Week 5 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Ethnic Studies Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 5 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 69–84 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–22 min total)

① Citizenship that did not bring the vote

Chapter 5, Section “Read the 1924 act and the 1934 act: citizenship, the vote, and self-government” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Citizenship and the vote” · Remember: the 1924 act granted citizenship, but the vote stayed under state law, and a Native person can hold two citizenships at once.

Echoes Extra: The 1924 Indian Citizenship Act — Ohio History Connection — a conversation with a citizen of the Delaware Nation who works on repatriation, who explains that her grandfather was not a U.S. citizen until he was 10 and that tribal people kept their own nation's citizenship rather than receiving it from the act; listen for the point that Native people in Arizona and New Mexico living on reservations were denied the vote even after 1924. Stop here before the voting laws that shaped Black Americans' lives after the Civil War; next week takes that up. (video, 7 min) (captions: creator)
Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 — Office of Navajo Government Development — a short explainer from a Navajo Nation government office on what the act granted and what it did not; notice its closing point that many states continued to deny Native Americans the right to vote, which matches the chapter's warning about reading the act for more than it did. Its opening sentence about the Constitution is the video's own summary, not a claim this course checks, so start your notes with what the act granted. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)

② Termination and relocation

Chapter 5, Section “Name termination and relocation: federal policies with a federal goal” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Termination and relocation” · Remember: termination and relocation were federal policies with a federal goal, running side by side in the same decade.

The Termination Act Explained: Ep 14 of Crash Course Native American History — CrashCourse — an animated episode that explains relocation and termination as one era and follows the Menominee Nation from termination to restoration by an act of Congress; notice that its counts of terminated nations and acres come from a different source than the National Archives figures the chapter uses, so read each figure with its source. It also calls the 1953 resolution the Termination Act and dates the relocation program to 1952; check both against the chapter's House Concurrent Resolution 108 and the 1951 offices. Use it while completing the Week-5 module overview. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
Choctaw Removals: Indian Urban Relocation Program — Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma — the Choctaw Nation's own history column on the relocation program, which calls it a later government-sponsored removal and lists the help families were promised, from housing and jobs to vocational training, and how those promises fell short. This builds on Week 3's line between immigrant peoples and colonized or incorporated peoples: the families it describes moved inside the country as citizens of their nation. (reading, 6–10 min)

③ Alcatraz and the turn to self-determination

Chapter 5, Section “Trace Red Power: Alcatraz and the turn to self-determination” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Red Power and Alcatraz” · Remember: Indians of All Tribes held Alcatraz for 19 months, and afterward the official policy of termination ended.

The Occupation of Alcatraz Island — Center for Sacramento History — archival television news film from the start of the occupation, with interviews with the occupiers and a federal official on the island's dock; listen for the occupiers' plan for an Indian education program and their statement that they would stay as long as they had to. The reporters use the period's wording and treat the first landing lightly; ask whose framing that is. (video, 9 min) (captions: automatic)
1969: Indians of All Tribes group occupies Alcatraz Island — National Library of Medicine — a one-entry page from a federal library's timeline of Native history, describing the landing and the group's later letter explaining its goal of a cultural center where Native people would teach their own young people. (reading, 2–4 min)
The Native Civil Rights Movement: Ep 15 of Crash Course Native American History — CrashCourse — an animated episode that opens on Alcatraz and traces how the occupation and earlier tribal efforts led to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975; notice its examples of tribes running their own schools, and its honest list of problems the new era did not solve. Treat its minute on a later child-welfare law as the host's own view of a question still argued in the courts, which this course does not argue. (video, 11 min) (captions: creator)
Self-Determination — Bureau of Indian Affairs — a short regional page from the federal agency itself explaining that the 1975 act, Public Law 93-638, lets tribes take over federal programs and services through contracts. (reading, 3–5 min)

④ Bringing ancestors home

Chapter 5, Section “Explain self-determination and return: the 1975 act and the 1990 law” · Session 2, Segment 5, “Self-determination and return” · Remember: the 1990 law requires return of ancestors and cultural items through consultation, and the nations carry much of the work.

Remains of 5 Native Americans returned home 120 years after graves were looted — PBS NewsHour — a news report on the Prairie Island Indian Community welcoming home five Dakota ancestors taken from Minnesota in the nineteenth century; the ceremony itself was not filmed, and a member of the tribe's historic preservation office calls the return an act of sovereignty. Notice that the report says the 1990 law does not reach private collections. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
Frequently Asked Questions about the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act — National Park Service — the federal program's own answers on who must comply, who may request items, and what lineal descendants and Native Hawaiian organizations are; read the first three questions. (reading, 6–10 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Bureau of Indian Affairs Records: Urban Relocation — National Archives — the National Archives' guide to the relocation program and its records; read the opening history on the 1951 offices and the 1956 law, and skip the lists of record series. (reading, 6–9 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com