Trauma and Resilience in American Indian and African American Southern History

"Trauma and Resilience in American Indian and African American Southern History explores the dual process of a refusal to remember, that is, the force of active forgetting, and the multiple ways in which Native Americans and African Americans have kept alive memories of conquest and enslavement. Complex narratives of loss endured during the antebellum period still resonate in the current debate over sovereignty and reparations. Remembrances of events tinged with historical trauma are critical not only to the collective memories of American Indian and African American communities but, as public health research forcefully demonstrates, to their health and well-being on every level. Interdisciplinary dialogue and inquiry are essential to fully articulate how historical and contemporary circumstances have affected the collective memories of groups. Until recently, Southern whites have (nostalgically or dismissively) remembered American Indian and African American historical presence in the region. Their recollections silence the outrages committed and thus prevent the healing of inflicted trauma. Efforts of remembrance are at odds with intergenerational gaps of knowledge about family history and harmful stereotyping"--Publisher's website. Cover 1 Table of Contents 9 Introduction: Un-doing Southern Silences ULRIKE WIETHAUS AND ANTHONY S. PARENT JR. 1 11 Part I: Home and Place 35 More Than a Slave (Poem) WALTER MEGAEL HARRIS 25 35 Chapter 1: American Indian Lands and the Trauma of Greed CLARA S. KIDWELL 27 37 Chapter 2: “Home” and “House” in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl ANTHONY S. PARENT JR. 42 52 Chapter 3: The Making of an African American Family BETH NORBREY HOPKINS 59 69 Part II: Art and Language 99 Native Pride (Poem) RED HORSE 89 99 Chapter 4: Language Loss and Resilience in Cherokee Medicinal Texts MARGARET BENDER 91 101 Chapter 5: The Suppression of Native American Presence in the Protestant Myth of America MARGARET ZULICK 108 118 Chapter 6: Slave Songs as a Public Poetics of Resistance ANTHONY S. PARENT JR. 121 131 Chapter 7: Dancing as Protest: Three African American Choreographers, 1940–1960 NINA MARIA LUCAS 150 160 Part III: Sexuality and Family 173 What If (Poem) DANIEL A. SEAN LITTLE BULL 163 173 Chapter 8: The Slavery Experience of American Indian Women ROSEMARY WHITE SHIELD WITH SUZANNE KOEPPLINGER 165 175 Chapter 9: IndiVisible: The Making of an Exhibition at the Museum of the American Indian GABRIELLE TAYAC 176 186 Chapter 10: African-American Mothers of Adolescents: Resilience and Strengths CHRISTY M. BUCHANAN, JOSEPH G. GRZYWACZ AND LAURA N. COSTA 190 200 Chapter 11: The Visceral Roots of Racism STEPHEN B. BOYD 222 232 Part IV: Politics and Economics 249 Illusion of Life (Poem) WALTER MEGAEL HARRIS 239 249 Chapter 12: Race, Class, and the Traumatic Legacy of Southern Masculinity RONALD NEAL 241 251 Chapter 13: ‘Living High on the Hog’? Race, Class and Union Organizing in Rural North Carolina ANA-MARÍA GONZÁLEZ WAHL AND STEVEN E. GUNKEL 258 268 Contributors 301 311 Index 307 317 Trauma and Resilience in American Indian and African American Southern History explores the dual process of a refusal to remember, that is, the force of active forgetting, and the multiple ways in which Native Americans and African Americans have kept alive memories of conquest and enslavement. Complex narratives of loss endured during the antebellum period still resonate in the current debate over sovereignty and reparations.
Remembrances of events tinged with historical trauma are critical not only to the collective memories of American Indian and African American communities but, as public health research forcefully demonstrates, to their health and well-being on every level. Interdisciplinary dialogue and inquiry are essential to fully articulate how historical and contemporary circumstances have affected the collective memories of groups. Until recently, Southern whites have (nostalgically or dismissively) remembered American Indian and African American historical presence in the region. Their recollections silence the outrages committed and thus prevent the healing of inflicted trauma. Efforts of remembrance are at odds with intergenerational gaps of knowledge about family history and harmful stereotyping. __Trauma and Resilience in American Indian and African American Southern History__ Remembrances of events tinged with historical trauma are critical not only to the collective memories of American Indian and African American communities but, as public health research forcefully demonstrates, to their health and well-being on every level. Interdisciplinary dialogue and inquiry are essential to fully articulate how historical and contemporary circumstances have affected the collective memories of groups. Until recently, Southern whites have (nostalgically or dismissively) remembered American Indian and African American historical presence in the region. Their recollections silence the outrages committed and thus prevent the healing of inflicted trauma. Efforts of remembrance are at odds with intergenerational gaps of knowledge about family history and harmful stereotyping.