Don Wildman

We'll discuss this all with Gregory Smoke, professor of history at the University of Utah, a leading scholar of Native American history and religion.

He's the author of Ghost Dances and Identity, the Definitive Study of Prophetic Movements in the 19th Century.

Professor Smoke has worked extensively with tribal nations and led major research projects for the National Park Service, including at Little Bighorn, Pipe Spring, and Zion.

He's also a past president of the National Council on Public History.

Professor Smoke, Greg, welcome.

Thanks.

Great to be here.

The Ghost Dance Movement begins in the late 19th century, as I mentioned, around 1890, the end of a century that has witnessed the conquest and collapse of tribal societies across the continent, but most recently, of course, in the West, specifically with the last tribes resisting expansion, the Apache, the Shoshone, Lakota, and others.

The management of this conquest after the wars were over was done as it still is today by pushing Native peoples onto reservations.

Starts with the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

Can you take us through this process historically?

But you're absolutely right.

I'm glad you said that because as I was reading that opening that I wrote, it has such a downer feeling.

And I want to tell people that's not the note we mean to strike today.

Of course, there's that element to this.

But that's your point is that there's as much of a cultural...

kind of rediscovery going on through this movement.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah.

Those policies you talk about are Indian Removal Act 1830, then the Indian Appropriations Act 1851, the General Allotment Act, which is also known as the Dawes Act 1887.