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The student body: a history of the Stewart Indian School, 1890-1940

Description

In 1890, the State of Nevada built the Stewart Indian School on a parcel of land three miles south of Carson City, Nevada, and then sold the campus to the federal government. The Stewart Indian School operated as the only non-reservation Indian boarding school in Nevada until 1980 when the federal government closed the campus. Faced with the challenge of assimilating Native peoples into Anglo society after the conclusion of the Indian wars and the confinement of Indian nations on reservations, the federal government created boarding schools. Policymakers believed that in one generation they could completely eliminate Indian culture by removing children from their homes and educating them in boarding schools. The history of the Stewart Indian School from 1890 to 1940 is the story of a dynamic and changing institution. Only Washoe, Northern Paiute, and Western Shoshone students attended Stewart for the first decade, but over the next forty years, children from over sixty tribal groups enrolled at the school. They arrived from three dozen reservations and 335 different hometowns across the West. During this period, Stewart evolved from a repressive and exploitive institution, into a school that embodied the reform agenda of the Indian New Deal in the 1930s. This dissertation uses archival and ethnographic material to explain how the federal government's agenda failed. Rather than destroying Native culture, Stewart students and Nevada's Indian communities used the skills taught at the school to their advantage and became tribal leaders during the 1930s. This dissertation explores the individual and collective bodies of Stewart students. The body is a social construction constantly being fashioned by the intersectional forces of race, class, and gender. Each chapter explores the different ways the Stewart Indian School and the federal government tried to transform the students' bodies through their physical appearance, the built environment, health education, vocational training, and extracurricular activities such as band and sports.

ContributorsThompson, Bonnie (Author) / Iverson, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Gray, Susan (Thesis advisor) / Green, Monica (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)

Created2013

Undismayed by any mere man: women lawmakers and tax policy in Nevada, 1919-1956

Description

Women have played a vital role in Nevada's lawmaking process since first lobbying the Territorial Legislature in 1861. In subsequent decades, women increased in numbers as lobbyists, staff, and reporters. By 1914, when Nevada women won the right to vote and be elected to office, male legislators were accustomed to a female presence in the Capitol. With enfranchisement, however, came a more direct role for women in the state's lawmaking process. Featuring the twenty-nine women who served in the Nevada Legislature in the first half of the twentieth century, this dissertation enhances knowledge about public women between what are commonly called the two feminist waves. In addition to a general analysis of their partisan and legislative activities, this dissertation specifically contemplates women's participation in shifting Nevada's tax base from residents to nonresidents. This dissertation argues that these women legislators were influenced primarily by their experiences in the business sector. Suffrage provided the opportunity to hold public office, but it did not define their politics. More useful for understanding women lawmakers in the first half of the twentieth century is what I call "fiscal maternalism." Women legislators mitigated their social concerns with their understanding of the state's economic limitations. Their votes on controversial issues such as legalized gambling, easy divorce, and regulated prostitution reflected a perspective of these issues as economic first and moral second. Demonstrating a motherly care for the state's economy and the tax burden on families, women invoked both their maternal authority and financial acumen to construct their legislative authority. Combining policy history and women's history, this dissertation documents that a legislator's sex did not necessarily predict her vote on legislation and advances the gendered analysis of state lawmaking beyond the dichotomy that emerges with the application of the label "women's issues." In addition, this dissertation demonstrates that the digitization of newspapers provides a fruitful new resource for historians, particularly those interested in women. The ability to search within articles removes the reliance on headlines and reveals that the previously-disregarded society pages are valuable tools for tracing women's business activities and political networks.

ContributorsBennett, Dana R. (Author) / Gray, Susan E (Thesis advisor) / Critchlow, Donald (Committee member) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)

Created2011

Does the Spatial Arrangement of Urban Landscape Matter? Examples of Urban Warming and Cooling in Phoenix and Las Vegas

Description

This study examines the impact of spatial landscape configuration (e.g., clustered, dispersed) on land-surface temperatures (LST) over Phoenix, Arizona, and Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. We classified detailed land-cover types via object-based image analysis (OBIA) using Geoeye-1 at 3-m resolution (Las Vegas) and QuickBird at 2.4-m resolution (Phoenix). Spatial autocorrelation (local Moran’s I ) was then used to test for spatial dependence and to determine how clustered or dispersed points were arranged. Next, we used Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) data acquired over Phoenix (daytime on 10 June and nighttime on 17 October 2011) and Las Vegas (daytime on 6 July and nighttime on 27 August 2005) to examine day- and nighttime LST with regard to the spatial arrangement of anthropogenic and vegetation features. Local Moran’s I values of each land-cover type were spatially correlated to surface temperature. The spatial configuration of grass and trees shows strong negative correlations with LST, implying that clustered vegetation lowers surface temperatures more effectively. In contrast, clustered spatial arrangements of anthropogenic land-cover types, especially impervious surfaces and open soil, elevate LST. These findings suggest that city planners and managers should, where possible, incorporate clustered grass and trees to disperse unmanaged soil and paved surfaces, and fill open unmanaged soil with vegetation. Our findings are in line with national efforts to augment and strengthen green infrastructure, complete streets, parking management, and transit-oriented development practices, and reduce sprawling, unwalkable housing development.

ContributorsMyint, Soe Win (Author) / Zheng, Baojuan (Author) / Talen, Emily (Author) / Fan, Chao (Author) / Kaplan, Shari (Author) / Middel, Ariane (Author) / Smith, Martin (Author) / Huang, Huei-Ping (Author) / Brazel, Anthony J. (Author)

Created2015-06-29