sun and Mediterranean or Atlantic breezes. The reality is that since World War 11, the French, now 55 million strong, have built one of the Free World's top four industrial powers. Their belated move into the late 20th century has brought both blessings and problems; in parliamentary elec- tions this March, high unemployment (1 1 percent) and other ills may hurt President Francois Mitterrand's Socialists, who in 1981 formed France's first left-wing government in 23 years. Here, John Ardagh looks...
's mystique endures. When Americans travel there, as some half a million do each year, they have two nations in mind. One is the land where the word civilization was coined, where Descartes, Rousseau, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Hugo, de Gaulle, and others still loom large. Then there is "the real France," a term suggesting an almost 19th- century world of swaying poplars, old chateaux, peasants, bistros, and beaches washed by sun and Mediterranean or Atlantic breezes. The reality is that since...
ing the recession-ridden summer of 1983, when Presi- dent Francois Mitterrand's two-year-old Socialist government was sagging in the opinion polls, the prestigious daily Le Monde took action. Its editors ran a series of front-page articles lamenting "the silence of the intellectuals."
Indeed, the lack of support for Mitterrand from Paris writers and thinkers was surprising. He not only had led the return to power of the Left, the historic home of the French intellectual, but, given his...
the ninth century, when the Catholic emperor Charles the Great held sway, "the French" were of Neolithic stock and that of Celtic, Roman, Frankish, Bur- gundian, and Norman arrivistes. Their initial success, dating from when the Gauls grew wheat and Cistercian monks burned forests to make fertilizer ash, lacked gloiw: They built Europe's first society of independent farmers, an achievement "as specific to France as the network of great trading cities was to Rome and the need for an...
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Americans are ambivalent about technology. They make folk heroes of the engineers who forge new technologies-Robert Fulton, Thomas Edison, and, most recently, Steven Wozniak, inventor of the Apple computer. Yet scholars and pundits chroni- cally worry that technology and its servants will overwhelm the human spirit. I11 1986, U.S. colleges and universities will graduate some 82,000 new engineers, trained to create space-age commu- nications, plan bridges and dams, or design computer chips....
leaders of Indian organizations; they have largely abandoned the violent takeovers and sit-ins epitomized the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Most Indian spokes- men assert that their broader goal is to maintain a distinct "Indian way of life." Yet how to do so is a matter of deep disagreement. How isolated from America's larger society can Indians afford to remain? How much development of the natural resources on Indian reservations should be permitted? Members of the na- tion's...
America's Indians, the U.S. Supreme Court has become a major source of redress. During the last term alone, the Justices handed down seven rulings in cases involving the country's old- est ethnic group; at issue were land claims, fishing rights, and mineral leases. The upsurge in Indian litigation signals a change in tactics by leaders of Indian organizations; they have largely abandoned the violent takeovers and sit-ins epitomized by the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Most Indian spokes-...
December 28, 1890, near the Badlands of South Dakota, a band of exhausted Sioux Indians, including perhaps 100 war- riors and some 250 women and children, surrendered to the blue-clad troopers of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry and agreed to travel with them to the Indian agency at Pine Ridge. The joint party camped that night in freezing weather at Wounded Knee Creek, 20 miles from Pine Ridge. Surrounding the Indian tepees were nearly 500 soldiers and a battery of four Hotchkiss light artillery pieces.
The...
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of these SOLI~S." A cellt~1l-y later, the Hopis w0~11d spw-n the Mexicans as they 1~x1sp~lr~~ed The Americals stoly. 111
the Spa~lisl~. were a~lotl~er 1850, followi~~g
the U~litecl Srates' victo~y in the war wit11 Mexico, the Hopis establisl~ed relatio~~s wit11 the federal govesnn1ent. Wl~y?A relatively pcifist people, they faced fseq~ient raids by the stronger and lnore aggressive Namllos. They welco~ned effosts by the U.S.cav~11-y ~~eigl~bors.
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all Americans.
The Native American Renais- sance,to borrow the title of Kenneth Lincoln's study (Univ. of Calif., 1983), has been aborning for some time, helped along a new generation of college-educated Indians.
An essential bridge from spoken to written language was provided half a century ago in South Dakota by Black Elk, the Oglala Sioux prophet (1863- 1950), and by his tireless interlocutor, the late John G. Neihardt, the Nebraska poet and scholar who took down Black Elk's words.
"Always...