Black-Hawk H. Thunderbird

House Thunderbird

“I have prepared this work to speak with you about ‘Indigenous People’ v. ‘Sovereignty’.

Our Association is established, Authenticated, and acknowledged Federally and in several States of the United States, ‘In fact’.

Our position is that Indigenous peoples should live as autonomous, self-determined, self-governing peoples, not as individual sovereigns”.

Published by House Thunderbird publications
Via InDigenous Education
Copyright © 2020

Image derived from Aldridge, D. & Aharon, Paul. (2010). Hydroclimate Events Revealed by a 4,300 Year Record of delta18O and delta13C Variability in a Speleothem from DeSoto Caverns (Alabama, USA). AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts.

Mississippian Chiefdoms and the Fission-Fusion Process

John H. Blitz
University of Alabama – Tuscaloosa

“A review of ethnohistorical sources suggests that another sociopolitical mechanism, the fission-fusion process, created the majority of mound-center settlement patterns through the aggregation or dispersal of basic political units. The fission-fusion process was the product of efforts by factional leaders to resolve the conflicting values of autonomy and security. Unlike the simple-complex chiefdom dichotomy, the fission-fusion model encompasses a greater diversity of Mississippian political forms and provides an alternative explanation for changes in mound center size, complexity, and location.”

Source: American Antiquity, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Oct., 1999), pp. 577-592
Published by: Society for American Archaeology