Indigenous peoples -- North America -- Biography, Indigenous peoples -- North America -- Ethnic identity, Indigenous peoples -- North America -- Cultural assimilation, Indigenous peoples -- North America, Dakota -- Biography, Dakota, Saulteaux -- Biography, Saulteax 

"In Being and Becoming Indian, James A. Clifton introduces us to the experience of Native Americans during the historical development of the United States. Professor Clifton and his expert contributors blend anthropology and history in the close study of fourteen individual Indian lives. Moving the narrative beyond traditional assumptions of what it means to be Indian, the authors carefully emphasize the tremendous range of cultural, ethnic, and "racial" identities that Native Americans have taken for themselves. While each biography is unique, the collection addresses the common themes of social and cultural marginality, ethnic boundary roles, alternating one's identity, ethnic mobility, and biculturalism.

Professor Clifton's introductory essay provides an intellectual guide to the twelve biographic chapters, which examine fourteen lives of individuals associated with the Shawnee, Seneca, Dakota, Ottawa, Oneida, Omaha, Salish, Blackfoot, Manitoba Saulteaux, Minnesota Ojibwa, Shoshone, Kiowa, and Baffin Island Inuit. A variety of life experiences are traced from the twentieth-century Salish woman striving as an author writing in English in Jay Miller's "Mourning Dove: The Author as Cultural Mediator," to the eighteenth-century Anglo-Mohawk lad who wanted to be accepted as a Congregational minister in Massachusetts in Geoffrey Buerger's "Eleazer Williams: Elitism and Multiple Identity on Two Frontiers," to the eighteenth-century Pennsylvania Irish-American who lived as a Shawnee and later worked as an interpreter and diplomatic intermediary in Colin Calloway's "Simon Girty: Interpreter and Intermediary." The book is handsomely illustrated with maps and portraits."--Book jacket. 

xxi, 337 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm 

Contents:
Alternate identities and cultural frontiers / James A. Clifton --
Simon Girty: interpreter and intermediary / Colin C. Calloway --
Joseph Renville and the ethos of biculturism / Gary C. Anderson --
Augustin Hamlin, Jr.: Ottawa identity and politics of Ottawa persistence / James M. McClurken --
Eleazer Williams: elitism and multiple identity on two frontiers / Geoffrey E. Buerger --
Susette and Susan LaFlesch: reformer and missionary / Jerry E. Clark and Martha Ellen Webb --
Mourning Dove: the author as cultural mediator / Jay Miller --
From Sylvester Long to Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance / Donald B. Smith --
"A place in your mind for them all:" Chief William Berens / Jennifer S.H. Brown --
Dan Raincloud: "Keeping our Indian way" / Mary Black-Rogers --
Maud Clairmont: artist, entrepreneur, cultural mediator / Thomas H. Johnson --
Joe True: convergent needs and assumed identity / Robert J. Stahl --
Oopeeleeka and Mina: contrasting responses to modernization of two Baffin Island Inuit women / Ann McElroy.

Includes bibliography and index.