Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality / Edition 1

by Luana Ross

Overview

Luana Ross writes, "Native Americans disappear into Euro-American institutions of confinement at alarming rates. People from my reservation appeared to simply vanish and magically return. [As a child] I did not realize what a 'real' prison was and did not give it any thought. I imagined this as normal; that all families had relatives who went away and then returned."

In this pathfinding study, Ross draws upon the life histories of imprisoned Native American women to demonstrate how race/ethnicity, gender, and class contribute to the criminalizing of various behaviors and subsequent incarceration rates. Drawing on the Native women's own words, she reveals the violence in their lives prior to incarceration, their respective responses to it, and how those responses affect their eventual criminalization and imprisonment. Comparisons with the experiences of white women in the same prison underline the significant role of race in determining women's experiences within the criminal justice system.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292770843
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	04/01/1998
Edition description:	1 ED
Pages:	326
Sales rank:	929,033
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Luana Ross (Salish) is Associate Professor of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies and Co-Director, Native Voices at the University of Washington.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments Introduction
• Part I. Colonization and the Social Construction of Deviance
  • 1. Worlds Collide: New World, New Indians
  • 2. Racializing Montana: The Creation of "Bad Indians" Continues
• Part II. Creating Dangerous Women: Narratives of Imprisoned Native American and White Women
  • 3. Prisoner Profile: Past and Present
  • 4. Lives Dictated by Violence
  • 5. Experiences of Women in Prison: "They Keep Me at a Level Where They Can Control Me"
  • 6. Rehabilitation or Control: "What Are They Trying to Do? Destroy Me?"
  • 7. Prison Subculture: "It's All a Game and It Doesn't Make Sense to Me"
  • 8. Motherhood Imprisoned: Images and Concerns of Imprisoned Mothers
  • 9. Double Punishment: Weak Institutional Support for Imprisoned Mothers
  • 10. Rehabilitation and Healing of Imprisoned Mothers
  • 11. Narrative of a Native Woman on the Outside: Gloria Wells Norlin (Ka min di tat)
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Violations and Descriptions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

What People are Saying About This

Franke Wilmer

"Professor Ross, through painstaking phenomenological analysis, has unmasked some of the ways in which (race, class, and gender) prejudices, and their internalization by individuals targeted by them, exert enormous influence on the processes and outcomes of the American criminal justice system.... This book will be of tremendous import to a broad, interdisciplinary audience."