Contested Cartographies: Landscapes of power, adaptation, and persistence on the Rosebud Reservation

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Contested Landscapes: The Archaeology of Politics, Borders, and Movement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In 1878, the Rosebud agency moved to its contemporary location at the junction of Rosebud Creek and the south fork of the White River. Over the course of the next decade, members of the Sincangu (Brulé) Sioux led by the charismatic headmen Spotted Tail came to settle within the reservation. While the reservation’s boundaries were a product of American directives, indigenous perceptions of identity and practices of place making intimately shaped the formation of this landscape. Following the long-standing practice of aggregating along waterways, Sincangu leaders strategically placed their encampments near the creeks and river tributaries that flowed across the reservation. Drawing on historic photographs, ethnographic objects, and archival documents, this paper will discuss the various ways in which Sincangu encampments became strategic sites for the exercise of colonial power in the form of ration issue houses, day schools, and churches. These places and associated routes of travel also became important arenas of contestation and adaptation as well as sites for the persistence of indigenous social practices. Ultimately, this discussion challenges the static binary categories of traditional-progressive and acculturation-survival which have often structured scholarly discussions of Native people during the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Contested Landscapes: The Archaeology of Politics, Borders, and Movement   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23185