Defining American Homelands: A Creek Nation Example, 1828-1907

Detached from Their Homeland: The Latter-day

“…The most recent work adding discourse to the homeland concept comes from Douglas Hurt (2003) who uses evidence from the Creek (Muscogee) Nation to advance a revised, less ambiguous conceptualization for homelands. In Hurt's estimation, homelands are comprised of a tightly knit, segregated community that occupies a defined territory where unique forms of cultural expression are inscribed upon the cultural landscape and the space is charged with deep emotional loyalty.…”

“…However, as the everexpanding body of research illustrates (Schnell 2000;Hurt 2001Hurt , 2003Smith 2002), it is apparent that no term within the geographic lexicon captures the essence of peoples' deep-seated feelings of attachment to place better than the concept of homeland. As Steven Schnell aptly remarks: "[M]ore than simply a refinement of the culture-area concept, the growing focus on homelands is a recognition of the inadequacy of broad culture regions to describe emotional attachments to place" (Schnell 2000, 156).…”

Examination of Prospective Teachers’ Perceptions of Homeland: A Phenomenological Study

“…The concept can also be defined as "territory with limited borders in which a nation lives freely and independently" (Kuşçu, 2005;Kaçmaz, 2012), the keystone that increases the feeling of being together of interconnected communities with geographical and emotional bonds" (Golia and others, 2007) or a piece of field or land on which a person was born, raised and sustained his life (Sütçü, 2004). The concept of homeland, which is developed in the form of sacredness in time, and on which people has deep feelings (Nostrand and Estaville, 1993) and to which people are connected with various emotions in an unusual way (Hurt, 2004), has also been attributed to holiness occasionally (Ünal and Çalışkan, 2017). Smith and White (2004) urge that the concept was developed by strong cultural groups having common ideals.…”

“…Also discussed by anthropologists and sociologists (Post, 2009), the concept of homeland is an important thought which has attracted geographers, and is studied in geography (Smith and White, 2004). However, it is a long-standing tradition to investigate home, place and spatial concepts in geography (Hurt, 2004). The concept of homeland, one of these concepts, was first used by Alvar Carlson.…”

“…Later Nostrand (1992) characterized this concept as three different elements: The human, the ground and the bond that forms a sense of identity between the two. Nostrand and estaville (1993), by adding new ones to these three components, relate the concept of Homeland to People, Place, sense of place, control of place and time (Schnell, 2000;Hurt, 2004;post, 2009). Furthermore, Nostrand (1992) argues that people who live long enough in a particular place to adapt to the natural environment are identified with the environment and the cultural characteristics of the environment.…”