Unfair Labor?

American Indians and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago

David R. M. Beck (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

332 Seiten

2023
University of Nebraska Press (Verlag)
978-1-4962-3472-8 (ISBN)

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Unfair Labor? is the first book to explore the economic impact of Native Americans who participated in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago. By the late nineteenth century, tribal economic systems across the Americas were decimated, and tribal members were desperate to find ways to support their families and control their own labor. As U.S. federal policies stymied economic development in tribal communities, individual Indians found creative new ways to make a living by participating in the cash economy. Before and during the exposition, American Indians played an astonishingly broad role in both the creation and the collection of materials for the fair, and in a variety of jobs on and off the fairgrounds.

While anthropologists portrayed Indians as a remembrance of the past, the hundreds of Native Americans who participated were carving out new economic pathways. Once the fair opened, Indians from tribes across the United States, as well as other indigenous people, flocked to Chicago. Although they were brought in to serve as displays to fairgoers, they had other motives as well. Once in Chicago they worked to exploit circumstances to their best advantage. Some succeeded; others did not.

Unfair Labor? breaks new ground by telling the stories of individual laborers at the fair, uncovering the roles that Indians played in the changing economic conditions of tribal peoples, and redefining their place in the American socioeconomic landscape.

David R. M. Beck is an award-winning historian and a professor in the University of Illinois Department of History. He was previously a professor of Native American Studies at the University of Montana for more than two decades. Beck is the author of several books, including The Struggle for Self Determination: History of the Menominee Indians since 1854 (Nebraska, 2005) and is the coauthor with Rosalyn LaPier of City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893–1934 (Nebraska, 2015).

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1. Overview: American Indians and Ethnology at the Fair
1. Fair Representation?
2. Evolution of the American Indian Displays at the Fair
Part 2. Before the Fair: Making Money at Home
3. Native People Collecting for the Fair
4. The Department of Ethnology Collecting for the Fair
5. Government Agencies Collecting for the Fair
Part 3. During the Fair: Working in Chicago
6. Working the Anthropological and Education Displays
7. Working the Commercial Displays
8. Those Left Out
Afterword/Afterward: American Indians and Their New World
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	26.04.2023
Zusatzinfo	34 photographs, 8 illustrations, 5 maps, 2 tables, 1 appendix, index
Verlagsort	Lincoln
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-4962-3472-3 / 1496234723
ISBN-13	978-1-4962-3472-8 / 9781496234728
Zustand	Neuware