University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Living and working in the enchanted lands: American Indian tourism labor, development, and activism, 1900-1970

Rohde, Melissa

Content Files
Rohde_Melissa.pdf

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/18305

Description

Title
Living and working in the enchanted lands: American Indian tourism labor, development, and activism, 1900-1970
Author(s)
Rohde, Melissa
Issue Date
2011-01-14T22:45:34Z
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Barrett, James R.
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Barrett, James R.
Committee Member(s)
  • Hoxie, Frederick E.
  • Roediger, David R.
  • Hoganson, Kristin L.
  • Gilbert, Matthew S.
Department of Study
History
Discipline
History
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Date of Ingest
2011-01-14T22:45:34Z
Keyword(s)
  • tourism
  • labor
  • American Indian
Abstract
Tourism work occupied an important role culturally, economically, and politically in American Indian communities throughout the US between 1900 and 1970. My dissertation looks at two case studies of Native American communities’ incorporation of tourism work: Anishinaabeg in northern Wisconsin and the northern Pueblos in New Mexico. Native Americans responded to changes in the political, economic, and natural environments through tourism work and development, in the process restructuring communities’ systems of labor and remaking identities. The intersection of work and recreation in sites of tourism helped create commodified ideas of “Indianness” and popularize stereotypical images of Native Americans. Tourism also became a tool communities used to create and build tribal industries and labor opportunities, to restructure communities’ labor systems, and to exert a voice in regional and national politics. My dissertation engages the following questions: How did Native American communities understand and negotiate the possibilities and perils of tourism work? How did communities organize socially, politically, culturally, and economically to perform work in the tourism industry? What forms of interactions did spaces of tourism facilitate between Native Americans and non-Indians? How did Native American communities’ engagements in tourism work remake tribal identities, especially connections to place, and conceptions of American Indian citizenship and sovereignty within and outside these communities?
Graduation Semester
2010-12
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/18305
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2010 Melissa Rohde

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