Introduction: This study will identify, describe, and analyze the historical and contemporary experiences of Native women who participate in Kateri Circles to investigate individual and collective identity negotiations and the impact of these negotiations upon kinship structures over time. Through their participation in Catholic-based Kateri Circles, Native people from Alaska to Florida, and from Main to California, come together in Native American communities to fulfill spiritual, social, and educational goals as defined by the National Tekakwitha Conference. These goals include praying for the canonization of Blessed Kateri Tekekakwitha with an emphasis on emulating her life of holiness and example, serving the needs of local communities, families, and other related groups, and educating members about spiritual and moral issues facing urban and rural Native American Communities (National Tekakwitha Conference 2005). As part of historically Catholic kin networks, Native women were instrumental as cultural mediators and negotiators of change who combined their access to indigenous kinship systems with religious-based fictive kin relationships, resulting in increased individual and collective autonomy, influence, and opportunities for religious leadership roles (Sleeper-Smith 2007). Native women who are active in Kateri Circles today continue to mediate the effects of a past characterized by the tensions between colonialism, missionization, and indigenous religious practices in the context of contemporary Catholic efforts to supppor the development of Native Catholicism through an active emphasis upon positively framed concept known as inculturation rather than its negative counterpart, syncretism (Holmes 1999).

Key Questions: (1) How has participation in Kateri Circles, over time, impacted Native women's concepts of individual and collective identity, and what has been the impact of these changes in identity upon kinship networks to which they belong? (2) How has the Tekakwitha Conference functioned to unify Native American Catholics while respective tribal identity? (3) In what ways does the Tekakwitha Conference serve to empower Native American Catholics to live in harmony with their Catholic and Native spirituality? (4) How has the Tekakwitha Conference worked to promote and maintain on-going communication between tribes and the hiearchy of the Catholc Church in America? (5) How does prayer, the sharing of the life story of Kateri Tekakwitha, and encouragement to follow her example impact native notions of kinship and identity?

Theoretical Framework: the theoretical framework for this study utilizes a synthesis of identity and kinship theory, informed by perspectives drawn from symbolic anthropology and ethnohistory (with its implicity nod to culture change). While identity theory allows for the examination of the participation of Native women in Kateri Circles as a site of religious-based ethnic identify formation, negotiation, and social empowerment, kinship--as a central organizing principle of a society--provides the means for the identification and articulation of these circles within the larger historical and contemporary symbolic systems and structures of meaning. Holmes (1999) has argued that 'Kateri has become a model for and a symbol of Native Catholicism,' thus, symbolic anthropology complements and deepens the understandings that will be drawn from identity and kinshp. As this project is an attempt to draw a connection between a historic phenomenon (Native women in Catholic kin networks) and modern day Kateri Circles, it is useful to use an approach grounded in symbolic anthropology.

Research Design: this study combines qualitative ethnographic research practices--participant observation, formal and informal interviewing, the production of fieldnotes, journals, life histories, and interview transcription--with archival and geneaological document analysis to understand individual and collective changes in dientity and kinship within historical Catholic kin networks and contemporary Kateri Circles over time. Utlizing participant observation as a method will allow for me to immerse myself in the activities of the Kateri Circles, such as praying for the canonization of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, attending Catholic Mass rituals that have been inculturated with local religious observances, participating in pilgrimages, and observing (1) how Native women express their identity as both Native and Catholic at individual and collective levels, (2) the kin relationships internal and external to these Circles, (3) how their participation in Kateri Circles acts as an ongoing bridge between Native spirituality and Catholicism, and (4) how Native women find empowerment through prayer and the sharing of the life story of Kateri Tekakwitha. Formal and informal interviews with women who participate in Kateri Circles will give me the opportunity to understand how they construct meaning through their activities and facilitate the collection of life history data to determine identity and kinship negotiations and change over time. Focus group interviews with Kateri Circle participants (recorded/taped with the approval of those present) will enable me to compare data from individual interviews about kinship and identity with data about collective meanings. Transcribed data from these interviews will supplement my fieldnotes/journals and allow for opportunities for feedback to clarify questions and concepts. Archival and geneaological research will provide vital historical context information in the form of primary and secondary sources, manuscripts, paintings, photographs, the documentation and creation of geneaologies, and individual writings and documents about missionization and the introduction of Catholicism into Native American communities and the responses of women to their efforts.

Research Advisors: Anya Royce (http://www.indiana.edu/~anthro/people/faculty/royce.html) Raymond DeMallie (http://www.indiana.edu/~anthro/people/demallie.html) Matthew Guterl (http://www.indiana.edu/~amst/message.html) Marvin Sterling (http://www.indiana.edu/~anthro/people/sterling.html) Jason Baird Jackson (http://jasonbairdjackson.com) Raymond Bucko (http://puffin.creighton.edu/bucko/)

Connecting to American Studies: this project, I believe, represents a unique opportunity to bring the disciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches of anthropology (in this case, ethnic identity, kinship, symbolic anthropology, and ethnohistory) into dialogue with the interdisciplinary perspectives and ongling debates within (and between) American Studies and American Indian Studies/Native American Studies. At a time when American Studies scholars are seeking to create a more inclusive intellectual space, expanding the transnational paradigm to reflect hemispheric perspectives, continuing to interrogate the 'holy trinity' of Ethnic Studies--race, class, and gender--and reaching out to scholars located in non-American Studies departments like Ethnic Studies, Latino Studies, Asian American Studies, and American Indian Studies, this project is effective designed to fuse disciplinarity with interdisciplinarity; the hopeful result will be a dissertation which suggests the contemporary viability of an intellectual engagement between Anthropology and a History/Literature dominated American Studies beyond the now-defunct 'Anthropological Turn' of the 1970s. Thus, in keeping with the theme of the 2008 American Studies Association convention, 'Back Down to the Crossroads: Integrative American Studies in Theory and Practice,' this interdisciplinary research project is intentionally situated at the intersection of American Studies, American Indian Studies/native American Studies, and Anthropology. In terms of anthropological methods, this study combines qualitative ethnographic research practices--participant observation, formal and informal interviewing, the production of fieldnotes, journals, life histories, and interview transcription--with archival/geneaological document analysis to understand individual and collective changes in identity and kinship within historical Catholic kin networks over time. An American Studies approach allows me the flexibility to augment and supplement data collected through ethnography and archival research with the rich textures of narratives--autobiographical and biographical--written by and written about Native women. This intellectual move is also disciplinarily complementary: 'Personal documents,' writes anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn, 'are probably the closest approximations we can obtain to the cultural structure as experienced as opposed to being viewed in the light of abstract models which the anthropologist constructs' (Kluckhohn in Gottschalk 1945: 134). The analysis of the narratives of Native women will proved much needed ethnographic data, as well as information on culture structure, status and role, acquisition of culture, culture change, and personality formation.

AMST Approach: In specifically American Studies terms, this project draws its inspiration from previous work upon the representations of Native women in the Eurocentric imagination. In her seminal article, 'The Pocahontas Perplex: the Image of Indian Woman in American Culture,' Rayna Green sugges that the image of 'the powerfully symbolic Indian woman, as Queen and Princess, has been with us since 1575 when she appeared to stand for the New World' (Green 2007: 17). Through an extensive examination of the representations of Native women in songs, ballads, stories, and other commodities created by Europeans (later, Americans), Green identifies a variety of stereotypical images that historically and contemporarily represent Native women in the American Imagination: the noble Princess, the savage Squaw, and the Mother-Queen. She argues that it was through 'the various traditional folkloric, philosophical and literary patterns characteristic of European through at the time,' that Indians, and subsequently Native women, became 'the inconographic representative of the Americas' (Green 2007: 18). While Green drew her data from sources grounded firmly within a Eurocentric perspective, I propose to use autobiographical and biographical narratives of Native women within their own particular context. Consequently, I draw upon the narrative voices of Native women from a variety of tribal groups within the geographical confines of the United States to understand the strategies through which they were able to negotiate their identities (beyond the Pocahontas Perplex) and the impacts of these negotiations upon their kinship relationships. Keeping ind that 'the Native sense of self tends to be relational,' rather than centered upon the individual, it follows that rhetorical strategies of representation using the autobiographical form embody differing senses of time and self than European narratives (Hernandez 1994: 42). The centrality of kinship as an organizing principle of social life among American Indian groups emphasizes this relational sense of self and shapes the formation of identity. Thus, the autobiographical and biographical narrative forms a fertile ground for an investigation into individual and collective identity negotiations over time and the impact of these negotiations upon the various kin networks within which they were involved. As Anderson (2007) suggests: 'narratives lend themselves to examining the means and ends of identity constitution,' this intense focus upon the voices of native women engaged in speech acts of self representation and identity formation as subject--rather than as abstracted object of a perhaps misrepresentative self--effectively fosters a more personal, interactive, and interpretive approach reminiscent of the Anthropological Turn of the 1970s (Anderson 2007: 163). Although the approach may at first seem in opposition to the current American Studies transnational paradigm which pushes to explore how American exists in the larger world (often in a hemispheric and cross-border sense), it is appropriate when considering the historical and contemporary situations of American Indian groups. Thus, through the lives of Native American women, then, I am hoping to glimpse their experience of American culture from the perspective of the 'transnational-within' rather than moving beyond the physical borders to reflect upon the meanings of the terms 'America' and 'American.' How did Native women oppose circulating Eurocentric representations like the noble Princess, the savage Squaw, and the Mother-Queen? Taking an American Studies approach and applying it to the autobiographies and autobiographies of American Indian women, I hope, will allow me to find out.