By Margaret Mortensen Vaughan, Ph.D.¹

Generally speaking, mainstream environmentalists and Indigenous peoples (both diverse groups of people) have had complicated relationships.² Under-examined are the cases of how media in particular environmental media and the genre of nature magazines, are involved in that complicating process. Print images and rhetoric influences readers who may not have an extensive knowledge of Indigenous (this article uses the political/ethnic labels of American Indian, Native, and Indigenous interchangeably) and Federal policy issues. Journalists may not have such a background and fall back on their knowledge of environmental law without considering Indigenous policies that apply to cases and situations on which they are writing. The following exegesis of rhetoric used in two articles focuses on the rhetorical strategies of opposition which include the belittlement, exaggeration, and demonization against American Indian religious freedom and silence on U.S. federal trust obligations and Indigenous treaty rights. This discourse is not new, but the more current cases in which these occur should be closely examined. These articles are cases in which environmentalist journalism depicts Indigenous peoples and certain groups of Indigenous peoples with negative imagery in order to influence readership opinion so that readers will not support changes in rule-making or policy that supports Indigenous cultural practices.

Audubon magazine, a respected environmental magazine in the mainstream environmental community, featured two articles on the uses of eagles and eagle feathers by Indigenous peoples.³ These were written by the same author. The articles were written to persuade the readership that policies and proposed rule changes toward Native Peoples’ access and use of live bald and golden eagles as well as eagle parts and feathers are misguided because this access contradicts the protection of eagles and unfairly favors the religious freedoms of American Indians. These articles were written before the delisting of the bald eagle from the endangered species list, an action on which the National Congress of American Indians and other communities disagreed (the desert bald eagle population were re-listed shortly after being delisted).⁴

A full-length article by Ted Williams in September 1986 focused on the American Indian harvesting of eagles and strongly criticized the Indigenous use of eagle feathers in ceremonies. This article “A Harvest of Eagles” was excerpted from his book, Don’t Blame the Indians: The Mechanized Destruction of Fish and Wildlife.⁵ The second article appeared in the March-April issue in 2001, “Golden Eagles for the Gods.” This article’s goal was to convince readers to write to the National Park Service to protest a proposed rule to open Wupatki National Monument in Arizona to members of the Hopi Tribe to collect golden eaglets for ceremonial purposes. The following passages will show how this journalist drew on argumentative strategies that belittled, exaggerated, and demonized Indigenous peoples. In “A Harvest of Eagles,” Williams referred to “American Indians” and Indians” as the subject of his criticism. In addition, his specific examples of “errant” Native American individuals who had faced legal prosecution were depicted with tribally-specific affiliations, including Red Lake Chippewa and Yankton Sioux. In “Golden Eagles for the Gods” the journalist continued these rhetorical strategies, writing about a “Hopi faction” and also “Indians” as a generalized group. The 2001 article appeared in a regular column of Audubon magazine called, “Incite.” The column title is wordplay concerning the word “insight” and “incite” meaning “to make angry.” In my observations, this is an unusual column appearing in environmental journalism, but it is a column that permits highly opinionated editorializing on an assortment of topics. As stated before, this style is not new, but its use in environmental writing in these cases speaks of a large perception gap between the Indigenous groups depicted in the article and this environmental journalist.⁶ The perception gap begins with the first line of the earliest article.

Williams starts out his 1986 article with an exaggeration, “AMERICAN INDIAN [sic] religion cannot be practiced without a copious flow of eagle feathers. Or so say the Indians. It seems very strange.”⁷ Williams set up his argumentative strategy of exaggeration and generalization in these first sentences. He combined all “Indian” religions and all “Indians” when he wrote “American Indian religion” and “so say the Indians.” He used exaggeration to call attention to “Indian” activities: “copious flow of eagle feathers” and “It seems very strange” (underline added for emphasis). The rhetorical strategy of exaggeration evoked imagery of a large amount of feathers versus the implied small amount of eagles.

Secondly, this journalism exaggerated about the easy access to eagle parts distributed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s eagle depository. He wrote, “from this supply to the Indian faithful flows a cascade of eagle feathers.”⁸ The term “Indian faithful” seems to indicate an organized religious movement, as well. The phrase “cascade of eagle feathers” also sets up an image evoking an image of a greedy, “Indian faithful.” The term “Indian faithful” seems to indicate an organized religious movement, as well. In actual practice, an irregular supply of eagle parts went in and out of the depository because the supply was based on accidental killings of eagles. Applicants were put on a waiting list. This distribution did not provide immediate access or a plentiful supply to Native American applicants, or a “cascade of eagle feathers.”

Thirdly, the article included exaggerations about the power of the Endangered Species Act, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. “It is against the law, plain and simple. No exceptions. Still, America’s legal system has excused Indians when they have killed eagles.”⁹ Williams sidelined an entire body of Federal Indian law, as well as laws and sovereignty of Native Nations. This body of Federal Indian law included treaties and the trust responsibility doctrine. Treaties and the trust doctrine pre-date environmental laws regulating hunting and feather ownership. Ranco and Suagee in a 2007 article write to emphasize the necessity of an environmental “participation that is cognizant of tribal sovereignty and colonial histories” which is not exemplified in this article by Williams. Ranco and Suagee begin their article with the following: “The unique political arrangement between Indian tribes and the United States is based on a complex body of law that includes treaties, acts of Congress, executive orders, and decisions of federal courts. This body of law distinguishes American Indians and Alaska Natives from other cultural and racial minorities in the United States, framing a political arrangement that reflects recognition of the aboriginal rights of the tribes, rights that predate the existence of the United States and even the concept of ‘race’ itself.”¹⁰ Williams belittled and side-stepped Federal Indian law such as high court rulings recognizing the exercise of treaty rights. Williams labeled this recognition of treaty rights as “excus[ing] Indians.” At another point he described the courts’ action with the phrase “appears to permit.”¹¹ By doing so he entered the territory of the next argumentative strategy: belittlement.

Several examples of belittling Indigenous peoples appeared in the article. The journalism piece discursively shifted away from the significance of treaty rights toward the idea that the high courts had “excused” Native communities from environmental protection laws. This discursive move was belittling to Native communities’ positions as sovereign nations, managers of their own affairs, and separate from states and environmental organizations. Furthermore, Williams’ constant use of the terms “American Indian religion” and “Indians” belittled diverse cultural communities with diverse spiritualities. In an opinionated manner, the journalist also belittled “Indian” religious activity for, in his eyes, it did not fit in the same category as “other serious religions.”
With all other serious religions the artifacts of worship are much less important than the overriding ideals and principles of the order, the application of central belief to day-to-day living, a supreme being, the worship itself.¹² Somehow the ceremonial use of eagle feathers set Indian religious activity apart from “serious religions” or organized, “civilized religions.”¹³

Williams also insinuated in this passage that “serious” (civilized religions) perpetuated themselves with abstract belief systems, and, in contrast, Native American religions relied on material objects or “artifacts of worship” and hence it can be interpreted to fit into the category of “idol worshipers.” “Idol worshipers” are akin to demon worshipers in some forms of major world religious thought. It is as if the journalist sought to demonize Native Americans in order to protect eagles.

Williams applied specific analogies to demonize “Indians.” He repeatedly referenced “Indians” as criminals who were prosecuted for killing eagles. Williams discussed an investigation in which “forty-one people (thirty-three of them Indian)” were caught harvesting eagles. In just one area, “perhaps [emphasis added] as many as 300 eagles, mostly balds had been killed in the vicinity of the Yankton Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota.”¹⁴ The number of birds killed was an estimate by qualified government estimators so Williams probably felt comfortable using the estimate. Furthermore, Williams argued that the decline of the eagle population on the wildlife refuge that bordered the Yankton Sioux reservation was a result of Indian hunting. He identified a Yankton Sioux father and son, “the Dions,” who were among thirty-three Indians arrested in an investigation. “For a sparsely populated Indian reservation already stocked with eagle feathers, an additional harvest requiring the dispatching of 300 birds would seem to indicate religious fanaticism of the sort one might encounter in the Middle East.”¹⁵ The 300 birds was an estimate when it was previously referenced in the article, but here it is set down as an established fact. The interpretation of events of the late 70s and early 80s fueled this comparison to Middle East fanaticism: Ayatollah Khomeini’s and Muslim fundamentalism’s take-over of Iran in 1979, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo in 1973, the Iran hostage crisis from 1979-1981, and the Iran and Iraq War.¹⁶ The allegation of religious fanaticism clearly was part of a discourse of opinion that drew on stereotypes about the “Middle East” to vilify Indian eagle hunters. Williams was referencing hot-button current events of the time to play on the emotions and the images within the minds of readers. He used one stereotype of “Middle Eastern fanaticism” to fuel discomfort or hate for Native Americans.

This approach, whether the journalist realized it or not, used the orientalizing of one “group” of people to orientalize American Indians (the idea of Orientalizing stems from the Palestinian American scholar Edward Said). The following quote explains the work of orientalizing:

“The depiction of this single ‘Orient’ which can be studied as a cohesive whole is one of the most powerful accomplishments of Orientalist scholars. It essentializes an image of a prototypical Oriental—a biological inferior that is culturally backward, peculiar, and unchanging—to be depicted in dominating and sexual terms. The discourse and visual imagery of Orientalism is laced with notions of power and superiority, formulated initially to facilitate a colonizing mission on the part of the West and perpetuated through a wide variety of discourses and policies.”¹⁷ The binaries between “civilized and savage,” the comparison to religious fanatics and “terrorists” attributed to a “Middle East” and the exaggerations and generalizing all are facets of orientalizing discourse.

Williams also drew on a well-known platitude to insinuate the evilness of the eagle hunters. “In any case, religion is what the Dions said made them do it.”¹⁸ This statement evoked the platitude, “The devil made me do it.” This statement in the article is also in the passive tense, so it appears that the Dions are saying it, rather than being mediated through a journalistic representation. Williams intentionally or unintentionally reworded this platitude to amplify his negative view of “Indian” religions. However, he was not able to provide definitive proof that Native American harvesting of eagles was detrimental to regional eagle populations.

In the last decade wintering eagles have declined on the Mundt refuge [the refuge adjacent to Yankton Sioux Indian Reservation]. Peak counts in the mid-seventies flirted with 300. By the early eighties peaks were down to 120. Weather conditions played a role, but Indian poaching probably did too.¹⁹
After demonizing Yankton Sioux eagle hunters, Williams based the cause of eagle population decline on assumptions. His statement on weather conditions was written with finality, but his statement on Indian poaching was written with the rather weak qualifier, “Indian poaching probably [emphasis added] did too.”²⁰

Another point in the article discussed the eighth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling involving the Yankton Sioux father and son, the Dions. The Court supported the treaty stipulations regarding hunting on reservations, recognizing the Dions’ rights to hunt eagles. Williams reacted with these words, “State and federal statues notwithstanding, bald or golden eagles passing through reservation air space were fair game for Indians.”²¹ Williams used the phrase “reservation air space” as if reservations were enemy territory. This imbrication of “enemy territory” and Indian Country or “reservation air space” contains roots in military parlance: The term “Indian Country” in communiqué signified enemy territory.

Williams reached the pinnacle of demonization of Indians, foreshadowed by the phrase “religion is what the Dions said made them do it” when he compared Native Americans to Satanists. Williams stated:

“Those who worship Satan certainly are practicing a genuine religion, but because sundry satanic rites not only are unacceptable to the public but dangerous to it as well. Satanists find themselves severely restricted by law.”²²

Through harnessing particularly revolting images of the time period, such as Satanists and “Middle East fanatics,” mixing in exaggeration, and misinterpreting the significance of treaties, Williams created an article to jar readers into opposing Native American utilization of eagle feathers. The journalist was interested in protecting and preserving eagles, not preserving or protecting cultures or American Indian sovereignty.

In his lengthy 2001 “sequel,” “Golden Eagles for the Gods,” Williams continued to use the strategy of demonizing Native Americans using untrustworthy and essentializing claims. The motive for the article’s publication was to persuade readers to contact the National Park Service and voice an opinion against the newly proposed Federal Register rule to allow the Hopi to take eagles at Wupatki National Monument. In this article, Williams essentialized Native Americans by referring to them as a “race.” Williams wrote, “The truth about Indians, like the truth about other races, is that one can’t generalize about them.” Williams revisited the concept of race at the end of his essay, categorizing people into “white, black, and red.”²³ In choosing the term “race,” the journalist declined to represent Native Americans as individuals within diverse cultural and ethnic groups. Williams’ nod to diversity was based on an essentializing racializing classification rather than on a cultural differentiation.²⁴ For an uninformed reader, “race” and behavior may be closely associated, despite Williams’ caveat about generalization. From the article’s context, it was difficult to interpret if Williams meant the term “race” as a socially-constructed classification or as a biological term sometimes used in nature writing in conjunction with plant and animal species. Evidence that he subscribed to race as a biological classification appeared in one of his books where he questioned the authenticity of Indians with “blonde hair, blue eyes and freckles”²⁵ The term “race” contains powerful categorical associations that may be absent from “ethnic or cultural group.” The term “race” deterministically implies or asserts inherent genetic or biological characteristics. Williams implied that people fit neatly within the confines of diverse “races”—a contradictory assertion. Terms such as “ethnicity” and “culture,” would have signified identities that were flexible, changeable, and learned, not inherent.²⁶ By twisting the discourse into one about race, Williams enabled the perpetuation of several fallacies: that “Indian” identity was a racial identity with unchangeable associated characteristics that outsiders have the power to define, and in an even further discursive twist, “Indians” were exercising rights based on “race” rather than a political category influenced by the processes of colonization.

This article attacked one Hopi “faction” for their eagle gathering activities at Wupatki National Monument (not understanding Hopi eaglet gathering processes).

In Arizona…a faction of the Hopi tribe, which for centuries has captured and killed young golden eagles for ritualistic sacrifice, is lobbying the National Park Service (with apparent success) to let it collect eagles from the 54-square-mile Wupatki National Monument, just north of Flagstaff.²⁷

In this case, Williams’ assertion clashed with a Hopi Tribe’s press release. He wrote this as though Wupatki was a new gathering area for the Hopi. In a press release in 1999, the Hopi Tribe stated that going to Wupatki for eagles is an “annual pilgrimage…exercised for as long as the Hopi can remember.”²⁸ Williams does not present Wupatki National Monument as an ancestral Hopi gathering place. In Williams’ view, Wupatki signified a bundle of meanings that included, patriotism, access for all American visitors, environmental protection, and a park without human predation. Williams held to the strict definition of parks without people (although parks are actually heavily managed areas), and presented this as the naturalized legally and socially correct state of affairs.

Throughout the article this journalist drew from personal opinions and second-hand information about Hopi eagle-gathering practices from identified and anonymous wildlife biologists. Williams drew on two statements by two government raptor biologists who clearly opposed Hopi eaglet gathering. These biologists do not speak from the point of “hard” Western science with numbers or studies to back up their claims. One compared the Hopi harvest of eagles to the effects of DDT: “We might as well be putting DDT out there.” ²⁹ Another raptor biologist explained that what exacerbated the diminishment of eagles was “overgrazing” on Hopi and Navajo land. This factor combined with “get[ting] hit by Hopi” (with permits) and Navajo (without permits) was what contributed to eagle population decline.³⁰

Williams finally did include some numbers of eagles harvested by permit: “from 1986-1999 was 208” and stated, “That’s a lot of mortality for a predator perched atop the food chain.”³¹ Then on the same page he turned to the acts of “Indians” in general that “the illegal kill by Indians (not necessarily Hopi) is many times more than that.” In “fact,” Williams argued, “Some Indians…some Hopi…think the ritual should be consigned to the past as was the sacrifice of children, from which anthropologists believe it may have derived.”³² The author tapped into an image historically used to demonize, propagandize, and persecute “the Other.” Kamen (1985) described how this child killer accusation was used during the Spanish Inquisition regarding alleged Jewish torturers sacrificing Christian children.³³ The same accusation continued into the twentieth century.³⁴ In this case, Williams attributed his source for ritual child murder among ancient Hopi to anonymous “anthropologists.” First of all, this journalist does not seem to be steeped in anthropology, especially shown in how he still subscribed to the concept of “race.” Second of all, I believe he acted unethically and mean-spirited when he does not name his source, the anthropologist, but still associated Hopi people with child killers.

The article continued to use second-hand information when describing a Fish and Wildlife worker reporting on a Hopi Eagle Clan member sneaking off to release Hopi eaglets because the Eagle Clan “reveres free, living eagles.”³⁵ This journalist’s representation contradicts a report in High Country News. High Country News reported in August of 1996, nine men of the Eagle Clan were arrested for gathering eaglets.³⁶ This is also a piece of journalism that may have misreported. However, it is safe to state that Williams presented a misperception when he assumes the eagle’s signification for Eagle Clan members was the same as non-Indian environmentalists desire to protect eagles.³⁷

The article presented the Hopi people as sneaky, exploitive and criminal, specifically as robbers in one passage: “the robbing [emphasis added] of eagle nests at Wupatki.”³⁸ And, also Williams stated,

The Hopi are also trying to take eagles and hawks from three other park units in Arizona—Grand Canyon, Sunset Crater Volcano, and Walnut Canyon. But if one tribe is allowed to take wildlife from the national park system, how can other tribes, or even Anglos, legally be denied?³⁹

He also asserted that the feathers were not utilized for the legally religious purposes but for black market profits or in powwow outfits that indirectly provide more profits. Williams depicted Native Americans as greedy and underhanded.

Some dancers make their livings going from powwow to powwow, competing for cash prizes….Powwow contestants are judged, in part, by the feathers they wear. During the “grand entry” dance at the annual Albuquerque powwow, you can see the remains of at least 20,000 eagles bouncing around the floor at one time.

It is the powwow circuit that keeps eagles and eagle parts moving so briskly on the black market.⁴⁰
Williams then recounted how members of the Hopi, “Indians of various tribes in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah,” and Jemez Pueblo were prosecuted for selling eagle parts.

While there is no evidence that the Hopi use immature golden eagles for anything other than their religious rituals, no one can reasonably expect them simply to place feathers worth this kind of money on Kachina dolls that never get sold or to piously scatter them under robbed aeries.⁴¹
The article also characterized Native Americans as impulsive, corrupt, and cruel. The cruelty factor was expressed in the case of a Jemez Pueblo man’s description of how he “dispatch[ed]” an eagle. Williams drew on another quote from a former Park Service employee:

I had one Indian tell me: “I’m like most Navajos. If I see an eagle, and I’ve got a gun, I’m taking a shot at it.” I’ve been with them when they’ve said: “I wish we had a gun.” Another time I was out with Hopis and an eagle jumped off a carcass out in the sand hills, and they were all bemoaning the fact that they didn’t have a rifle. ⁴²
Within the second article was a “What You Can Do” box illustrated with two hands gesturing toward a distantly shining yellow globe: “The National Park Service has asked to hear what you think of its proposed rule to let the Hopi Indians take golden eagles from a national park unit for ritualistic slaughter. Don’t disappoint it.” ⁴³
Throughout the 1986 and 2001 articles, Williams remained silent about a whole body of Federal Indian law and tribal law. Invisible in the discourse as well was the extensive history of non-Indian eagle hunting, pollution, and other environmental factors contributing to eagle endangerment. In 1986, Williams drew on demonization, orientalizing, belittlement, and exaggeration to make his points about Native Americans. In 2001, he attempted to depict a faction of the Hopi people, but momentarily in the article the discourse resorts back to generalizing about Native Americans in negative terms. In 2001, Williams used secondhand sources presented as trustworthy, clear inaccuracies, and demonizing portraits of Hopi cultures. Such representation can build resentment between mainstream environmental organizations, groups, and individuals and Indigenous governments, organizations, and individuals instead of building allies. These representations are in contrast to Ted Williams’ representation of the Nez Perce Wolf Recovery Project in the May-June 2007 issue of Audubon magazine.⁴⁴ Without background about the subject, little knowledge about Indian Country, and little knowledge of Indigenous law in the U.S., readers would have been susceptible to this opinionated journalism.

Following both articles, dialogical responses to the Hopi eagle controversy appeared in the letters-to-the-editor sections in which writers worked hard to displace the orientalizing discourse. The 1986 letters-to-the-editor, (the Dialogue section) regarding “A Harvest of Eagles” were subtitled “On the Warpath,” a cliché playing on an Indian warfare image representing readers’ passionate responses.⁴⁵ These letters fell into the category of calling Williams’ article “insulting,” arguing that religious substitutes were not acceptable in Western religions nor in American Indian religions, and asserting Williams had not fully researched the issue. One letter was from a Wayne State University Law School professor who wrote that treaties were enforceable legal documents that preceded environmental laws.

In May-June of 2001, the letters-to-the editor regarding Williams’ article were subtitled “All that Glitters.” A quote from one of the letters from the Chief of Staff in the Chairman’s Office in the Hopi tribe, Eugene Kaye, was excerpted as a call-out in the letters section. “Defiling a sacred Hopi religious ceremony with crass allegations of torture is a disservice to the readers of Audubon as well as the Hopi Tribe.”⁴⁶ More letters were published in favor of Williams’ (2001) article than against the article. However, the letters from Eugene Kaye, a member of the Hopi Tribe and Boyd Nystedt, a Navajo Nation member, added a dialogical mode to the discussion. Kaye charged, “Williams makes no effort to present the importance of eagles in Hopi religion. Rather, he depicts the practice in a most derogative manner and dismisses Hopi beliefs as pious hocus-pocus.”⁴⁷ Kaye described Audubon as behaving like a “trashy tabloid” using “crass allegations of torture” and pointed out that the Eagle Repository gathered their eagle collection largely because of the actions of non-Indians. Nystedt asked Audubon and its readers, “Were the Hopi or Navajo or Paiute consulted when Wupatki was created? ⁴⁸ Nystedt interrogated the “parks without people” discourse pointing out that national parks were created by banishing Indigenous peoples from the parklands. Williams wrote a reply to Kaye’s letter in which Williams’ recycled his article’s arguments and stated, “it’s time for them [Hopi] to modernize their religious practices (italics deleted).⁴⁹ Kaye’s voice was asserted in the dialogical space of the letters-to-the-editor, and Williams answered back in a way that clarified a behind-the-scenes attitude, and a belief in the savagery/civilization dichotomy. For Williams, “civilization” was equivalent to “modernized” religious practices. This was also encompassing an assimilative approach: Assimilation through the coerciveness of Western environmental practices and philosophies.

In a nutshell, a regularly contributing Audubon columnist, portrayed Native Americans and Hopi communities as practicing environmentally and socially offensive religions that were depicted as criminal and ecologically unsustainable. This journalism used the devices of demonizing, orientalizing, essentializing and exaggerating about Native Americans as an argumentative strategy. These are not new strategies or ways of depicting Indigenous Peoples Understanding this strategy of rhetoric is important to Indigenous peoples and allies to deflect and provide alternative imagery and explanations that humanize and also show how federally recognized American Indian Nations and the federal government rely on a specific body of doctrines and laws and rule-making that interact in both simple and complicated ways than what environmental journalism may depict. Such representations are important to what Ranco describes as “getting to the table” or being a powerful part of the policy decision making and contributing to the type of “table setting”⁵⁰ in the struggle for environmental justices according to the often intertwined cultural, religious, and environmental contexts for American Indians.

Endnotes

1. Large sections of this paper are excerpted from my dissertation, which benefited greatly from my dissertation committee: Jay Stauss, Tsianina Lomawaima, and Joe Hiller. Margaret Ann Mortensen Vaughan. “How Can You Love the Wolf and the Eskimo at the Same Time?” Representations of Indigenous Peoples in Nature Magazines. Doctoral Dissertation University of Arizona (Dissertation Abstracts International, 65 09A, 2004).

2. See the 2002 Fall Issue of the 7 Great Plains Natural Resources Journal 3 for statements on this from the 7th Biennial Indian Law Symposium: Indian Law, Culture, and the Environment: A New Dialogue for a New Century Panel 1: Tribal People and Environmentalists: Friends or Foes?

3. Ted Williams, “A harvest of eagles,” Audubon, Vol. 88, No. 5 September 1986 pp. 54-57. Ted Williams, “Golden eagles for the gods,” Audubon, Vol.103, No.2, 2001 March-April, pp. 30, 32, 34-39. For a legal analysis of the issue of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and its affects on Native communities and individuals see Matthew Perkins, “The Federal Indian Trust Doctrine and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act: Could Application of the Doctrine Alter the Outcome in U.S V. Hugs?” Environmental Law Vol. 30, pp. 701-727. Changes in the eagle permitting system to take eagles, hold eagles’ parts and feathers for religious purposes, and run an eagle aviary in an Indigenous community can be found on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife internet site: http://www.fws.gov/permits/mbpermits/birdbasics.html.

4. See The National Congress of American Indians Resolution #ECWS-07-0004 Title: Opposing Endangered Species Act De-listing of the Bald Eagle Resolution. This can be found on this website: http://www.ncai.org/ncai/resolutions/doc/07-004_Bald_Eagle.pdf.

5. Ted Williams Don’t blame the Indians: Native Americans and the mechanized destruction of fish and wildlife. (South Hamilton, MA: GSJ Press, 1986).

6. The concept of the perception gap is applied to this new context, but is influenced by the book by Leonard Steinhorn and Barbara Diggs-Brown, By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race (New York: Plume 2000), pp. 181-196.

7. Ted Williams, “A harvest of eagles” p. 54.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Darren Ranco and Dean Suagee, “Tribal Sovereignty and the Problem of Difference in Environmental Regulation: Observations on ‘Measured Separatism’ in Indian Country.” Antipode Vol. 39, No. 4, 2007, pp. 693-707 and quotes from pages 704 and 693-694.

11. Ted Williams “A harvest of eagles” p. 56.

12. Ted Williams “A harvest of eagles” p. 54.

13. Tsianina Lomawaima (Director of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona) brought to my attention the nuances of “civilized versus savage” that runs through Williams’ article.

14. Ted Williams “A harvest of eagles” p. 54.

15. Ted Williams “A harvest of eagles” p. 54, 56.

16. George Brown Tindall, America: A narrative history. (Vol. 2 2nd ed. NY: W.W. North & Company, 1988.

17. Danielle Sered, “Orientalism,” posted Fall 1996, retrieved February 8, 2007, from http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Orientalism.html.

18. Ted Williams “A harvest of eagles” p. 56.

19. Ted Williams “A harvest of eagles” pp. 54.

20. Ted Williams “A harvest of eagles” p. 54.

21. Ted Williams “A harvest of eagles” p. 56.

22. Ted Williams “A harvest of eagles” p. 57.

23. Ted Williams “Golden Eagles for the Gods pp. 30, 39.

24. Stephen Small, The contours of racialization: Structures, representations and resistance in the United States. In Roldolpho D. Torres, Louis. F. Mirón, & Jonathon Xavier Inda. (Eds.), Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) pp. 42-64.

25. Ted Williams, Don’t blame the Indians: Native Americans and the mechanized destruction of fish and wildlife. (South Hamilton, MA: GSJ Press, 1986) p. 119.

26. Stephen S. Cornell & Douglas Hartmann, Ethnicity and race: Making identities in a changing world. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1998).

27. Ted Williams, “Golden eagles for the gods,” p.30, 32.

28. The Hopi Tribe, Press release: Hopi denied access to religious sites by Wupatki National Monument officials, Posted June 29, 1999, at: ww.nau.edu/~hcpo-p/current/pressreleases/archive/eagles.htm.

29. Ted Williams, “Golden eagles for the gods,” p. 32.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid.

33. Kamen, Henry, Inquisition and society in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), pp. 15-16.

34. David J. Hogan, (Ed.), The Holocaust chronicle: A history in words and pictures. (Lincolnwood, IL: Publications International, 2000), p. 42.

35. Ted Williams, “Golden eagles for the gods,” p. 32.

36. George Hardeen, Two tribes, two religions, vie for a place in the desert. High Country News.org Vol. 28, no. 4, August 5, 1996. [On-line].

37. See Paul Nadasdy, “ Transcending the Debate Over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism,” Ethnohistory Vol. 52 No. 2 Spring 2005, pp. 291-331.

38. Ted Williams, “Golden eagles for the gods,” pp. 34-35

39. Ibid p. 36.

40. Ibid p. 37.

41. Ibid p. 37-38

42. Ibid p. 39.

43. Ibid p. 37.

44. Ted Williams “Back Off” Audubon May-June 2007, Posted: May 4, 2008, at: http://audubonmagazine.org/features0705/incite.html paragraph 20.

45. “On the warpath” [Letters-to-the-Editor], Audubon, Vol. 88 No.6, November, 1986, pp. 125-127

46. Eugene Kaye, “All that glitters,” [Letter to the Editor] Audubon, Vol. 103, No. 3, May-June 2001, p. 12.

47. Ibid.

48. B. Nystedt, (2001, May-June). “All that glitters” [Letter to the Editor]. Audubon, Vol. 103, No. 3, p. 12.

49. Ted Williams, (2001, May-June). “All that glitters,” [Letter to the editor] Audubon Vol. 103 No. 3, May-June, 2001, at: http://audubonmagazine.org/letter/letter0105.html.

50. See Darren Ranco , “The Trust Responsibility and Limited Sovereignty: What can Environmental Justice Groups Learn from Indian Nations? Society and Natural Resources, Vol. 21, pp. 354-362. Quotes from p. 355.