A01=Sandra Faiman-Silva
Author_Sandra Faiman-Silva
Category=JBCC
Category=JBSL11
Category=KCP
Category=NHK
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Product details
- ISBN 9780803269026
- Weight: 425g
- Publication Date: 01 Jun 2000
- Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Choctaws at the Crossroads examines the political economy of the Choctaws at the end of the twentieth century. Forcibly relocated in the 1830s from the lower Mississippi Valley to the southeastern corner of Indian Territory, the Choctaws today are a dynamic and complex rural ethnic community in Oklahoma. Many work as nonunionized laborers for large corporations, yet they seek to maintain some aspects of their traditional way of life. Combining fieldwork and archival research, Sandra Faiman-Silva uncovers the processes by which the local economic and social practices of the Choctaws have become intertwined with and, in some respects, dependent on corporate and global economic forces. Low wages and often temporary work force the Choctaws to supplement their income through tribal economic assistance and through traditional practices of horticulture, fishing, craft production, canning, and residence sharing. Faiman-Silva finds a troubling paradox in this strategy. Such traditional economic activities are central to Choctaw identity and way of life and are outside the non-Indian controlled, capitalist system; at the same time, these practices help sustain the power and profits of corporations. This sensitive and theoretically informed study makes an important contribution to understanding the historic, economic, and social conditions of contemporary Native Americas.
Sandra Faiman-Silva is a professor of anthropology at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts.
