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Book Review
Canada and the United States
| Gregory E. Smoak. Ghost Dances and Identity: Prophetic Religion and American Indian Ethnogenesis in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2006. Pp. xiii, 289. $44.95.
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| The central concern of this carefully researched, excellent work is the impact of late nineteenth-century Native American Ghost Dance (nazánga) movements on processes of identity formation among the Bannock and Shoshone or Newe peoples in the Fort Hall area of southeast Idaho. By "ethnogenesis," Gergory E. Smoak means the socially constructed nature of ethnicity and race as they develop through a process of native encounter with the invading non-native populations. Non-native attitudes toward race and ethnicity constantly challenged native peoples to define and redefine their own sense of identity within the context of an increasing imposition of social control and dominance. In this process, religious movements like the nazánga provided a native context for strategies of both accommodation and resistance. Complex issues of negotiation of identity, including conflict and competition among Bannock and Shoshone leaders, resulted in a constant struggle to define native identity and to maintain cultural integrity and native spiritual values. |
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