Dissertation Information for Gretchen Grace Harvey NAME: - Gretchen Grace Harvey
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- History
SCHOOL:
- Arizona State University (USA) (1996)
ADVISORS: - Peter Iverson
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - Robert A. Trennert Jr. - Albert L. Hurtado
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: Cherokee and American: Ruth Muskrat Bronson, 1897-1982
Abstract: Ruth Muskrat Bronson's life began in a nineteenth-century rural, Cherokee community in the Delaware District of Indian Territory. When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, it effectively dissolved the Cherokee Nation. As a young girl, Bronson saw first-hand the human distress caused by these changes. The experience fueled her sense of responsibility towards Indian people who needed help coping with the changing times. By the time she graduated from college in 1925, she had decided to work on behalf of what she referred to as the Indian cause. It became her life's work.
After graduation, Bronson accepted a position in the Education Division of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As a civil servant she spent nineteen years developing a program that assisted American Indian students in their pursuit of higher education. From 1945 until 1956 Bronson exercised strong leadership in the National Congress of American Indians. Her commitment to the organization helped guarantee its long term survival. In 1957, Bronson moved to Arizona where she spent the rest of her life encouraging the development of Indian community leadership.
Ruth Bronson demonstrated that one could retain at once pride in tribal heritage and membership, and in being an American. In that sense, her life and career exemplified the kind of identity that others had to forge in the demanding and complicated world of this century. Bronson lived most of her life in a world where men were assumed to be the only ones capable of recording major achievements. Even today, because historians have had to rely on the records and memories of male participants, the accomplishments of pioneering Indian women activists like Bronson have been too often discounted. In fact, the more recent advances in the struggle for tribal self-determination rest upon a foundation created by Indian persons like Ruth Bronson. Thus, it remains important for Ruth Muskrat Bronson to assume her rightful place among influential and important Indian leaders of the twentieth century. Her words and actions mattered in her own time and they paved the way for those American Indian leaders who followed.
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MPACT Scores for Gretchen Grace Harvey A = 0
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calculated 2010-06-22 13:35:40
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