First Nations Development Institute

What shapes attitudes about Native American policy issues and inherent rights? Race and ethnicity are important in shaping US public opinion, but Native Americans have been almost entirely excluded from this research. We use data from an original survey and focus groups collected from the Reclaiming Native Truth project to examine the factors that shape attitudes toward Native American inherent rights and broader race conscious policy issues. We find high levels of support overall, but several factors influence lower levels of support. Many people have very low factual knowledge about Native American issues and rely heavily on partisan shortcuts in forming opinions, especially for policy issues. Overall, attitudes about inherent rights are less consistent as many people have very little knowledge about them. People of color tend to be more supportive than white people and white people tend to rely more on partisan shortcuts. Specifically, conservative whites are the least supportive across most issues. We also explore the effect of Native American resentment, finding there are people who hold overtly hostile views of Native Americans and are unsupportive of their rights and policies. Our findings contribute to growing literature on Indigenous resentment, settler colonialism and public attitudes toward Indigenous peoples.

Prairie dogs have declined by 98% throughout their range in the grasslands of North America. Translocations have been used as a conservation tool to reestablish colonies of this keystone species and to mitigate human-wildlife conflict. Understanding the behavioral responses of prairie dogs to translocation is of utmost importance to enhance the persistence of the species and for species that depend on them, including the critically endangered black-footed ferret. In 2017 and 2018, we translocated 658 black-tailed prairie dogs on the Lower Brule Indian Reservation in central South Dakota, USA, a black-footed ferret recovery site. Here, we describe and evaluate the effectiveness of translocating prairie dogs into augered burrows and soft-released within presumed coteries to reestablish colonies in previously occupied habitat. We released prairie dogs implanted with passive integrated transponders (PIT tags) and conducted recapture events approximately 1-month and 1-year post-release. We hypothesized that these methods would result in a successful translocation and that prairie dogs released as coteries would remain close to where they were released because of their highly social structure. In support of these methods leading to a successful translocation, 69% of marked individuals was captured 1-month post-release, and 39% was captured 1-year post-release. Furthermore, considerable recruitment was observed with 495 unmarked juveniles captured during the 1-year post-release trapping event, and the reestablished colony had more than doubled in the area by 2021. Contrary to our hypothesis, yet to our knowledge a novel finding, there was greater initial movement within the colony 1-month post-release than expected based on recapture locations compared with the published average territory size; however, 1 year after release, most recaptured individuals were captured within the expected territory size when compared to capture locations 1-month post-release. This research demonstrates that while translocating prairie dogs may be socially disruptive initially, it is an important conservation tool.

Archives > Volume 19 (2022) > Issue 2 > Item 06 DOI: 10.55521/10-019-206 Roe Bubar, J.D.Professor, Ethnic Studies Department/School of Social WorkColorado State UniversityRoe.Bubar@colostate.edu Tiffani Kelly, M.S.Assistant Director, Native American Cultural CenterAdjunct Faculty, Ethnic Studies DepartmentColorado State UniversityTiffani.Kelly@colostate.edu Kimberly Bundy-Fazioli, Ph.D., LCSWAssociate Professor, Social Work DepartmentUniversity of Massachusetts Globalkbundyfa@umassglobal.edu Caridad Souza, Ph.D.Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies Department and Women’s Studies & Gender […]

Abstract What shapes Americans' attitudes toward and about Native Americans? Public opinion research acknowledges that race and ethnicity are a factor in shaping US public opinion. Native Americans have been almost entirely excluded from this research. But we do know that, despite being a relatively small population, the general public holds stereotypes and false narratives about Native Americans that have been perpetuated by popular culture, education curriculum, and national myths. In this paper, we use new and original data collected under the Reclaiming Native Truth project to examine the factors that shape attitudes toward Native Americans. More specifically, we examine individual and contextual factors that shape views of discrimination against Native Americans and resentment toward Native Americans. We find that political ideology (liberal versus conservative) and the reliance on Native American stereotypes are factors most consistently associated with resentment and attitudes about Native American discrimination, although direct personal experiences and factual knowledge also matter. Our findings contribute to conversations about attitudes toward racial and ethnic minority groups and emerging scholarship on the role of political attitudes in settler-colonial societies.