J. Diane Pearson, Lecturer

Ethnic Studies Department, Native American Studies

Office: 548 Barrows
Email: jdp@berkeley.edu
Phone: 642-0236
Office hours: TBA

Peoplehood, indigeneity, survival and revised post-colonization histories guide my critical contributions to Native American Studies as a core discipline essential to the study of North America.  Bound together in peoplehoods of sacred histories, common languages, shared ceremonials, and sacred territories, Native nations experienced post-colonial destruction, resistance, and resurgence.  Sacred histories reaffirm Native origins and expand post-colonial histories.  Eight major language families, and their thousands of shared spoken languages and dialects, are among the oldest and most complex languages known to mankind; they add richness and diversity to North America in spite of English-language onslaughts intended to destroy them.  Shared ceremonials reinforce individual, family, band, and community relations and spiritual ties; resurgence of these ceremonials is crucial to Native American survival.  Sacred homelands provide places of worship, spiritual guidance, access to power, health, and subsistence; protected by treaties, agreements, and aboriginal rights, Native nations struggle to retain or recover indispensable land-bases.  As an author of the revitalized Peoplehood Model, I have published an ethnohistory of peoplehood and survival by the Joseph’s band of Nez Perces and their experiences with post-colonial assaults on their language, religion, health, communal and governing structures, land-loss, and removal from their sacred territories; The Nez Perces in the Indian Territory: Nimiipuu Survival. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.

My other research contributes to Native American Studies as a discipline; these studies include Imperial Medicine and the American Indian: The Politics of Disease.  Imperial Medicine develops another theoretical model essential to Native American Studies that explains Western medicine, disease and demography, and the United States’ determination to replace Native American medical practices with a mandatory political-medical model of Western medicine.  Critical examination of economic survival, political economies, and adaptation to federal programs add another important dimension to Native American Studies, while assessment of Umatilla, Nez Perce, and Colorado Ute land loss and deportations broaden disciplinary understandings of the period following the Civil War as the United States accelerated precious metal and resource-based advances into Indian Country.

I have expanded the dissertation research into Imperial Medicine and the politics of disease among Native Americans from 1797 through the 20th century, and am preparing to publish a two-volume study that analyzes the Imperial Medical Model and Native Americans during that time.  I also work on two other research topics; one continues to involve the Nez Perce Indians, peoplehood, and their survival in Kansas and the Indian Territory, and the other covers 19th and 20th century Native American political economies, land-loss, and the American West.  These topics and my experiences in corporate America enabled me to perform applied fieldwork through the Office of Community Development (University of Arizona) as a self-determination and economic development consultant on both the Navajo and Hopi nations.  I also serve as an advisor to the Nez Perce Trail Foundation, and have served on the Nez Perce in the Indian Territory executive committee at the Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.   

 

Education

Research interests

Peoplehood, indigeneity, survival and revised post-colonial histories guide my critical contributions to Native American Studies as a core discipline essential to the study of North America.

Courses

Selected courses and lectures  that I have taught or developed focus on comparative aspects of Native American survival, post-Colonial histories, demographic collapse, medical practices, arts, visual images, gender, and philosophies.  My courses also reflect the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural societies, communities, languages, and artistic traditions of Native North America.  I incorporate my research, publications, and experiences working with Native nations, and working with learning-disabled college students, to provide interactive, multi-modality, learner-centered, and critical-analytical classrooms and courses. 

NAS110: Research Methods, Theories and Ethics in Native America.

 

NAS120.1AC; Critical Histories of American Indians, Black Indians and African Slaves in American Photography.

NAS151: Native American Philosophies.

NAS158: Native Americans and the Cinema: From Exploitation to Self-Determination

NAS178; Disease, Demography, and Politics in Native America

NAS190.1; Shooting Back: Indigenous Films and Filmmakers.

NAS149: Gender in American Indian Societies.

NAS20B: Introduction to Native American Post-Colonial Studies in Art, Literature, Language, and Music.

NAS20A: Introduction to Native American Studies: Colonialism, History, and Resistance.

NAS90; Freshman, Sophomore Seminar: Myth, Memory, and History.

Teaching Partner, “Imperial Medicine and the American Indian 1797-1921: The Politics of Disease,” Anthropology 421/521 - Ethnology of North America, spring 2008, The University of Arizona, Tucson.

Courses Instructed at the University of Arizona, Tucson:  Introduction to American Indian Studies; The Many Nations of North America; Learning Skills and Strategies; Public Policy and Native Nations.

Selected publications

The Nez Perces in the Indian Territory: Nimiipuu Survival.  Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press 2008. 

• Based on archival and ethnohistorical research, this book fills an essential gap for the period between 1877 and 1885 when the Nimiipuu (Nez Perces) and their Palus and Cayuse allies were deported more than 1,500 miles from Idaho and held in federal prison camps in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the Indian Territory. 

Imperial Medicine and the American Indian 1797-1928: The Politics of Disease.” Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, in press.

““Peoplehood, Treaties, Prison Camps, and Governance: Nez Perce Resurgence.”  William Willard, J. Diane Pearson, and Al Marshall, editors, Rising From the Ashes, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, in press.

• Joined in a peoplehood of language, sacred histories, ceremonies, and sacred territories for more than ten thousand years, Nez Perce leaders relied on this peoplehood as they learned to deal with the United States following treaties made with that nation in 1855 and 1863, and the war of 1877. Leaders understood that land loss, new governance organizations, separatist religious influences, loss of language, a disruptive war with the United Sates in 1877, and post-colonial incursions and histories of their peoplehood impinged upon their aboriginal, religious, health care, and civil rights. Impinged upon their religious freedoms.

“Building Reservation Economies: Cattle, Oxen, American Indian Cowboys and the American West.” The International Journal of Business and Globalisation, vol. 1(3), 2007. 

• Examines political economies and post-colonial changes introduced into reservation bovine economies and the contributions of American Indian stockmen and stockwomen to these economies.
• http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=15057&prevQuery=&ps=10&m=or

“Building Reservation Economies:  American Indian Agriculture, 1858 – 1928.”  The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, vol. 4(6), 2007.

• Examines the post-colonial political economies introduced into reservation agricultural economies and the contributions of American Indian agriculturists to these economies.
• http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=14980&prevQuery=&ps=10&m=or

“Building Reservation Economies: American Indian Teamsters, 1858 to 1925.”  The International Journal of Self-Employment and Entrepreneurship,” vol. 18, spring, 2005.

• Examines the American Indian Teamsters Act of 1877 and the political economies of post-colonial changes introduced into reservation labor economies and the contributions of American Indian teamsters.
• http://www.jsbe.com/jsbe-volume-18-issue-2/developing-reservation-economies-native-american-teamsters-1857%961921.html

“Numipu Land Loss: Following Archie Phinney’s Research.” Journal of Northwest Anthropology, spring, 2004.

• Post-colonial land loss, homelands, treaty processes U. S., and warfare.
• http://www.coyotepress.com/cgi-bin/cyp455/4172

“Numipu Narratives: The Essence of Survival.” Journal of Northwest Anthropology, spring, 2004. 

• Peoplehood, the Nez Perce war, and exile to the Indian Territory.
• http://www.coyotepress.com/cgi-bin/cyp455/4172

“Numipu Winter Villages.”  J. Diane Pearson & Peter Harrington, cartographer.  Journal of Northwest Anthropology, spring, 2004.

• Peoplehood, sacred ceremonies, and showcases homelands-based maps.
• http://www.coyotepress.com/cgi-bin/cyp455/4172

“Medical Diplomacy and the American Indian: Thomas Jefferson, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and the Subsequent Effects on American Indian Health and Public Policy.”  Wicazo Sa Review, spring, 2003, vol. 18(2).

• Preview to author’s upcoming book, “Imperial Medicine and the American Indian, 1797 – 1928: The Politics of Disease.”
• http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wicazo_sa_review/v019/19.1pearson.html

“Lewis Cass and the Politics of Disease: The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832.”  Wicazo Sa Review, spring, 2003, vol. 18(1).

• Preview to the author’s upcoming book, “Imperial Medicine and the American Indian, 1797 – 1928: The Politics of Disease.”
• http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wicazo_sa_review/v018/18.2pearson01.html

“Peoplehood: A Model for American Indian Sovereignty,” Wicazo Sa Review, spring, 2003, v. 18(1); Tom Holm, J. Diane Pearson, and Ben Chavis.

• Re-introduction of the revised Peoplehood Theory of Indigenous identity and sovereignty.
• http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wicazo_sa_review/v018/18.1holm.html

M. Scott Momaday, “In the Bear’s House,” and “The Indolent Boys,” annotated review.  Wicazo Sa Review vol. 18(2) (2003): 168-179.

• Annotated review provides essential primary resource material for author’s critical philosophical and liturgical presentations of Native American history.
• http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wicazo_sa_review/v018/18.2pearson02.html

Pearson, J. Diane, and Fred Wesley, “Recalling the Changing Women: Returning Identity to Chiricahua Apache Women and Children.”  Journal of the Southwest vol. 44(Autumn 2002): 259-275.

• Ethnographic reconstruction of historic Chiricahua Apache photographs that returns identity, place, time, and meaning to previously unidentified photograph participants.
• http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-95106142.html

SELECTED PROFESSIONAL LECTURES:

“Imperial medicine, American Indians and the Politics of Disease.” “Good medicine? Race, Gender and Justice in Health Care.”  Center for Race & Gender, University of California, Berkeley, February, 2010.

“Peoplehood, Treaties, Prison Camps, and Governance: Nez Perce Resurgence.”  Plateau Conference, Washington State University, Pullman-Moscow, Idaho, May 12, 2009.

“Sundown in the Golden State; the Story of Jackson Sundown in the Bay Area.”  Plateau Conference, Washington State University, Pullman-Moscow, Idaho, May 12, 2009.

“American Indian Teamsters.” Ethnic Studies Department, American Indian Studies, Invited Presentation. San Francisco State University, April 26, 2009.

“1879: The Year of Decision: Umatilla, Ute, and Nez Perce Deportation, Land-Loss, and U. S. Expansion in the Post-Civil War Years.” WSSA, Albuquerque, NM, April 2009.

“The Nez Perces in the Indian Territory: Bringing the Nimiipuu Back to the Indian Territory.” The Eighth Sequoyah Research Center Symposium, Arkansas, October 18, 2008.

“Research, Nez Perce Indians, and the Politics of Survival.”  Ethnic Studies Conference, San Francisco State University, October, 2008.

“The Nez Perces in the Indian Territory: Coming Home.” Invited presentation, Nez Perce Trail Association, West Yellowstone Park, Montana, September 2008.

 “Imperial Medicine and the American Indian,” Society for Ethnohistory Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico, November 2007.

 “New Dimensions in James Mooney’s photographs and representations of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Lakota Sun Dances.” Invited presentation, Graduate Theological Seminary, Berkeley, CA, October 2007.

 “The Nez Perces in the Indian Territory.” Invited presentation, Friends of the Bancroft Library Luncheon, November 2006.

 “Sun Dancers, Christians, and walahsat practitioners in the Indian Territory.” Vine Deloria, Jr. Memorial Symposium, Bellingham, WA, July 2006.

 “Changing spiritual practices; Nimiipuu Sun Dancers in the Indian Territory.” Society for Applied Anthropology, Vancouver, BC, March 2006.

 “The Numipu Narratives: The Essence of Survival in the Indian Territory.” Invited lecture, Plateau People’s Conference, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, September 20, 2004.

 “Numipu Narratives.” Invited lecture and book preview at the Nez Perce Cultural Center, NPS, Spalding, ID, October 1, 2004.

 “Developing reservation economies: American Indian teamsters, 1877-1900.” Society for Ethnohistory Conference, Riverside, California, November 2003.

 “Agricultural development on American Indian reservations, 1858-1925.”  Society for Applied Anthropology, Portland, OR, March 2003.              

Honors & Awards