have negotiated shifting environmental, economic, and political circumstances to rebuild in the face of incredible pressures, Red Earth Nation shows that with their first, eighty-acre land purchase in the 1850s, Meskwaki leaders initiated a process that is still under way. Indeed, Native nations across the United States have taken up the #Landback cause, marshaling generations of resistance to reframe the history of Indigenous dispossession to explore stories of reclamation and tribal sovereignty.

Texas is a solid red state. Or trending purple. Or soon to be blue. One thing is certain: as Texas looms ever larger in national politics, the makeup of its electorate increasingly matters. At a critical moment, as migration, immigration, and a maturing populace alter the state's political landscape, this book presents a deeply researched, data-rich look at who Texas voters are, what they want, and what it might mean for the future of the Republican and Democratic parties, the state, and the nation. Battle for the Heart of Texas goes beyond the pronouncements of leaders and pundits to reveal voters' nuanced opinions--about the 2020 Democratic primary candidates, state and national Republicans' responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, and issues such as immigration and gun policy. Working with an unprecedented cache of polling figures and qualitative data from surveys and focus groups--the product of a cooperative effort between the Dallas Morning News and The University of Texas at Tyler--Mark Owens, Kenneth A. Wink, and Kenneth Bryant Jr. provide an in-depth examination of what is reshaping voter preferences across Texas, including the partisan impact of the urbanization and nationalization of state politics. Their analyses pinpoint the influence of race, media exposure, ideological diversity within the parties, and geographic variation across the state, detailing how Texas politics has changed over time. Race may not have typically defined Texas politics, for instance, but the authors find that rhetoric on policies related to race are now shaping the electorate. The diversity in civic engagement among the Latino community also emerges from the data, compounded and complicated by the growth of the Latino population of voting age. The largest red state in the country, with the second-largest population, Texas is crucial to the way we think about political change in America--and this book amply and precisely equips us to understand the bellwether state's changing politics.

Academia is not, by and large, a kind place. Individualism and competition are what count. But without kindness at its core, Catherine Denial suggests, higher education fails students and instructors--and its mission--in critical ways. Part manifesto, part teaching memoir, part how-to guide, A Pedagogy of Kindness urges higher education to get aggressive about instituting kindness, which Denial distinguishes from niceness. Having suffered beneath the weight of just "getting along," instructors need to shift every part of what they do to prioritizing care and compassion--for students as well as for themselves. A Pedagogy of Kindness articulates a fresh vision for teaching, one that focuses on ensuring justice, believing people, and believing in people. Offering evidence-based insights and drawing from her own rich experiences as a professor, Denial offers practical tips for reshaping syllabi, assessing student performance, and creating trust and belonging in the classroom. Her suggestions for concrete, scalable actions outline nothing less than a transformational discipline--one in which, together, we create bright new spaces, rooted in compassion, in which all engaged in teaching and learning might thrive.

Oklahoma is currently home to 117 known species of mammals, representing one marsupial (opossums; Didelphimorphia), seven insectivores (shrews and moles; Soricomorpha), twenty-three bats (Chiroptera), one armadillo (Cingulata), four rabbits (Lagomorpha), fifty-one rodents (Rodentia), twenty-two carnivores (Carnivora), and eight artiodactyls (deer, pronghorn, sheep, and bison; Artiodactyla). For the professional mammalogist and amateur naturalist alike, Mammals of Oklahoma provides a clear, comprehensive, illustrated guide to Oklahoma's diverse native fauna, as well as introduced species and extirpated and unverified mammals cited in the state's records. Incorporating the latest data, this second edition includes up-to-date descriptions and identification keys; line drawings and full-color photos and distribution maps; life history information; and ecological notes on such things as dens, nests, burrows, food habits, reproduction, pathogens and parasites, and predators. The book's etymology offers insight into each species' scientific name, and its natural history describes habitat and diseases, among other distinguishing characteristics. A glossary provides guidance on technical terms. This accessible and authoritative volume marks a significant update and expansion of the knowledge of mammals in Oklahoma. It will be the definitive desk reference and field guide to the state's rich mammalian diversity.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains practiced an archival art--narrating war exploits in large-scale paintings executed on animal hide robes, shirts, tipi covers, and tipi liners. Essentially autobiographical, the paintings were worn and lived in by the men whose war exploits they portrayed, and were made to be "read" by the public at large. Executed in a pictorial narrative style and documenting actual events, these paintings blend visual art and history. Indigenous War Painting of the Plains is the first comprehensive look at this important North American art form, covering the full corpus of war paintings from fourteen tribes across the plains. Two impediments have previously made such a book impractical: photography alone falls short of rendering war paintings for the printed page, and only about half of the surviving works have reliable documentation on their cultural origins. Arni Brownstone surmounts these difficulties by producing precise electronic redrawings and by using well-documented paintings to inform poorly documented examples, bolstered by a careful examination of collection histories. Featuring some 300 photographs and electronic redrawings, the book focuses on 83 paintings organized into four chapters covering the paintings of tribes associated with a specific geographical sphere of artistic influence. Four appendixes feature paintings combined with "translations" by Indigenous collaborators who had intimate knowledge of the depicted events. Offering vivid access to the key works of war painting preserved in 37 museums throughout North America and Europe, Indigenous War Painting of the Plains illuminates distinctions between painting styles of different tribes, reveals how they influenced one another and changed over time, and conveys a deep understanding of how war painting developed in relation to profound social changes in Plains Indian cultures.

In Handmaid to Divinity, Desiree Hellegers establishes seventeenth-century poetry as a critical resource for understanding the debates about natural philosophy, astronomy, and medicine during the Scientific Revolution. Hellegers provides important insights into seventeenth-century responses to the emergent discourses of western science and into the cultural roots of the current environmental crisis.Drawing on recent cultural and feminist critiques of science, Hellegers offers finely nuanced readings of John Donne's Anniversaries, John Milton's Paradise Lost, and Anne Finch's The Spleen.

A year after John Bradstreet's raid of 1758-the first and largest British-American riverine raid mounted during the Seven Years' War (known in North America as the French and Indian War)-Benjamin Franklin hailed it as one of the great "American" victories of the war. Bradstreet heartily agreed, and soon enough, his own official account was adopted by Francis Parkman and other early historians.In this first comprehensive analysis of Bradstreet's raid, Ian Macpherson McCulloch uses never-before-seen materials and a new interpretive approach to dispel many of the myths that have grown up around the operation. The result is a closely observed, deeply researched revisionist microhistory-the first unvarnished, balanced account of a critical moment in early American military history.Examined within the context of campaign planning and the friction among commanders in the war's first three years, the raid looks markedly different than Bradstreet's heroic portrayal. The operation was carried out principally by American colonial soldiers, and McCulloch lets many of the provincial participants give voice to their own experiences. He consults little-known French documents that give Bradstreet's opponents' side of the story, as well as supporting material such as orders of battle, meteorological data, and overviews of captured ships. McCulloch also examines the riverine operational capability that Bradstreet put in place, a new water-borne style of combat that the British-American army would soon successfully deploy in the campaigns of Niagara (1759) and Montreal (1760).McCulloch's history is the most detailed, thoroughgoing view of Bradstreet's raid ever produced.

The story of the United States Air Force stretches back to aerial operations prior to the First World War-well before the USAF became a separate service-and looks forward to a new era of air power in space. Fighting from Above presents a concise account of this expansive history, offering a new perspective on how the air forces of the United States created an independent way of warfare over time.From the earliest battles of the USAF's predecessor organizations to its modern incarnation, Brian D. Laslie identifies four distinct and observable ways of war that developed over four distinct epochs. Beginning with the development of early air power (1906-1941), he highlights the creation of roles and missions, with bombardment theory and practice ascendant. An era of strategic dominance (1942-1975) followed, in which the ideas of strategic bombardment ruled the United States Air Force; when such notions were unceremoniously proven false during the Vietnam-era conflicts, a period of tactical ascendancy (1975-2019) began. Finally, Laslie considers the current environment, where much of the story of the USAF remains unwritten, as we are still grappling with the challenges posed by an unmanned future with drones and realization of the promises of a final frontier.While detailing combat operations, Fighting from Above also pays close attention to technology, politics, rivalries, logistics, policy, organization, equipping, and training. Thorough, concise, and innovative in its approach, it is an authoritative, exceptionally readable history of the development of American air power.

Born in 1888 in Oklahoma Territory, Jim Thorpe was a Sac and Fox Indian. In 1912 he participated in the Olympic Games in Stockholm, winning both the decathlon and pentathlon. It was then that King Gustav V of Sweden dubbed him "the world's greatest athlete."

Before their forced removal to Oklahoma in the 1830s, the Euchee people lived in Georgia and other southeastern territories. Today the Euchees are enrolled members of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, but they possess their own separate language, culture, and traditions. This unique collection, written by Euchee citizen Gregory H. Bigler, combines traditional di'ile (Euchee tales), personal recollections, and contemporary stories to portray a way of life often hidden from view.Written in an engaging, down-to-earth style, the stories in this book immerse the reader in the everyday experiences of the Euchee community. With his gift for storytelling, Bigler welcomes readers into the lives and culture of the people whose stories he has heard or observed throughout his life and career as a lawyer and judge. Unforgettable characters appear or reappear in various settings, and these figures, whether animal or human, are bound to bring forth a chuckle or leave the reader wanting to learn more about their history. Some of the tales address serious legal injustices, while others poke gentle fun at lofty academic constructs. In the title story, for example, the mischievous character Shajwane (Rabbit), resolves to decolonize the forest, to strip away its "false narrative," by literally removing all new growth from the trees.These stories bring to life Euchee traditions that include family ties, the stomp dance, and communal cooking and feasting. Woven throughout is the sacred element of spirit. As Bigler explains in his introduction, the "spiritual" for Euchees does not signify a Western quest for peace or centeredness but instead a world filled with animate spirits that interact with all of us-as we see them, feel them, or seek them out.The Euchee people are unknown to most Americans. They inhabit a small area of northeastern Oklahoma and have yet to receive federal recognition. Yet even in their modern-day lives-as these stories capture so beautifully-the Euchee people remain fiercely determined to show "they are still here."

Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist recovers this remarkable figure from the shadows of history and for the first time fully reveals his life for what it was: an extraordinary American story and a critical chapter in the annals of racial justice.

Texas has a history of producing nationally prominent leaders. It is also important for its burgeoning population and its natural resources. Few can argue that its politics are not fascinating. The years from 1938 to 1957 were the most primitive period of rule by the Texas Establishment, a loosely knit plutocracy of the Anglo upper classes answering only to the vested interests in banking, oil, land development, law, the merchant houses, and the press. Establishment rule was reflected in numerous and harsh antilabor laws, the suppression of academic freedom, a segregationist philosophy, elections marred by demagoguery and corruption, the devolution of the daily press, and a state government that offered its citizens, especially minorities, very few services. Important elements in the contemporary political scene originated between 1938 and 1957.