This study was designed to determine the effectiveness of the 10-week filial therapy model as an intervention for Native American parents and their children residing on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. Filial therapy is an approach used by play therapists to train parents to be therapeutic agents with their own children. Parents are taught basic child-centered play therapy skills and practice those skills during weekly play sessions with their children. The purpose of this study was to determine if filial therapy is effective in: 1) increasing parental acceptance of Native Americans residing on the Flathead Reservation of their children; 2) reducing the stress level of those parents; 3) improving empathic behaviors of those parents toward their children; 4) changing the play behaviors of children with their parents who participated in the training; and, 5) enhancing the self-concept of those children. The experimental group parents (N=11) received 10 weekly 2-hour filial therapy training sessions and participated in weekly 30-minute play sessions with one of their children. The control group (N=10) received no treatment during the 10 weeks. All adult participants completed the Porter Parental Acceptance Scale and the Parenting Stress Index. Child participants completed the Joseph Pre-school and Primary Self Concept …

The Texas Constitution of 1876 set aside three million acres of Texas public land in exchange for construction of the monumental red granite Capitol that continues to house Texas state government today. The Capitol project and the land went to an Illinois syndicate led by men influential in business and politics. Austin's statehouse is a recognizable symbol of Texas around the world. So too, the massive Panhandle tract given in exchange -- what became the "fabulous" XIT Ranch -- has come to, for many, symbolize Texas and its role in the nineteenth century cattle boom. After finding sales prospects for the land, known as the Capitol Reservation, weak at the time, backed by British capital, the Illinois group, often called the Capitol Syndicate, turned their efforts to cattle ranching to satisfy investors until demand for the land increased. The operation included a satellite ranch in Montana to which two-year-old steers from Texas were sent for fattening, often "over the trail" on a route increasingly blocked by people and settlement. Rather than a study focused on ranching operations on the ground -- the roundups, the cattle drives, the cowboys -- this instead uncovers the business and political side of the Syndicate's …