Health, Disease, and Demography

Thornton, Russell

doi:10.1002/9780470996461.ch5

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…9 Estimates of Indigenous population decline in the face of smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and malaria has ranged from as low as 2 million to as high as 7 million. 10 The wide range in hypothesized death rates reflects debates over the total pre-1492 population. High estimators posit a relatively large initial Indigenous population ranging between 12.5 and 18 million, and argue that European-introduced diseases had a significant and early impact.…”

Section: Resilience: An Alternative Approach To Epidemic Diseasementioning

confidence: 99%

A Rejoinder to Body Bags: Indigenous Resilience and Epidemic Disease, from COVID-19 to First “Contact”

Montgomery¹

2020

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since January of 2020, the number of deaths in Indian country due to COVID-19 has steadily grown, bringing into stark relief the destructive effects of disease epidemics on historically marginalized communities. For Indigenous peoples, the ravages of the ongoing pandemic are part of a broader epidemiological history of devastation set in motion by European colonization. The robust body of historical and anthropological scholarship which has emerged to document the impacts of infectious disease on Indigenous people has typically reinforced settler-colonial narratives of disappearance and culture loss. Although we cannot deny the tragic and long-term consequences of foreign pathogens on the peoples of the Americas, Indigenous communities have creatively responded to and survived disease outbreaks. Drawing on ethnographic and oral historical sources, this article documents some of the strategies employed by Indigenous people across North America to explain and treat episodic viral spread from the seventeenth into the twenty-first centuries. Tracing the culturally grounded methods of disease management employed by Indigenous groups over time highlights the resiliency of Tribal nations during the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

show abstract

Section: Resilience: An Alternative Approach To Epidemic Diseasementioning

confidence: 99%

A Rejoinder to Body Bags: Indigenous Resilience and Epidemic Disease, from COVID-19 to First “Contact”

Montgomery¹

2020

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…[31] Assessing the imposition of domesticated agriculture by Europeans during early contact, Cherokee-American anthropologist and historian Russell Thornton has thus suggested that "the reasons for the relatively few infectious diseases in this [western] hemisphere [prior to European contact] surely include… the existence of fewer domesticated animals, from which many human diseases arise" -unlike those that later grew up due to grain storage and transit patterns which differed from hunter-gatherer lifestyles as well as their own pre-contact forms of landmanagement and crop cultivation. [32] As biological anthropologists have shown, some precontact Native American communities were likely familiar with the association between cultivated animal lots and disease, albeit in more isolated settings. Pueblo Native Americans had witnessed the spread of diseases in areas contaminated by turkey dung, most probably salmonella and Shigella.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The latter exacerbated the spread of diseases that Native American communities were already struggling to fight off due to their impaired immunity. [24] According to the pioneering paleo-archeological work of Armelagos, such a phenomenon has commonly affected societies as they have transitioned to concentrated agricultural settlement and animal husbandry. Examining paleo-archeological evidence in European and Middle Eastern populations, Armelagos has noted the problems that followed relatively sudden proximity to domesticated animals and to human and animal waste in newly agricultural societies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonizing the Diet: synthesizing Native-American history, immunology, and nutritional science.

Mailer¹

2013

jevohealth

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article examines historical evidence that correlates a decline in Native American health and fertility with ruptures to indigenous food systems following European colonization. It suggests new interdisciplinary ways to study the association between breached indigenous nutritional practices and a decline in Native American health. These objectives bring together students of history and natural science and entail new ways of synthesizing hitherto separate scholarly enterprises in the classroom. In light of the most cutting-edge scientific literature on nutrition, metabolic syndrome, and immunology, they require a new consideration of the historical association between Native American health and indigenous food systems. KeywordsNative American, history, teaching, hunter-gatherer, fat-soluble, immunity AbstractThis article examines historical evidence that correlates a decline in Native American health and fertility with ruptures to indigenous food systems following European colonization. It suggests new interdisciplinary ways to study the association between breached indigenous nutritional practices and a decline in Native American health. These objectives bring together students of history and natural science and entail new ways of synthesizing hitherto separate scholarly enterprises in the classroom. In light of the most cutting-edge scientific literature on nutrition, metabolic syndrome, and immunology, they require a new consideration of the historical association between Native American health and indigenous food systems.

show abstract

Colonialism and Pandemics

Blume

2022

International and Cultural Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Health, Disease, and Demography

Cited by 9 publications

References 34 publications

A Rejoinder to Body Bags: Indigenous Resilience and Epidemic Disease, from COVID-19 to First “Contact”

A Rejoinder to Body Bags: Indigenous Resilience and Epidemic Disease, from COVID-19 to First “Contact”

Decolonizing the Diet: synthesizing Native-American history, immunology, and nutritional science.

Colonialism and Pandemics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About