Six Nations Research

• The Cayuga Diaspora.

Based on fieldwork and archival research, this project examines Cayuga participation in the Revolutionary War and its late 18^th and 19^th century aftermath for Cayuga society and human geography. The Cayuga split into factions under extreme political and social pressure in the 1780's and 1790's. This research is designed to disclose as much as possible about the social and historical processes at work, and their effects on persistent but changing Cayuga identities.

• Akwesasne Mohawk History.

Based on fieldwork and archival research, this project looks at the political economy and history of Mohawk land use in northern New York and southern Ontario and Quebec.

Hopi Research

• The Orayvi Split: a Hopi Transformation.

The split of Orayvi, the largest Hopi town, in 1906, continues to resonate as a profound event in Puebloan cultural history, exemplary for anthropological explanations of fission in small-scale, kin-based human societies. Multiple hypotheses have been offered (sociological, materialist, ideological, and agential), each pointing to alternative, often mutually exclusive, causes. But effective analysis of the split crucially depends upon accurate data and apposite conceptual tools.

The received picture of Orayvi, both empirically and analytically, is seriously flawed, notably owing to neglect of the archival record. With particular attention to demography, social forms, and material conditions, the present research and its resulting monograph seeks to redress those flaws, both structurally and historically. A new assessment of social structure focuses on the interplay of matrilineal kinship with Orayvi's "houses" and ritual sodalities. An examination of material conditions, especially in Oraibi Wash farmlands, draws on unconsidered survey and allotment records. The exact population of Orayvi in 1906 is reconstructed from an array of census sources (presented in detail), and correlated by houses, kinship groups, and ritual sodalities. An extended appendix (Part II) presents a series of unpublished documents.

The work's principal aim is to produce a comprehensive picture of the Orayvi split's sociology, economy, demography, and history. As a "total social fact," the Orayvi split resists reductive explanation to just one set of factors, and requires detailed attention to contexts both structural and historical, material and cognitive. The main publication (in press) is The Orayvi Split: a Hopi Transformation (Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History).
The Orayvi split. Part 1.: a Hopi transformation; Anthropological papers of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 87, pt. 1
The Orayvi split. Part 2.: a Hopi transformation; Anthropological papers of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 87, pt. 2

Aspects of the research have been presented at the University of New Mexico (2004), the University of Arizona (2004), the International Congress of Americanists, Seville (2006), the Society for American Archaeology annual meetings (2007), and the University of Virginia (2007). Ancillary topics are discussed in 2 articles: 'Leslie White's Hopi Ethnography: Of Practice and In Theory' (Journal of Anthropological Research 59:2, 2003), and 'Why Anthropology Needs More History' (Journal of Anthropological Research Distinguished Lecture; Journal of Anthropological Research 60:4:487-514).

• Hopi Ethnogeography.

Ongoing research with AMNH Research Associate, TJ Ferguson, seeks to produce a Hopi atlas in collaboration with the Hopi Tribe's Cultural Preservation Office.

• Exploring the Changing Nature of the Zuni Salt Lake Cultural Landscape.

(This work is funded by the Christenson Foundation; principal investigators Andrew Duff, Washington State University, and TJ Ferguson, AMNH Research Associate). Whiteley's aspect of the research focuses on Hopi historical and cultural usages of Zuni salt lake, western New Mexico.

Pueblo Research

Research into New Mexico Pueblo history and sociocultural transformation, especially vis-a-vis the Pueblo of Isleta and the Pueblo of Tesuque. Monograph in preparation on "A Political and Economic History of Isleta Pueblo" with Henry Walt and Elizabeth Brandt.

2 articles have appeared: 'Bartering Pahos with the President' (Ethnohistory 2004) and 'Reconnoitering "Pueblo" Ethnicity: the 1852 Tesuque Delegation to Washington' (Journal of the Southwest, 2003). The research is currently also being developed into a work on Pueblo history and identity. A collaborative project (funded by NEH) with Henry Walt and the Pueblo of Isleta focuses on a traveling museum exhibit, "Isleta in the 19th Century."