Indigenous peoples / Indigeneity Books

Book SynopsisA Grammar of Upper Tanana is a comprehensive text that performs the impressive task of linguistically rendering a written record of the endangered Upper Tanana language.Trade Review“A Grammar of Upper Tanana, Volume 2 is a treasure trove of well-exemplified insights into the semantics, syntax, and discourse structures of this Alaskan/Yukon language. Based on fifteen years of dedicated field work with nine fluent speakers, this is an indispensable resource for both scholars of Dene languages and the many community members who are committed to carrying the language forward.”—Patrick Moore, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia“Theoretically informed and empirically well grounded, A Grammar of Upper Tanana, Volume 2 is without parallel as a reference work on the Upper Tanana language and is sure to serve as a model for the comprehensive grammatical description of Northern Dene languages for years to come. Olga Lovick also demonstrates an impressive command of the literature concerning Alaskan Dene languages. The result is a cross-linguistically informed description that remains firmly centered on Upper Tanana language structure, beliefs, and practices.”—Christopher Cox, associate professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies at Carleton UniversityTable of ContentsList of figures List of tables List of Abbreviations Preface to volume 2 Acknowledgments Introduction to volume 2 I Semantics Semantic properties of nouns Noun classification Lexical semantics Tense, aspect, modality, evidentiality Lexical aspect: verb theme categories Inflectional aspect The modal system (inflection) Modal particles II The simple clause Word order overview Word order in simple clauses Nonverbal predicates Polar Questions Content questions Requests Negation Third-person marking Pronominal number marking The noun phrase Non-clausal coordination Quantification of entities Comparison Prosodic augmentation III Beyond the clause Coordination of clauses Relative clauses Adverbial clauses 27 Verbs with clausal complements Quotative frames Addressing individuals Managing information structure Insubordination Appendix I: Portmanteau morphemes in the conjunct zone Glossed sample texts Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisLessons from Fort Apache is an ethnography of Indigenous language dynamics on the Fort Apache reservation in Arizona that reveals important implications for both North American and global concerns about language endangerment.Trade Review“Lessons from Fort Apache is an important book for people, both Native and non-Native, who are involved with language preservation, maintenance, and strengthening programs. Those working for language and culture revitalization will recognize many of the issues, problems, and glimmers of hope described. Those seeking to establish or become involved with such processes may find the insights of this work a welcome buffer against the first onslaughts of angst and self-doubt.”—Judith M. Maxwell, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology“This is a beautifully crafted ethnography that tells the reader much about the complicated terrain upon which contemporary Indigenous language practices subsist. It challenges the reader to question her everyday assumptions about language, American Indianness, and survival. It also demands that the reader reconsider ideas of advantage and salvation that underscore mainstream, institutionally driven interventions and to ask, what are we saving and for whom?”—Barbra A. Meek, Language in Society“Nevins argues persuasively that linguists who hope to propagate an endangered language through documentation and the creation of teaching materials must find ways of partnering with centers of linguistic and pedagogical authority that already exist inside the community, and not expect to replace those voices with their own. . . . This realistic, thoughtful study should be regarded as obligatory reading for any linguist genuinely concerned with endangered language maintenance and revitalization.”—Edward Vajda, Choice“[Nevins] brings renewed relevance to Apache texts collected in an earlier era by Harry Hoijer. . . . [This is] an extended ethnographic analysis of Apache interactions with non-Apache people and practices that has implications for cultural interventions of any kind in Apache communities. At its highest level, the book is a demonstration of ‘the generativity of otherness.’”—Lise Dobrin, associate professor of anthropology at the University of VirginiaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. Indigenous Languages and the Mediation of Communities 3. Learning to Listen: Coming to Terms with Conflicting Meanings of Language Loss 4. They Live in Lonesome Dove: English in Indigenous Places 5. Stories in the Moment of Encounter: Documentation Boundary Work 6. What No Coyote Story Means: The Borderland Genre of Traditional Storytelling 7. "Some 'No No' and Some 'Yes'": Silence, Agency, and Traditionalist Words 8. Sustainability: Possible Socialities of Documentation and Maintenance Appendix A: Lawrence Mithlo Appendix B: Eva Lupe on Her Early Life Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisStrength from the Waters is an environmental and social history that frames economic development, environmental concerns, and Indigenous mobilization within the context of a timeless issue: access to water. Between 1927 and 1970 the Mayo people—an Indigenous group in northwestern Mexico—confronted changing access to the largest freshwater source in the region, the Fuerte River. In Strength from the Waters James V. Mestaz demonstrates how the Mayo people used newly available opportunities such as irrigation laws, land reform, and cooperatives to maintain their connection to their river system and protect their Indigenous identity. By using irrigation technologies to increase crop production and protect lands from outsiders trying to claim it as fallow, the Mayo of northern Sinaloa simultaneously preserved their identity by continuing to conduct traditional religious rituals that paid homage to the Fuerte River. This shift in approach to both new tecTrade Review“Strength from the Waters makes important contributions to modern Mexican history, environmental history, and ethnohistory, especially with its fascinating oral histories of Mayo elders.”—Mikael Wolfe, author of Watering the Revolution: An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in MexicoTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Their Technology, Our Way: Los Goros and Fuerte River Infrastructure, 1927 to 1942 2. Sweetness and Water Power: The SICAE Sugarcane Cooperative and Mayo Struggles for Water, 1944 to 1958 3. When the State Fails the Gods Remain: Independent Mayo Water Control Strategies, 1944 to 1957 4. The Inward Turn: Mayo Hydraulic Labor, Millenarian Movements, and Changing Rituals, 1947 to 1963 5. From Our River to Theirs: The Effects of Hydraulic Development, 1955 to 1970 Epilogue: Remaining Strong Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisPeople of the Saltwater is an exploration of an ancient community of the Gitxaala Nation and how its members relate socially, politically, and economically to the rest of the world.Trade Review"An important contribution to scholarship about First Nations of the Northwest Coast."—Eric Oakley, Pacific Northwest Quarterly Magazine“Each of these chapters provides excellent case studies for teaching about Indigenous resource management and place-making and the continuity of these practices in spite of colonization and capitalism.”—Sara V. Komarnisky, Canadian Journal of Native Studies “An engaging and important book. . . . Menzies effectively weaves archaeology and linguistics into People of the Saltwater, which also contains considerable history: oral history, written history, and Menzies’s own personal history. . . . [It] may be viewed as a hybrid, or crossover book that straddles the boundary between scholarly and popular. It is a significant addition to the scholarship of, and by, Indigenous peoples in British Columbia.”—Robert Muckle, BC Booklook “An important addition to the Northwest Coast canon. Defying categorization, [People of the Saltwater] will be a meaningful contribution to class reading lists for Native studies, anthropology, and Northwest Coast studies and to everyone interested in the people and history of the Northwest Coast. . . . [People of the Saltwater] is complex and rich, with an intimate understanding of the intricacies of Git lax m’oon history and culture and the people’s relationship with their environment and natural resources.”—Frank Kelderman, American Indian Quarterly “The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast have a special place in the history of anthropology, as they do in the development of autoethnography or native ethnography. . . . People of the Saltwater continues both of these proud traditions. It is a contemporary ethnography of a Tsimshian or Gitxaala community living still on British Columbia’s coast, written by an anthropologist who is himself a descendant of that society.”—David Eller, Anthropology Review“[Menzies] astutely forefronts Native terms before their Canadian English translations to establish respectful priorities. . . . Because this is a contemporary ethnography by a native son, current legal and cultural issues are highlighted, firmly set within the context of a vibrant culture grounded in hereditary rights, adaawx, and wise leaders. . . . Of particular note, Menzies pays tribute to William Beynon, a Wolf-title holder (Gwisk’aayn), literate speaker, and prolific ethnographer and colleague of almost all the ‘greats’ of Northwest Coast anthropology.”—Jay Miller, Journal of Anthropological Research “Menzies’s ethnography of the Gitxaała people is highly personal, enjoyably engaging, and a welcome contribution to community-based scholarship on the Northwest Coast. . . . Menzies’s analysis adds a clear voice to conversations about the impacts of global industrial processes on local peoples.”—Thomas McIlwraith, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Guelph and author of “We Are Still Didene”: Stories of Hunting and History from Northern British ColumbiaTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Git lax m’oon: Gitxaała and the Names Anthropologists Have Given Us2. Smgigyet: Real People and Governance3. Laxyuup: The Land and Ocean Territories of Gitxaała4. Adaawx: History and the Past5. Sihoon: Catching Fish6. Tskah, Xs’waanx: Herring, Herring Roe7. Bilhaa: Abalone8. Hoon: SalmonConclusionNotesReferencesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisLiza Black critically examines the inner workings of postWorld War II American films and production studios that cast American Indian extras and actors as Native people, forcing them to come face to face with mainstream representations of Indianness.Trade Review“A refreshing take on an old story, one that has too often emphasized settler colonial tropes at the expense of Indigenous experiences. . . . Picturing Indians is an important and impressive contribution to a growing body of historical literature that asks us ‘to look at the movies as a site of work as well as art.’ . . . More importantly, [Black] demands that we reckon with the physical presence of Native people in the movie industry, where they exercised their own judgment and made their own meanings for the work they performed within the constraints of the studio system.”—Andrew Fisher, American Historical Review “A significant contribution to the growing Indigenous studies scholarship in the area of film and media studies.”—Angelica Lawson, Western Historical Quarterly “Fresh and original. . . . Picturing Indians represents a critical contribution to the field of Native American representations in film with its study of labor history and analysis.”—Michelle Raheja, Film Quarterly"In both method and content, this book charts a new movement in Indigenous film studies in particular and film studies in general. It is welcome, indeed."—Jennifer L. Jenkins, Southwestern Historical Quarterly“Black’s study of the lives, labor, and organized guilds of Native American and (faux) Native American actors within the Hollywood film industry is not a recuperative gesture, but instead it is a radical intervention that turns the tables on the simple vilification of the Hollywood Indian and the settler colonialist ideology imbued within the films.”—Andre Seewood, American Indian Quarterly "This book is necessary reading to anyone interested in studying Native American visual representation."—Steve Pelletier, American Indian Culture and Research Journal“Meticulously researched, this engrossing volume files a deep void in both film studies and Native American history.”—Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine “Liza Black systematically studies Indian characters in the Hollywood films of the l940s and l950s and shows how film created a single type of Indian for Native and non-Native actors, though the latter often received higher pay. Black disables this construct, and she offers a stunning history of the experiences of Native American actors who worked in the film industry during these years.”—Lisbeth Haas, author of Saints and Citizens: Indigenous Histories of Colonial Missions and Mexican California“Liza Black’s exhaustively researched study of American Indian actors fills a gap in scholarship on Native American performance by focusing on the most influential and damaging period for Hollywood’s representations of Native peoples. Highlighting their efforts to make a living in the film industry and negotiate its expectations, Black powerfully demonstrates Native people’s survival and agency, as well as the ways popular culture created and abetted narratives that continue to support indigenous erasure and dispossession.”—Nicolas G. Rosenthal, author of Reimagining Indian Country: Native American Migration and Identity in Twentieth-Century Los AngelesTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. “Just Like a Snake You’ll Be Crawling in Your Own Shit”: American Indians and White Narcissism 2. “Indians Agree to Perform and Act as Directed”: Urban Indian (and Non-Indian) Actors 3. “Not Desired by You for Photographing”: The Labor of American Indian (and Non-Indian) Extras 4. “White May Be More Than Skin Deep”: Whites in Redface 5. “A Bit Thick”: The Transformation of Indians into Movie Indians 6. “Dig Up a Good Indian Historian”: The Search for Authenticity Epilogue Notes Bibliography Filmography Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis Directed by anthropologist Alexander Lesser in 1935, the Santa Fe Laboratory of Anthropology sponsored a field school in southwestern Oklahoma that focused on the neighboring Kiowas. During two months, graduate students compiled more than 1,300 pages of single-spaced field notes derived from cross-interviewing thirty-five Kiowas. These eyewitness and first-generation reflections on the horse and buffalo days are undoubtedly the best materials available for reconstructing pre-reservation Kiowa beliefs and rituals. The field school compiled massive data resulting in a number of publications on this formerly nomadic Plains tribe, though the planned collaborative ethnographies never materialized. The extensive Kiowa field notes, which contain invaluable information, remained largely unpublished until now. In Kiowa Belief and Ritual, Benjamin R. Kracht reconstructs Kiowa cosmology during the height of the horse and buffalo culture from field notes pertaining to coTrade Review"Kiowa Belief and Ritual is a thought-provoking contribution to the study of religion and spirituality within the Kiowa nation in Oklahoma."—Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote, Canadian Journal of Native Studies“[An] encyclopedic and yet still surprisingly personalized . . . rendition of Kiowa religion. The result is what could hardly be imagined as a more complete summary of a people’s beliefs and rituals at a particular moment in time—a moment that had just ended when the data were collected and that, despite all of the tribulations and losses faced by the Kiowa, continues not only to be remembered but to reverberate through their culture.”—Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database"[Kiowa Belief and Ritual] makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Plains Indigenous religion, and offers Kiowa community members an engaging link to their Indigenous heritage."—Andrew McKenzie, Great Plains Quarterly"Benjamin R. Kracht's Kiowa Belief and Ritual is a welcome, important contribution to the literature on Plains Indian Religions, specifically the Kiowa. . . . Kracht has accomplished excellent, dedicated work in providing his assessment of these incredibly important fieldnotes from, it should be recognized, an exceptionally special group of honored elders."—Inés Hernández-Ávila, Reading Religion“Benjamin Kracht provides keen insight into the belief system and worldview of the Kiowa people. This ethnographic window reveals what is sacred, powerful, and spiritual among this warrior people of the southern plains. Kracht’s scholarship advances our understanding of the true reality of the Kiowas.”—Donald L. Fixico, Distinguished Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University and author of Call for Change: The Medicine Way of American Indian History, Ethos, and Reality“Kiowa Belief and Ritual offers a meticulously researched and richly detailed account of pre-reservation Kiowa religious life. Benjamin Kracht makes extensive use of interviews conducted with Kiowa elders in 1935, and their recollections and experiences make for compelling reading. This is a significant contribution to the literature on Native North America.”—Michael Paul Jordan, assistant professor of ethnology at Texas Tech UniversityTable of Contents List of Illustrations Kiowa Pronunciations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Ethnographic Studies of Plains Indian Religions 1. Kiowa History, 1832–1868 2. Kiowa Beliefs and Concepts of the Universe 3. Acquiring, Maintaining, and Manifesting Power 4. Bundles, Shields, and Societies 5. The Kiowa Sun Dance Conclusion: The Collapse of the Horse and Buffalo Culture and the Sun Dance Appendix: Kiowa Sun Dance Chronology, 1833–1890 Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis is the biography of Sherman Coolidge, Arapaho survivor of the Indian Wars, witness to the maladministration of the reservation system, mediator between Native and white worlds, and ultimate defender of Native rights and heritage.Trade Review"Tadeusz Lewandowski has written a valuable history of Arapaho activist Sherman Coolidge. At last, the field has a scholarly biography on this important but long-neglected Society of American Indians (SAI) leader."—Jack Evans, South Dakota History“Pointed, polished, lucid, and readable. Those who study the era of assimilation will find much to savor in this account of Sherman Coolidge, a man who played a major role in the creation of a nationwide Indian organization and contributed to how Native people were publicly perceived during his lifetime. In addition, this biography also offers a narrative version of events that is interesting in its own right as it recounts the ups and downs of a human life.”—Philip Burnham, author of Song of Dewey Beard: Last Survivor of the Little BighornTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Prologue 1. The Arapahos and Runs On Top 2. New Life 3. Return 4. Conspiracy, Exile, and the East 5. Losing Ground 6. Grace 7. Proving Herself 8. Twosing 9. Death and Life 10. Malcontents 11. A New Mission, a New Society 12. The Society Ascendant 13. Harmony in Jeopardy 14. State of Chaos, State of War Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisUnfair Labor? is the first book to explore the economic impact of Native Americans who participated in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago.By the late nineteenth century, tribal economic systems across the Americas were decimated, and tribal members were desperate to find ways to support their families and control their own labor. As U.S. federal policies stymied economic development in tribal communities, individual Indians found creative new ways to make a living by participating in the cash economy. Before and during the exposition, American Indians played an astonishingly broad role in both the creation and the collection of materials for the fair, and in a variety of jobs on and off the fairgrounds. While anthropologists portrayed Indians as a remembrance of the past, the hundreds of Native Americans who participated were carving out new economic pathways. Once the fair opened, Indians from tribes across the United States, as well as other indigenous people, fTrade Review“Beck has given us a master class in historical research and interpretation. Drawing on an impressive array of previously unseen sources . . . he has assembled a picture of Indian-white interactions that, while notably unequal, nonetheless display Native American agency and determination in numerous directions. . . . Beck has done signal service in exposing the grounded reality of Indian-white economic relations at the height of the Gilded Age. It is not a pretty picture.”—Curtis M. Hinsley, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era"This is an important and deeply researched contribution and recommended reading for social and labor historians as well as those in Native history."—Julie Guard, Great Plains Research"This book will be of interest to specialists in the field of Native American studies. There is no other in-depth study of the Native Americans in this significant fair, and some labor historians will welcome the consideration of the commodification of labor in these tribes and its limits. It is a fresh way of thinking about this moment."—Rosemary Feurer, Nebraska History"Beck details the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that Indigenous people brought to Chicago—and took home—in the 1890s."—Katrina Phillips, Western Historical Quarterly"This is a revealing glimpse into such pioneers of American anthropology as Frederic Putnam, Franz Boas, and James Mooney. Undergraduate seminars will be well served with this volume as required reading, and even interested general readers will find it informative."—J.H. O’Donnell, Choice"Unfair Labor? is an important contribution to indigenous labor history, as well as to the history of world’s fairs."—Abigail Markwyn, Journal of American Ethnic History"Unfair Labor is the most thorough analysis we have of Native Americans’ involvement with the 1893 fair."—Robert W. Rydell, Journal of Arizona History"Unfair Labor? is captivating, well researched, and clearly written. It would be an excellent resource for a variety of upper-secondary and college-level history and American studies courses that cover labor, capitalism, material culture, public history, American Indians, or social forces, to name a few. The book would be a welcome addition to both public and academic libraries alike."—Julie Hawks, Journal of American Culture“Beck, a seasoned historian with a reputation for lucid prose, is modeling . . . a scholarly generosity that tacitly acknowledges how historical knowledge is built, distributed, absorbed, and remade. A meaningful addition to Beck’s body of work and the University of Nebraska Press’s noteworthy catalogue of Native American and Indigenous studies titles, Unfair Labor? demystifies, nuances, and legitimizes American Indians’ participation in the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.”—Meredith Conti, Theatre History Studies"Unfair Labor? is a carefully organized, argued, and focused contribution to Indigenous labor history. Beck takes good advantage of the vast archival resources related to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition to generate a wide-angle snapshot of Indigenous people's efforts to navigate the ethnographic and performative income opportunities that arose under late nineteenth-century colonialism's sustained assimilationist assault."—Paige Raibmon, Native American and Indigenous StudiesTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Part 1. Overview: American Indians and Ethnology at the Fair 1. Fair Representation? 2. Evolution of the American Indian Displays at the Fair Part 2. Before the Fair: Making Money at Home 3. Native People Collecting for the Fair 4. The Department of Ethnology Collecting for the Fair 5. Government Agencies Collecting for the Fair Part 3. During the Fair: Working in Chicago 6. Working the Anthropological and Education Displays 7. Working the Commercial Displays 8. Those Left Out Afterword/Afterward: American Indians and Their New World Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisSensing Others explores the lives of Indigenous Batek people in Peninsular Malaysia amid the strange and the new in the borderland between protected national park and oil palm plantation. As their ancestral forests disappear around them, Batek people nevertheless attempt to live well among the strange Others they now encounter: out-of-place animals and plants, traders, tourists, poachers, and forest guards. How Batek people voice their experiences of the good and the strange in relation to these Others challenges essentialized notions of cultural and species difference and the separateness of ethical worlds. Drawing on meticulous, long-term ethnographic research with Batek people, Alice Rudge argues that as people seek to make habitable a constantly changing landscape, what counts as Otherness is always under negotiation. Anthropology's traditional dictum to make the strange familiar, and the familiar strange creates a binary between the familiar and the Other, often encapsulating Indigenous lives as the archetypal Other to the modern worldview. Yet living well amid precarity involves constantly negotiating Otherness's ambivalences, as people, plants, animals, and places can all become familiar, strange, or both. Sensing Others reveals that when looking from the boundary, what counts as Otherness is impossible to pin down.Trade Review“Sensing Others is one of the richest, most textured, and most innovative ethnographies I have read in recent years. Through her acute and deeply informed account, Alice Rudge compellingly conveys the complex nexus of emotion, experience, identity, and ethics entangled in Batek life and its scholarly representation. This is a remarkable book, a signal accomplishment, and a likely classic.”—Donald Brenneis, coeditor of Law and Empire in the Pacific: Fiji and Hawai‘i“In her exceptionally high-quality fieldwork, Alice Rudge noticed and understood unusually subtle levels of Batek life practice in the midst of profound change, and she conveys those understandings eloquently here. Sensing Others is a fundamental contribution to anthropology, Southeast Asian studies, linguistic anthropology, hunter-gatherer studies, and environmental studies, and to global popular understanding of Indigenous rainforest people in the Anthropocene.”—Rupert Stasch, author of Society of Others: Kinship and Mourning in a West Papuan PlaceTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Prelude: Friends and Strangers Author’s Note List of Abbreviations Introduction: Living with Others Chapter 1. Closeness and Loss, Longing as Archive Interlude 1. Story of the pompakoh Bird, in Which a Father Becomes a Bird Chapter 2. Alone and Together, Wrongdoing and the Ethical Self Interlude 2. Story of the Batak Cannibal, in Which a Woman Escapes Chapter 3. Like and Different, Hidden Likenesses in Everyday Speech Interlude 3. Story of the caŋkãy Frog, in Which Frogs and Leaves Become Batek Chapter 4. Known and Unknown, Sensing the Intentions of Others Interlude 4. Story of a sarɔt Who Flicks His “Fruit” Chapter 5. Attachment and Detachment, Sharing with Strange Others Interlude 5. Story of Hiding from Batak in the Treetops Coda: The Politics of Being Alone Appendix 1: Grammar Appendix 2: Selected Lexicon Notes References Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisMusician and music historian Craig Harris tells the compelling stories of contemporary Indigenous musicians of North America in their own words.Trade Review“Spanning from its origins and early documentation to its renewed interest in the twenty-first century, Rise Up! brings Indigenous music full circle for the first time. The ancient heartbeat of the drum that connects each Indigenous person to the earth is finally explored.”—Dom Flemons, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter“Rise Up! takes us on a journey into the deepest part of ourselves, beyond the wounds of our recent past, and into the heartbeat of our history, toward an unrestricted future full of possibility. . . . This book will be a help to many on our educational, healing, and reconciliation journeys.”—Sandra Sutter, Métis singer-songwriter“Craig Harris has done a remarkable job in opening the door for anyone and everyone who reads this excellent book, introducing the reader to this amazing music as well as the lives of many who have created it and preserve it.”—David Amram, renowned multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and conductorTable of ContentsList of Photographs Foreword, by Stephen Butler Preface 1. Fingerprints 2. Anthropologists 3. Assimilation 4. Stereotypical 5. Defiance 6. Beating of the Heart 7. Sound of the Wind 8. Ancestral Voices 9. Sing It Loud 10. Rockin’ the Rez 11. Rocksteady 12. Tongue Twisters 13. Connections Coda List of Interviews Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisAcclaimed comics scholar Frederick Luis Aldama shines light on how mainstream comics have clumsily distilled and reconstructed Indigenous identities and experiences. This book emphasizes how Indigenous comic artists are themselves clearing new visual-verbal narrative spaces for articulating more complex histories, and narratives of self.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom insights into the Chickasaw sources of Faulkner's fictional ‘Yoknapatawpha’, to discussions that reveal the potential for indigenous land-, family-, and story-based methodologies to deepen understanding of Faulkner's fiction, the essays in this volume advance the critical analysis of Faulkner's Native South and the Native South's Faulkner.

Read more less

Book SynopsisTells the story of Mississippi's founding era in a sweeping narrative that gives these crucial years the attention they deserve. Several key themes, addressing how and why the state developed as it did, rise to the forefront in the book's pages.

Read more less

Book SynopsisPresents a collection of stories, poetry, art, and essays divining the contemporary intersection of Latinx and Indigenous cultures from the American Southwest, Mexico, and Central and South America.Trade ReviewThis truly innovative book amasses creative and research-based writing that illustrates a connection between historical indigenous communities and contemporary Chicanx identified peoples." - Rachel González-Martin, author of Quinceañera Style: Social Belonging and Latinx Consumer IdentitiesTable of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Collecting Our Bones Shantel Martinez and Kelly Medina-LópezPart I. Ghosts in the Real: Historiography in Our Stories that Becomes Research Chapter 1. La Llorona: A LatIndingenous Specter of Trauma, Motherhood, and Contemporary Racial Violence Sarah De Los Santos Upton and Leandra Hinojosa Hernández Chapter 2. Legacies of Land, Cultural Clashes, and Spiritual Stirrings: A Testimonio of New Mexican Ghost Stories Amanda R. Martinez Chapter 3. Dueling Border-Ghosts: Exploring the Equator as a Space of Spirituality and Resistance Diana Isabel Martínez Chapter 4. Closing the Circle Eric Murillo Chapter 5. Ciguanabas, Refugees, and Other Hauntings: Three Salvadoran Women’s Epistemic Hauntings as Resistance against Heteropatriarchy Brenda Selena Lara Chapter 6. "Entre la Santa y la Muerte": Liminality and Empowerment in Mexico’s Santa Muerte Luisa Fernanda Grijalva-Maza Chapter 7. La CoyotaPerejundia Moises Gonzales Chapter 8. Iconografía Prohibida/Forbidden Iconography Lizzeth Tecuatl Cuaxiloa Chapter 9. Making a Living Saul RamirezPart II. Hazme Caso: Memoir, Poetry, and Stories Chapter 10. Curse of the Zamora Girls: Unveiling Familial Ghost Stories for Survival Bianca Tonantzin Zamora Chapter 11. And He Whispered, "Yolanda, Yolanda"Spencer R. Herrera Chapter 12. Mi Abuelita y Los Rosarios Arturo "Velaz" Muñoz Chapter 13. Los Aullidos de las Madres Sarah Amira de la Garza Chapter 14. my baby wanted an el camino, that’s real Diego Medina Chapter 15. Cry BabyKathleen Alcalá Chapter 16. Becoming Indigenous Again: Returning Home and Making the Ghosts Visible Juan Pacheco Marcial Chapter 17. cortando las nubes,or, death came on horses ire’ne lara silva Chapter 18. Thru the Veil and 32.2480° N, 112.9161° W (Sonoran Desert) Roxanna Ivonne Sanchez-AvilaPart III. Bringing the Borderlands Home: Public Discourses and Theories of the Flesh Chapter 19. Hauntology of the Oppressed: The MeXicana Gothic and Spectral Geographies in Sandra Cisneros’s "Woman Hollering Creek" Cathryn J. Merla-Watson Chapter 20. Haunted by Settler Nostalgia: (Lat)Indigenous Specters, White Vampires, and the Historical Amnesia of Twilight Susana Loza About the Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisTo inhabitants of the Gulf Coast region of Louisiana, food is much more than nourishment. The acts of gathering, preparing, and sharing food are ways to raise children, bond with friends, and build community. This book examines how coastal residents deploy self-reliance and care for each other through harvesting and sharing food.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Salvage, Krisna Uk draws on extensive research in a Cambodian village she calls Leu to provide a unique ethnography of the Jorai, an ethnic minority group that lives in Vietnam and in the most heavily bombed region of northeast Cambodia. The Jorai inhabit a remote region largely beyond the reach of the nation-state but have suffered the devastating effects of battles between and within states. Uk focuses on the experience of a Jorai community that experienced violent and protracted international and domestic conflictsthe Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge regime. These conflicts had enduring effects on the community''s moral fabric, the villagers' activities, and the physical and spiritual environments with which they engage daily.Uk's ethnography is an exploration of a resilient communal life that refuses to surrender its integrity to the blind, destructive forces of modern aerial warfare and that struggles to come to terms with the unintelligible violence unleashed by CamboTrade ReviewI envied her smooth transitions through discussions of dense theory, reviews of related literature, and traditional anthropological fieldwork. Clearly written and well organized, the book is also a testament to the care that many people, in this case those at Cornell University Press, put into creating such a fine work. -- Kurt Borchard, University of Nebraska Kearney * Historical Geography *Uk's book [is] a pioneering anthropological study of an ethnicity that has been at the fulcrum of major historical events for many decades. The author has set a high mark for those who will, we can only hope, enjoy further opportunities to undertake ethnographic research with the minority communities of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. * Pacific Affairs *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe organizing principle for this anthology is the common Native American heritage of its authors; and yet that thread proves to be the most tenuous of all, as the experience of indigeneity differs radically for each of them. While many experience a centripetal pull toward a cohesive Indian experience, the indications throughout these essays lean toward a richer, more illustrative panorama of difference. What tends to bind them together are not cultural practices or spiritual attitudes per se, but rather circumstances that have no exclusive province in Indian country: that is, first and foremost, poverty, and its attendant symptoms of violence, substance abuse, and both physical and mental illness.... Education plays a critical role in such lives: many of the authors recall adoring school as young people, as it constituted a place of escape and a rare opportunity to thrive.... While many of the writers do return to their tribal communities after graduation, ideas about ''home'' becoTrade ReviewI Am Where I Come From teaches us that... young people, whether they come from the Pacific, from a Native American reservation, or from anywhere else, are glimmers of light in a world that desperately needs them. -- Peter Sutoris * The Marshall Islands Journal *This book will be beneficial to Native college students and those aspiring to college who will recognize their own stories and lives, as the contributors are unafraid of sometimes gritty, always grounded details as well as the big picture. It should prove highly useful as course learning material and a research resource. It also nicely identifies how and why university recruitment strategies, student support, and overall campus experiences frequently fail Native students and their communities. * Choice *[T]he writers disclose, in searingly honest and often artful prose, the obstacles that haunted them before, during and after life at Dartmouth, including but not limited to horrific abuses, family dysfunction, intentional racism and racism that was born of ignorance, imposter syndrome, depression, anxiety and coping mechanisms that veered into the realm of self-destruction. -- Emma Jean Holley * Valley News *Table of ContentsIntroduction by Melanie Benson TaylorPart I. Broken: Racial Mixture and Cultural Hybridity1. Seeking to Be Whole, Shannon Prince2. Bringing Back a Piece of the Sky, Blythe George3. Chahta hattak sia, "I am a Choctaw Man," Preston WellsPart II. An Indian Education: Leaving and Finding Home at Dartmouth College4. Nihalgai Bahane': A Fourth World Story, Jerry Watchman5. Bracelets Upon My Soul, Ma’Ko’Quah Jones6. My Journey to Healing, Kalina NewmarkPart III. Full Circle: Returning and Remaking Home7. Little Woman from Lame Deer, Cinnamon Spear8. Village Girl, AlexAnna Salmon9. Future Ancestor, Hillary Abe10. An Unpredictable Journey, John Around HimPart IV. Continuing Education: NADs Reflect on their Journeys11. I Walk in Beauty Davina, Ruth Begaye Two BearsFollowup: Shí Asdz Baa Davina, Ruth Begaye Two Bears12. The Good Ol’ Days When Times Were Bad, Bruce DuthuFollowup: Living Life in a Posture of Humility, Bruce Duthu13. Why Didn’t You Teach Me?, Bob BennettFollowup: To Be an Indian is a Rough Life, Bob Bennett

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe organizing principle for this anthology is the common Native American heritage of its authors; and yet that thread proves to be the most tenuous of all, as the experience of indigeneity differs radically for each of them. While many experience a centripetal pull toward a cohesive Indian experience, the indications throughout these essays lean toward a richer, more illustrative panorama of difference. What tends to bind them together are not cultural practices or spiritual attitudes per se, but rather circumstances that have no exclusive province in Indian country: that is, first and foremost, poverty, and its attendant symptoms of violence, substance abuse, and both physical and mental illness.... Education plays a critical role in such lives: many of the authors recall adoring school as young people, as it constituted a place of escape and a rare opportunity to thrive.... While many of the writers do return to their tribal communities after graduation, ideas about ''home'' becoTrade ReviewI Am Where I Come From teaches us that... young people, whether they come from the Pacific, from a Native American reservation, or from anywhere else, are glimmers of light in a world that desperately needs them. -- Peter Sutoris * The Marshall Islands Journal *This book will be beneficial to Native college students and those aspiring to college who will recognize their own stories and lives, as the contributors are unafraid of sometimes gritty, always grounded details as well as the big picture. It should prove highly useful as course learning material and a research resource. It also nicely identifies how and why university recruitment strategies, student support, and overall campus experiences frequently fail Native students and their communities. * Choice *[T]he writers disclose, in searingly honest and often artful prose, the obstacles that haunted them before, during and after life at Dartmouth, including but not limited to horrific abuses, family dysfunction, intentional racism and racism that was born of ignorance, imposter syndrome, depression, anxiety and coping mechanisms that veered into the realm of self-destruction. -- Emma Jean Holley * Valley News *Table of ContentsIntroduction by Melanie Benson TaylorPart I. Broken: Racial Mixture and Cultural Hybridity1. Seeking to Be Whole, Shannon Prince2. Bringing Back a Piece of the Sky, Blythe George3. Chahta hattak sia, "I am a Choctaw Man," Preston WellsPart II. An Indian Education: Leaving and Finding Home at Dartmouth College4. Nihalgai Bahane': A Fourth World Story, Jerry Watchman5. Bracelets Upon My Soul, Ma’Ko’Quah Jones6. My Journey to Healing, Kalina NewmarkPart III. Full Circle: Returning and Remaking Home7. Little Woman from Lame Deer, Cinnamon Spear8. Village Girl, AlexAnna Salmon9. Future Ancestor, Hillary Abe10. An Unpredictable Journey, John Around HimPart IV. Continuing Education: NADs Reflect on their Journeys11. I Walk in Beauty Davina, Ruth Begaye Two BearsFollowup: Shí Asdz Baa Davina, Ruth Begaye Two Bears12. The Good Ol’ Days When Times Were Bad, Bruce DuthuFollowup: Living Life in a Posture of Humility, Bruce Duthu13. Why Didn’t You Teach Me?, Bob BennettFollowup: To Be an Indian is a Rough Life, Bob Bennett

Read more less

Book SynopsisNinigret (c. 16001676) was a sachem of the Niantic and Narragansett Indians of what is now Rhode Island from the mid-1630s through the mid-1670s. For Ninigret and his contemporaries, Indian Country and New England were multipolar political worlds shaped by ever-shifting intertribal rivalries. In the first biography of Ninigret, Julie A. Fisher and David J. Silverman assert that he was the most influential Indian leader of his era in southern New England. As such, he was a key to the balance of power in both Indian-colonial and intertribal relations.Ninigret was at the center of almost every major development involving southern New England Indians between the Pequot War of 163637 and King Philip''s War of 167576. He led the Narragansetts'' campaign to become the region''s major power, including a decades-long war against the Mohegans led by Uncas, Ninigret''s archrival. To offset growing English power, Ninigret formed long-distance alliances with the powerful Mohawks of the Iroquois Trade ReviewNinigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts sheds powerful new light on a major figure and the tumultuous world he helped to shape. It is a must-read for anyone interested in colonial and/or Native American history. * American Historical Review *Ninigret adds layers to a crucial period in regional and early American history, and it invites future conversations about cross-cultural power brokers and the nature of indigenous authority and adaptation in the midst of English settler colonialism. -- Christine DeLucia * The New England Quarterly *Fisher (graduate student, Univ. of Delaware) and Silverman (George Washington Univ.)... provide an excellent study of the region's politics and diplomacy from the Pequot War to King Philip’s War. They carefully detail Ninigret’s role as a skillful leader who forged strategic and often shifting alliances during this period.The authors’ meticulous examination of diplomacy and war is accompanied by a wealth of insight into Native American society and culture. This book makes an important contribution to understanding early New England and Native American history, and reveals Ninigret as an active and skillful agent in shaping the history of the period. As such, this book takes its place as essential reading for scholars of 17th-century New England. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -- J.C. Arndt * CHOICE *This book is a sympathetic political and diplomatic biography of an important sachem who has rarely received adequate historiographical attention. It is an important contribution to our understanding of Indian diplomacy in southern New England between the Pequot War and King Philip's War. Students of colonial New England will find the nuanced understandings of Native community and kinship networks illuminating, and scholars of early America at all levels will discover in its pages a model for a Native-centered interpretation of on-the-ground colonial diplomacy. -- Linford D. Fisher * William and Mary Quarterly *This is a good book about an extremely difficult and important time in the history of this country. Buy it and read it. I am very grateful to the authors for having written it. * Northeast Anthropology *This volume's unique contribution is a reinterpretation that puts Indians at the center of how we look at the politics and conflicts of New England in the seventeenth century. It not only shows diverse interests among Indians, but as a corollary, highlights diversity among the English as well. The evidence is substantial and convincing, and the authors have thankfully added Ninigret to the woefully short list of Indians from the colonial era whom we can say that we know in some detail Fisher and Silverman’s biography is written as crisply and clearly as the complicated and ambiguous story will allow. The first chapter especially would make an excellent introduction to eastern Native societies and early colonial contact for undergraduates. -- Jonathan DeCoster * Itinerario *[T]he authors, convinced of the sachem's importance, follow every possible path in the materials and have produced a volume of great insight and historical ingenuity.... These historians succeed in their task, almost more than the limitations in their material should really allow.... This work deserves a wide audience, one interested in native biography, native–imperial interaction, and the tactics, strategies and deployment of political and military power in the seventeenth century. -- Christopher Bilodeau, Dickinson College * History: Journal of the Historical Association *Table of ContentsPreface vii A Chronology of Key Events in the Life of Ninigret xxi 1. Being and Becoming a Sachem 1 2. "To obtaine it by force" 31 3. "I doe but Right my owne quarrell" 54 4. A Time of Decision 87 5. Ninigret's Narragansett War 113 Epilogue: The Small Matter of Eltwood Pomeroy’s Mare

Read more less

Book SynopsisPenelope Anthias's Limits to Decolonization addresses one of the most important issues in contemporary indigenous politics: struggles for territory. Based on the experience of thirty-six Guaraní communities in the Bolivian Chaco, Anthias reveals how two decades of indigenous mapping and land titling have failed to reverse a historical trajectory of indigenous dispossession in the Bolivian lowlands. Through an ethnographic account of the limits the Guaraní have encountered over the course of their territorial claimfrom state boundaries to landowner opposition to hydrocarbon developmentAnthias raises critical questions about the role of maps and land titles in indigenous struggles for self-determination.Anthias argues that these unresolved territorial claims are shaping the contours of an era of post-neoliberal politics in Bolivia. Limits to Decolonization reveals the surprising ways in which indigenous peoples are reframing their territorial projects in the conteTrade ReviewHer critical reflections on decolonization will be of interest to anthropologists and geographers seeking a ground-up perspective on how extractive economies transform marginalized communities. * Choice *Limits to Decolonization demonstrates the limitations of indigenous mapping as a liberatory project, and the emergence of a form of hydrocarbon citizenship, the cultural implications of which are as yet unclear. It is a most welcome addition to the growing literature on contemporary Bolivia. * The AAG Review of Books *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe History of Starved Rock provides a wonderful overview of the famous site in Utica, Illinois, from when European explorers first viewed the bluff in 1673 through to 1911, when Starved Rock became the centerpiece of Illinois'' second state park. Mark Walczynski pulls together stories and insights from the language, geology, geography, anthropology, archaeology, biology, and agriculture of the park to provide readers with an understanding of both the human and natural history of Starved Rock, and to put it into context with the larger history of the American Midwest.Trade ReviewMark Walczynski has written 'the' history of Starved Rock not 'a' history of this place. The distinction is worth noting because the author has produced an exhaustively researched historyand because he takes care to distinguish the past as informed by the historical record from the body of lore associated with Starved Rock. * The Annals of Iowa *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. 1673–1679: The Black Robe Arrives at Kaskaskia (Kaaskaaskinki waahpiiwa mahkateehkoreya) 2. 1680–1682: Everything Is Difficult (Čeeki kiikoo aarimatwi) 3. 1683: The French Build a Fort (maamistikoošiwa wešihtooka niimihki) 4. 1684: The Iroquois Lay Siege to the Fort (Niimihki wiiyostamwa pahsiikania) 5. 1685–1691: Trade and the Beaver (Ataweeyoni ci amehkwa) 6. 1692–1712: The Rock Is Abandoned (Neekarentaaašipehkwa) 7. 1712–1730: Starved Rock and the Fox Wars (Mihšikatwi Aašipehkonki—Mahkwaskimina) 8. 1730–1776: We Leave, Never to Return (Nimecimehkaamina) 9. 1777–1840: The Big Knives Will Be in Control (Tipeerinkiiwakikatamihšimaarhsaki) 10. 1841–1885: Wait! Its Heart Is Still Beating (Eeskwa perakiiwi ateehi) 11. 1886–1911: It Will Always Be Sitting Here, Beautiful (Peehkisita moonšaki apiwa kata) Concluding Thoughts

Read more less

Book SynopsisBabaylan Sing Back depicts the embodied voices of Native Philippine ritual specialists popularly known as babaylan. These ritual specialists are widely believed to have perished during colonial times, or to survive on the margins in the present-day. They are either persecuted as witches and purveyors of superstition, or valorized as symbols of gender equality and anticolonial resistance. Drawing on fieldwork in the Philippines and in the Philippine diaspora, Grace Nono''s deep engagement with the song and speech of a number of living ritual specialists demonstrates Native historical agency in the 500th year anniversary of the contact between the people of the Philippine Islands and the European colonizers.Trade ReviewGrace Nono offers rich theoretical and empirical material to all those interested in Philippine babaylan, ritual healing, and Southeast Asian shamanism in general. * PACIFIC AFFAIRS *Babaylan Sing Back synthesizes Nono's work over the past several decades and the result is a fascinating in-depth analysis of ritual oral traditions of "invisible" shamans. Her familiarity with many of the ritual specialists who appear in the book and meticulous research she has conducted over the decades provides a rich level of detail that adds to the reader's experience and understanding. * Bangkok Post *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Who Sings? A Baylan's Embodied Voice and its Relations 2. Shifting Voices and Malleable Bodies 3. Song Travels: Mumbaki Mobility and the Relationality of Place

Read more less

Book SynopsisWisdom From the Edge describes what anthropologists can do to contribute to the social and cultural changes that shape a social future of wellbeing and viability. Paul Stoller shows how anthropologists can develop sensuously described ethnographic narratives to communicate powerfully their insights to a wide range of audiences. These insights are filled with wisdom about how respect for nature is central to the future of humankind. Stoller demonstrates how the ethnographic evocation of space and place, the honing of dialogue, and the crafting of character depict the drama of social life, and borrows techniques from film, poetry, and fiction to expand the appeal of anthropological knowledge and heighten its ability to connect the public to the idiosyncrasies of people and locale. Ultimately, Wisdom from the Edge underscores the importance of recognizing and applying indigenous wisdom to the social problems that threaten the future.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Writing Ethnography in Turbulent Times Part I: The Senses in Artful Ethnography 1. Imaging Knowledge: Artful Vision in Slow Research 2. In the Shade of the Jujube Tree 3. Sensory Dimensions of Spirit Possession 4. Tasting Harmony in the World Part II: The Wisdom of the Elders 5. Peripheral Knowledge and the Imponderables of the Between 6. Th e World According to Rouch 7. Wisdom from the Edge of the Village Coda

Read more less

Book SynopsisWisdom From the Edge describes what anthropologists can do to contribute to the social and cultural changes that shape a social future of wellbeing and viability. Paul Stoller shows how anthropologists can develop sensuously described ethnographic narratives to communicate powerfully their insights to a wide range of audiences. These insights are filled with wisdom about how respect for nature is central to the future of humankind. Stoller demonstrates how the ethnographic evocation of space and place, the honing of dialogue, and the crafting of character depict the drama of social life, and borrows techniques from film, poetry, and fiction to expand the appeal of anthropological knowledge and heighten its ability to connect the public to the idiosyncrasies of people and locale. Ultimately, Wisdom from the Edge underscores the importance of recognizing and applying indigenous wisdom to the social problems that threaten the future.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Writing Ethnography in Turbulent Times Part I: The Senses in Artful Ethnography 1. Imaging Knowledge: Artful Vision in Slow Research 2. In the Shade of the Jujube Tree 3. Sensory Dimensions of Spirit Possession 4. Tasting Harmony in the World Part II: The Wisdom of the Elders 5. Peripheral Knowledge and the Imponderables of the Between 6. Th e World According to Rouch 7. Wisdom from the Edge of the Village Coda

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Tip of the Spear, Alfred Peredo Flores argues that the US occupation of the island of Guåhan (Guam), one of the most heavily militarized islands in the western Pacific Ocean, was enabled by a process of settler militarism. During World War II and the Cold War, Guåhan was a launching site for both covert and open US military operations in the region, a strategically significant role that turned Guåhan into a crucible of US overseas empire. In 1962, the US Navy lost the authority to regulate all travel to and from the island, and a tourist economy eventually emerged that changed the relationship between the Indigenous CHamoru population and the US military, further complicating the process of settler colonialism on the island.The US military occupation of Guåhan was based on a co-constitutive process that included CHamoru land dispossession, discursive justifications for the remaking of the island, the racialization of civilian military labor, and

Read more less

Book SynopsisEmptied Lands investigates the protracted legal, planning, and territorial conflict between the settler Israeli state and indigenous Bedouin citizens over traditional lands in southern Israel/Palestine. The authors place this dispute in historical, legal, geographical, and international-comparative perspectives, providing the first legal geographic analysis of the "dead Negev doctrine" used by Israel to dispossess and forcefully displace Bedouin inhabitants in order to Judaize the region. The authors reveal that through manipulative use of Ottoman, British and Israeli laws, the state has constructed its own version ofterra nullius. Yet, the indigenous property and settlement system still functions, creating an ongoing resistance to the Jewish state.Emptied Lands critically examines several key land claims, court rulings, planning policies, and development strategies, offering alternative local, regional, and international routes for justice.Trade Review"People are dispossessed not only with guns and bulldozers, but also with legal practices and strategies. Emptied Lands reveals how the painfully named and legally invoked Dead Negev Doctrine facilitates the continued dispossession of Bedouins in the Negev, the most intense and protracted land dispute within Israel. Drawing from decades of activism and scholarship, Kedar, Amara, and Yiftachel provide a powerful challenge to the doctrine, creating space for better forms of legality."—Nicholas Blomley, Simon Fraser University"Three of the best critical scholars of contemporary Palestine have successfully combined legal, geographical, and political analysis into a forensic study of how Israel has weaponized the law against the most vulnerable of all inhabitants of Palestine, the Bedouins. A remarkable multidisciplinary feat, this book provides an essential understanding of settler colonialism."—Eyal Weizman, Goldsmiths, University of London"This book is particularly valuable on a subject that is as complex as it is almost unresearched—namely, how the state formulates different elements that amalgamate politics with history and law in order to legitimize Bedouin land dispossession. Kedar, Amara, and Yiftachel...are able to identify and explain in their historical and legal context the key elements of the state's policy and the court decisions with regard to the Bedouin land issue."—Morad Elsana, Israel Studies Review"[Emptied Lands] confronts us with a direct, scholarly account of one of the main routes to dispossession on which the State of Israel has relied in emptying the Negev of its Palestinian Bedouin residents. This fascinating and well-written book—the result of extensive archival research, verification of sources, and a thorough reading of historical and geographical documents—systematically dismantles the Israeli establishment's claims using a variety of scientific, legal, geographic, planning, and Zionist sources. The uniqueness of the work lies in the presentation of an alternative, geographically based legal property rights study."—Safa Aburabia, Journal of Palestine Studies"The three authors have done a great service to those who wish to critically appraise the Israeli court position with regard to Bedouin in the Negev, their indigeneity and their claims to autonomy. Knowing the argument put forward to deny their indigeneity, or their rights to the lands of their forefathers, is powerful ammunition for future legal cases, as well as in continuing resistance to being ignored in 'unrecognised villages', or forcibly resettled."—Dawn Chatty, Nomadic PeoplesTable of ContentsIntroduction: Terra Nullius in Zion? 1. The Legal Geography of Indigenous Bedouin Dispossession 2. The Land Regime of the Late Ottoman Period 3. The Land Regime of the Mandate Period 4. Formulating the Dead Negev Doctrine During the Israeli Period 5. Historical Geography of the Negev: Bedouin Agriculture 6. Bedouin Territory and Settlement 7. The Bedouin as an Indigenous Community 8. International Law, Indigenous Land Rights, and Israel 9. State and Bedouin Policies and Plans Conclusion:

Read more less

Book SynopsisCan there be good social policy? This book describes what happens to Indigenous policy when it targets the supposedly 'wild people' of regional and remote Australia. Tess Lea explores naturalized policy: policy unplugged, gone live, ramifying in everyday life, to show that it is policies that are wild, not the people being targeted. Lea turns the notion of unruliness on its head to reveal a policy-driven world dominated by short term political interests and their erratic, irrational effects, and by the less obvious protection of long-term interests in resource extraction and the liberal settler lifestyles this sustains. Wild Policy argues policies are not about undoing the big causes of enduring inequality, and do not ameliorate harms terribly well either—without yielding all hope. Drawing on efforts across housing and infrastructure, resistant media-making, health, governance and land tenure battles in regional and remote Australia, Wild Policy looks at how the logics of intervention are formulated and what this reveals in answer to the question: why is it all so hard? Lea offers readers a layered, multi-relational approach called policy ecology to probe the related question, 'what is to be done?' Lea's case material will resonate with analysts across the world who deal with infrastructures, policy, technologies, mining, militarization, enduring colonial legacies, and the Anthropocene.Trade Review"By naming the arbitrary, anarchic nature of policy, Tess Lea turns the notion of unruliness on its head. The sheer effectiveness of the writing speaks to her ethnographic skill in delineating bureaucratic purpose: the result is a stunning re-visioning whose implications will reach far beyond what stimulated it." -- Marilyn Strathern * University of Cambridge *"Wild Policy offers an extraordinary contribution to the anthropology of policy, settler colonialism, and infrastructural inequality. Tess Lea's profound accomplishment rests on her sharp, ethnographically innovative account of policy as a milieu, its attention to the uneven ground of policy's materiality, and its appreciation for the work involved in wresting some good from policy's consequential detritus." -- Daniel Fisher * University of California, Berkeley *"Lea is an acute observer of the everyday practices that characterise the wild, disorderly, and strange cultural world of the interventionist settler-colonial state....this is courageous scholarship. Wild Policy's blast of originality compelled me." -- Eve Vincent * Sydney Review of Books *"[There] is a poetics in Lea's anthologising of policies, one that is profoundly moored in land and relations. The efficacy and power of Lea's work, be [it] destabilising or advocating, lies in their specific and relational mode of engagement with human and more-than-human worlds." -- Jamie Wang * Sydney Environment Institute *"Wild Policy provides a nuanced take on how policy is formulated and implemented in ways that exclude Indigenous experience, and seeks to rectify this through the interludes that present Indigenous knowledge apart from scholarly theorization." -- Claire Ross and Alexander Howes * Political and Legal Anthropology Review *

Read more less

Book SynopsisOaxaca Resurgent examines how Indigenous people in one of Mexico's most rebellious states shaped local and national politics during the twentieth century. Drawing on declassified surveillance documents and original ethnographic research, A. S. Dillingham traces the contested history of indigenous development and the trajectory of the Mexican government's Instituto Nacional Indigenista, the most ambitious agency of its kind in the Americas. This book shows how generations of Indigenous actors, operating from within the Mexican government while also challenging its authority, proved instrumental in democratizing the local teachers' trade union and implementing bilingual education. Focusing on the experiences of anthropologists, government bureaucrats, trade unionists, and activists, Dillingham explores the relationship between indigeneity, rural education and development, and the political radicalism of the Global Sixties. By centering Indigenous expressions of anticolonialism, Oaxaca Resurgent offers key insights into the entangled histories of Indigenous resurgence movements and the rise of state-sponsored multiculturalism in the Americas. This revelatory book provides crucial context for understanding post-1968 Mexican history and the rise of the 2006 Oaxacan social movement.Trade Review"Thoroughly researched and wonderfully written, Oaxaca Resurgent vividly portrays how bilingual teachers and other indigenista brokers managed to resist, selectively accept, and reshape developmentalist policies and multicultural state projects throughout the 20th century. Based on surveillance documents from Mexican Intelligence Services as well as oral interviews he conducted in Spanish and Mixtec, a language he learned as his intellectual and personal life became increasingly intertwined with the destiny of Oaxaca, Dillingham works with care and empathy, persuasively arguing that Oaxaca's gift for our contemporary world resides in the indomitable energy and plurality of vision of its many indigenous communities."—Cristina Rivera Garza, author of The Restless Dead: Necrowriting and Disappropriation"Oaxaca Resurgent provides a wide-ranging analysis of the tug of war between Mexico's developmentalist policy and historic strategies of indigenous resistance. With careful attention to state projects and grassroots initiatives, Dillingham offers a compelling picture of the institutions, actors and ideologies that shaped the politics of indigeneity in the complex and dynamic terrain of Oaxaca."—Tanalís Padilla, author of Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata"A. S. Dillingham's meticulous archival and oral reconstruction places Mixtec intellectuals and activists at the center of indigenista thinking and development schemes: authoring, appropriating, retooling, and transforming every aspect of indigenismo for their own purposes, from the postrevolutionary period to the neoliberal present. Dillingham brings to life three generations of activists who came to political maturity under that mantle of indigenismo, transforming its meaning from the inside out, and tracing how these Mixtec actors contributed to the resurgence of indigenous anticolonial and autonomy movements that swept the hemisphere in the second half of the 20th century. A must read for hemispheric Native American and indigenous scholars."—María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, author of Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States"Those of us who have conducted archival research on indigenista development and education sometimes struggle to highlight the indigenous brokers who were trained and paid to carry out these programs. In this book, Dillingham supplements his archival work with a healthy dose of interviews to shine a light on these critical actors. Indigenous men (and, later, women) used the crisis of Mexican indigenismo, Echeverría's 'opening' and his Third-Worldist discourse, and the politics of the New Left to push for multicultural state development and education programs. Dillingham restores agency to these people, which may be this fine book's greatest contribution."—Stephen Lewis, H-LatAm"Dillingham's use of local archives and oral histories reconstructs how teachers and activists pursued their own goals within state and party institutions, undermining many of these institutions in the long run... Oaxaca Resurgent undoubtedly adds a regional perspective and original evidence to the ongoing debate about the nature of Mexico's postrevolutionary state."– Emilio de Antuñano, Hispanic American Historical Review"Oaxaca Resurgent brings together two important conversations in Mexican Indigenous history: the ongoing colonialism of national development and the longstanding Indigenous resistance. Using twentieth-century Oaxaca both as case study and as exemplar, Dillingham offers an illuminating window into Indigenous political activism in the face of postrevolutionary state appropriation of Indigenous culture and history. Examining what he calls the 'double bind of indigenismo,' a space for Indigenous resurgence that emerges from the tension between state constructions of Indigeneity and the strategic deployment of those constructions by Native peoples from the state of Oaxaca, Dillingham carefully reconstructs how Indigenous individuals and communities forwarded—and continue to forward—their own anticolonial projects by leveraging and undermining nationalistic invocations of Indigeneity. The book draws on an impressive range of sources, including declassified surveillance documents and oral histories, and it is beautifully written. This innovative work will resonate broadly with Indigenous activists and scholars alike."—American Society for Ethnohistory"In the face of more than a century of scholarship that has made Oaxaca and its peoples an object of inquiry—in archaeology, anthropology, sociology, and other fields—this wide-ranging study instead demonstrates the many ways that Oaxacans have made themselves the subjects of their own history. ...Dillingham's argument is the assertion that this multiculturalism was not merely an identity based strategy of the state to incorporate Indigenous Mexicans into an increasingly austere, neoliberal economy. He shows instead that the struggle for multicultural recognition maintained its class character, serving as a source of organizing power especially for the dissident teachers-union movement that flourished in Oaxaca and directly challenged the hegemony of the ruling party."—Christy Thornton, Journal of Interdisciplinary History"A.S. Dillingham weaves together a powerful story of resistance in one of Latin America's most culturally rich regions... The value this important study brings to the field is that it uncovers the long history of indigenous activism that survived and even thrived despite the oppressive nature of one of the longest-lived political regimes of the Western Hemisphere, a testament to the will of Oaxaca's communities."—James A. Garza, The Americas"Oaxaca Resurgent is an outstanding book. Dillingham's analysis is sharp and conclusive but measured.... By embedding his analysis in layers of context, Dillingham tells a universal story, moved by the ebbs and flows of global intellectual sea change, yet never loses sight of the small group of Indigenous bilingual teachers from Oaxaca who drive his story, who are here not relegated to dancing for the approbation of the state."—Colby Ristow, Latin American Politics and Society"Much of the literature on neoliberalism and multiculturalism has conceptualized official multiculturalism as a consolation in lieu of socio-economic reform. Dillingham instead shows how indigenous activists, empowered by state indigenismo, crafted the multiculturalism that the state would later embrace. They may not have always gotten what they demanded, but they were never merely victims of forces beyond their control."—Eben Levey, The Latin AmericanistTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Double Bind of Indigenismo 1. Modernizing the Mixteca: Regional Approaches to Underdevelopment 2. "Was It God or the Devil?": Bilingual Radio Schools and Cold War Catholicism 3. Mixtec Land and Labor: Migration and State-Sponsored Resettlement on the Costa Chica 4. Indigenismo in the Age of Three Worlds: Oaxacan Youth and Mexico's Democratic Opening 5. Bilingual Teachers at the Front: The Rise of Dissident Trade Unionism and the Neoliberal Order 6. Anticolonialism in the Classroom: The Institutionalization of Multiculturalism Conclusion: The Entangled Histories of Recognition and Resurgence

Read more less

Book SynopsisOaxaca Resurgent examines how Indigenous people in one of Mexico's most rebellious states shaped local and national politics during the twentieth century. Drawing on declassified surveillance documents and original ethnographic research, A. S. Dillingham traces the contested history of indigenous development and the trajectory of the Mexican government's Instituto Nacional Indigenista, the most ambitious agency of its kind in the Americas. This book shows how generations of Indigenous actors, operating from within the Mexican government while also challenging its authority, proved instrumental in democratizing the local teachers' trade union and implementing bilingual education. Focusing on the experiences of anthropologists, government bureaucrats, trade unionists, and activists, Dillingham explores the relationship between indigeneity, rural education and development, and the political radicalism of the Global Sixties. By centering Indigenous expressions of anticolonialism, Oaxaca Resurgent offers key insights into the entangled histories of Indigenous resurgence movements and the rise of state-sponsored multiculturalism in the Americas. This revelatory book provides crucial context for understanding post-1968 Mexican history and the rise of the 2006 Oaxacan social movement.Trade Review"Thoroughly researched and wonderfully written, Oaxaca Resurgent vividly portrays how bilingual teachers and other indigenista brokers managed to resist, selectively accept, and reshape developmentalist policies and multicultural state projects throughout the 20th century. Based on surveillance documents from Mexican Intelligence Services as well as oral interviews he conducted in Spanish and Mixtec, a language he learned as his intellectual and personal life became increasingly intertwined with the destiny of Oaxaca, Dillingham works with care and empathy, persuasively arguing that Oaxaca's gift for our contemporary world resides in the indomitable energy and plurality of vision of its many indigenous communities."—Cristina Rivera Garza, author of The Restless Dead: Necrowriting and Disappropriation"Oaxaca Resurgent provides a wide-ranging analysis of the tug of war between Mexico's developmentalist policy and historic strategies of indigenous resistance. With careful attention to state projects and grassroots initiatives, Dillingham offers a compelling picture of the institutions, actors and ideologies that shaped the politics of indigeneity in the complex and dynamic terrain of Oaxaca."—Tanalís Padilla, author of Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata"A. S. Dillingham's meticulous archival and oral reconstruction places Mixtec intellectuals and activists at the center of indigenista thinking and development schemes: authoring, appropriating, retooling, and transforming every aspect of indigenismo for their own purposes, from the postrevolutionary period to the neoliberal present. Dillingham brings to life three generations of activists who came to political maturity under that mantle of indigenismo, transforming its meaning from the inside out, and tracing how these Mixtec actors contributed to the resurgence of indigenous anticolonial and autonomy movements that swept the hemisphere in the second half of the 20th century. A must read for hemispheric Native American and indigenous scholars."—María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, author of Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States"Those of us who have conducted archival research on indigenista development and education sometimes struggle to highlight the indigenous brokers who were trained and paid to carry out these programs. In this book, Dillingham supplements his archival work with a healthy dose of interviews to shine a light on these critical actors. Indigenous men (and, later, women) used the crisis of Mexican indigenismo, Echeverría's 'opening' and his Third-Worldist discourse, and the politics of the New Left to push for multicultural state development and education programs. Dillingham restores agency to these people, which may be this fine book's greatest contribution."—Stephen Lewis, H-LatAm"Dillingham's use of local archives and oral histories reconstructs how teachers and activists pursued their own goals within state and party institutions, undermining many of these institutions in the long run... Oaxaca Resurgent undoubtedly adds a regional perspective and original evidence to the ongoing debate about the nature of Mexico's postrevolutionary state."– Emilio de Antuñano, Hispanic American Historical Review"Oaxaca Resurgent brings together two important conversations in Mexican Indigenous history: the ongoing colonialism of national development and the longstanding Indigenous resistance. Using twentieth-century Oaxaca both as case study and as exemplar, Dillingham offers an illuminating window into Indigenous political activism in the face of postrevolutionary state appropriation of Indigenous culture and history. Examining what he calls the 'double bind of indigenismo,' a space for Indigenous resurgence that emerges from the tension between state constructions of Indigeneity and the strategic deployment of those constructions by Native peoples from the state of Oaxaca, Dillingham carefully reconstructs how Indigenous individuals and communities forwarded—and continue to forward—their own anticolonial projects by leveraging and undermining nationalistic invocations of Indigeneity. The book draws on an impressive range of sources, including declassified surveillance documents and oral histories, and it is beautifully written. This innovative work will resonate broadly with Indigenous activists and scholars alike."—American Society for Ethnohistory"In the face of more than a century of scholarship that has made Oaxaca and its peoples an object of inquiry—in archaeology, anthropology, sociology, and other fields—this wide-ranging study instead demonstrates the many ways that Oaxacans have made themselves the subjects of their own history. ...Dillingham's argument is the assertion that this multiculturalism was not merely an identity based strategy of the state to incorporate Indigenous Mexicans into an increasingly austere, neoliberal economy. He shows instead that the struggle for multicultural recognition maintained its class character, serving as a source of organizing power especially for the dissident teachers-union movement that flourished in Oaxaca and directly challenged the hegemony of the ruling party."—Christy Thornton, Journal of Interdisciplinary History"A.S. Dillingham weaves together a powerful story of resistance in one of Latin America's most culturally rich regions... The value this important study brings to the field is that it uncovers the long history of indigenous activism that survived and even thrived despite the oppressive nature of one of the longest-lived political regimes of the Western Hemisphere, a testament to the will of Oaxaca's communities."—James A. Garza, The Americas"Oaxaca Resurgent is an outstanding book. Dillingham's analysis is sharp and conclusive but measured.... By embedding his analysis in layers of context, Dillingham tells a universal story, moved by the ebbs and flows of global intellectual sea change, yet never loses sight of the small group of Indigenous bilingual teachers from Oaxaca who drive his story, who are here not relegated to dancing for the approbation of the state."—Colby Ristow, Latin American Politics and Society"Much of the literature on neoliberalism and multiculturalism has conceptualized official multiculturalism as a consolation in lieu of socio-economic reform. Dillingham instead shows how indigenous activists, empowered by state indigenismo, crafted the multiculturalism that the state would later embrace. They may not have always gotten what they demanded, but they were never merely victims of forces beyond their control."—Eben Levey, The Latin AmericanistTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Double Bind of Indigenismo 1. Modernizing the Mixteca: Regional Approaches to Underdevelopment 2. "Was It God or the Devil?": Bilingual Radio Schools and Cold War Catholicism 3. Mixtec Land and Labor: Migration and State-Sponsored Resettlement on the Costa Chica 4. Indigenismo in the Age of Three Worlds: Oaxacan Youth and Mexico's Democratic Opening 5. Bilingual Teachers at the Front: The Rise of Dissident Trade Unionism and the Neoliberal Order 6. Anticolonialism in the Classroom: The Institutionalization of Multiculturalism Conclusion: The Entangled Histories of Recognition and Resurgence

Read more less

Book SynopsisAround the year 1800, independent Native groups still effectively controlled about half the territory of the Americas. How did they maintain their political autonomy and territorial sovereignty, hundreds of years after the arrival of Europeans? In a study that spans the eighteenth to twentieth centuries and ranges across the vast interior of South America, Heather F. Roller examines this history of power and persistence from the vantage point of autonomous Native peoples in Brazil. The central argument of the book is that Indigenous groups took the initiative in their contacts with Brazilian society. Rather than fleeing or evading contact, Native peoples actively sought to appropriate what was useful and potent from outsiders, incorporating new knowledge, products, and even people, on their own terms and for their own purposes. At the same time, autonomous Native groups aimed to control contact with dangerous outsiders, so as to protect their communities from threats that came in the form of sicknesses, vices, forced labor, and land invasions. Their tactical decisions shaped and limited colonizing enterprises in Brazil, while revealing Native peoples' capacity for cultural persistence through transformation. These contact strategies are preserved in the collective memories of Indigenous groups today, informing struggles for survival and self-determination in the present.Trade Review"This beautifully written and deeply researched history opens new interpretations of both peaceful and violent contacts among Indigenous peoples and colonial settlers, missionaries, and traders. Heather F. Roller highlights stories of engagement across Native Brazil, focused on the Mura and Guaikurú's emblematic strategies for autonomy that shaped the sertões and framed the survival of their present-day descendants."—Cynthia Radding, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill"Indigenous people living independently from colonial and national rule used to cover much of the American continent. This book compellingly tells the vigorous histories of key Indigenous societies around Brazil and its western borders. Roller's groundbreaking study is timely, stirring and revelatory."—Mark Harris, University of St Andrews, Scotland"It is rare when a respected researcher revisits her work and comes to a totally different conclusion about its meaning. However, that is exactly what Roller has done in her important new book. ... This work is more than informative: it is imperative reading for all Brazilianists and Latin American scholars of the colonial and modern periods. Essential."—R.M. Delson, CHOICE"Contact Strategiessets a high standard for ethnographic research that future historians may fruitfully emulate toextract insights from hostile sources that rarely even acknowledgedIndigenous people by name."—Hendrik Kraay,Journal of Interdisciplinary History"Roller tracks changes and continuities in Indigenous engagement with dominant society through a methodical and far-ranging combing of archival and printed sources... [Her] ability to ground the chapters of this sprawling diachronic study in the patterned initiatives of Indigenous populations is innovative and illuminating." –Seth Garfield,Hispanic American Historical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Facing Empire 2. Why Embrace the Whites? 3. Practices of Peace 4. A Return to War Is Always Possible 5. Against Extinction Conclusion

Read more less

Book SynopsisAround the year 1800, independent Native groups still effectively controlled about half the territory of the Americas. How did they maintain their political autonomy and territorial sovereignty, hundreds of years after the arrival of Europeans? In a study that spans the eighteenth to twentieth centuries and ranges across the vast interior of South America, Heather F. Roller examines this history of power and persistence from the vantage point of autonomous Native peoples in Brazil. The central argument of the book is that Indigenous groups took the initiative in their contacts with Brazilian society. Rather than fleeing or evading contact, Native peoples actively sought to appropriate what was useful and potent from outsiders, incorporating new knowledge, products, and even people, on their own terms and for their own purposes. At the same time, autonomous Native groups aimed to control contact with dangerous outsiders, so as to protect their communities from threats that came in the form of sicknesses, vices, forced labor, and land invasions. Their tactical decisions shaped and limited colonizing enterprises in Brazil, while revealing Native peoples' capacity for cultural persistence through transformation. These contact strategies are preserved in the collective memories of Indigenous groups today, informing struggles for survival and self-determination in the present.Trade Review"This beautifully written and deeply researched history opens new interpretations of both peaceful and violent contacts among Indigenous peoples and colonial settlers, missionaries, and traders. Heather F. Roller highlights stories of engagement across Native Brazil, focused on the Mura and Guaikurú's emblematic strategies for autonomy that shaped the sertões and framed the survival of their present-day descendants."—Cynthia Radding, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill"Indigenous people living independently from colonial and national rule used to cover much of the American continent. This book compellingly tells the vigorous histories of key Indigenous societies around Brazil and its western borders. Roller's groundbreaking study is timely, stirring and revelatory."—Mark Harris, University of St Andrews, Scotland"It is rare when a respected researcher revisits her work and comes to a totally different conclusion about its meaning. However, that is exactly what Roller has done in her important new book. ... This work is more than informative: it is imperative reading for all Brazilianists and Latin American scholars of the colonial and modern periods. Essential."—R.M. Delson, CHOICE"Contact Strategiessets a high standard for ethnographic research that future historians may fruitfully emulate toextract insights from hostile sources that rarely even acknowledgedIndigenous people by name."—Hendrik Kraay,Journal of Interdisciplinary History"Roller tracks changes and continuities in Indigenous engagement with dominant society through a methodical and far-ranging combing of archival and printed sources... [Her] ability to ground the chapters of this sprawling diachronic study in the patterned initiatives of Indigenous populations is innovative and illuminating." –Seth Garfield,Hispanic American Historical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Facing Empire 2. Why Embrace the Whites? 3. Practices of Peace 4. A Return to War Is Always Possible 5. Against Extinction Conclusion

Read more less

Book SynopsisWinner of the prestigious Casa de las Américas Prize, this work spins a heartfelt story of an improbable relationship between an anthropologist and her charismatic Indigenous father. When Aparecida Vilaça first traveled down the remote Negro River in Amazonia, she expected to come back with notebooks and tapes full of observations about the Indigenous Wari' people—but not with a new father. In Paletó and Me, Vilaça shares her life with her adoptive Wari' family, and the profound personal transformations involved in becoming kin. Paletó—unfailingly charming, always prepared with a joke—shines with life in Vilaça's account of their unusual father-daughter relationship. Paletó was many things: he was a survivor, who lived through the arrival of violent invaders and diseases. He was a leader, who taught through laughter and care, spoke softly, yet was always ready to jump into the unknown. He could shift seamlessly between the roles of the observer and the observed, and in his visits to Rio de Janeiro, deconstructs urban social conventions with ease and wit. Begun the day after Paletó's death at the age of 85, Paletó and Me is a celebration of life, weaving together the author's own memories of learning the lifeways of Indigenous Amazonia with her father's testimony to Wari' persistence in the face of colonization. Speaking from the heart as both anthropologist and daughter, Vilaça offers an intimate look at Indigenous lives in Brazil over nearly a century.Trade Review"In this extraordinary account, the rich experiences of a seasoned social anthropologist are superbly sustained by novelistic insights. Aparecida Vilaça takes us on a journey into a profoundly alien culture by entering the mind of one man, Paletó. His life spanned, it seemed, an entire history of human civilization. From an upbringing and early adulthood in an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon forest to the explosive, savage intrusions of modernity, his outlook remained deeply humane. Through him, Vilaça holds up a mirror to the unchanging fundamentals of human nature."—Ian McEwan"Simple and profound, this book is a testament to an ethical, moral, and political commitment to the colonized peoples of America."—Casa de las Américas Prize committee"When I read Paletó and Me, I had a wonderful revelation. Our ancestors, with wisdom and magic, foresaw an irrepressible capacity of people to affect worlds and to make families across cultures. And I gained a 'relative' in the talented writer Aparecida Vilaça, whose anthropology is made of affects between worlds."—Ailton Krenak, author of Ideas to Postpone the End of the World"The wonderful draw of Paletó and Me is the courage of one woman immersing herself in another culture and 'making relatives.' Through her acute observations, Aparecida Vilaça conveys a way of being to any reader who may not know how one indigenous community continues to exist." —Linda Hogan, author of The Radiant Lives of Animals"Paletó and Aparecida's unlikely, potent kinship is narrated unforgettably in this book, without the narrator glossing over any of the violence of colonialism across which it happened. Kinship is always a surprise, never to be taken for granted. Paletó and Me shows how such a surprise continues to matter."—Donna Haraway, author of Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene"In this fascinating account, Aparecida Vilaça at times effaces herself—concealed by her friend's lively voice—and at times reemerges in the luminous form of her singular and personal writing. Far from being a conventional anthropological text, Paletó and Me depicts the inebriating journey between identities that reveal themselves to be both ancient and fleeting."—Mia Couto, author of Sleepwalking Land"Written in a conversational tone and guided by memories, Paletó and Me is inspired by questions rather than conclusions and completely forsakes ideology, rendering Aparecida Vilaça's memories into a delightful story."—Paulo Roberto Pires, Época Magazine"Vilaa manages to captivate us by letting her and Paletó's memories speak for themselves. Beautifully written, Paletó and me is not only a joy to read, but should become the model for anthropologists wishing to express the personal aspects of their fieldwork."—Niklas Hartmann, Journal of the Anthropological Society of OxfordTable of Contents1. Death without Cannibalism 2. The Encounter 3. The Peccary Brother 4. The Houses 5. Escaping Death for the First Time 6. The First White and Other Wars 7. The Stone Axe, the Dream of Paris, and the Bachelor House 8. The Jaguar Mother-in-Law 9. The Wives 10. Escaping Death for the Second Time: The Massacre 11. The Bewitched Bride and Poison in the Houses 12. Meeting the Whites 13. Sexy 14. Talking with the Bishop and the Misunderstandings of Contact 15. The Epidemics 16. Guajará-Mirim, Brazil 17. Meeting the Missionaries 18. In the Land of the Priests 19. Becoming a Believer 20. One Coach Station, Two Airports, and a Titanium Leg 21. When the Water Meets the Clouds and the Fish-Men 22. The Animals Who Are People, the Big Rock, and the Bones of the Dead 23. The Slippery People and the Big Television 24. Making Kin 25. The Farewell

Read more less

Book SynopsisOver the last decade, Peru has experienced a spectacular mining boom and astronomical economic growth. Yet, for villagers in Peru's southern Andes, few have felt the material benefits. With this book, Eric Hirsch considers what growth means—and importantly how it feels. Hirsch proposes an analysis of boom-time capitalism that starts not from considerations of poverty, but from the premise that Peru is wealthy. He situates his work in a network of villages near new mining sites, agricultural export markets, and tourist attractions, where Peruvian prosperity appears tantalizingly close, yet just out of reach. This book centers on small-scale development investments working to transform villagers into Indigenous entrepreneurs ready to capitalize on Peru's new national brand and access the constantly deferred promise of national growth. That meant identifying as Indigenous, where few actively did so; identifying as an entrepreneur, in a place where single-minded devotion to a business went against the tendency to diversify income sources; and identifying every dimension of one's daily life as a resource, despite the unwelcome intimacy this required. Theorizing growth as an affective project that requires constant physical and emotional labor, Acts of Growth follows a diverse group of Andean residents through the exhausting work of making an economy grow.Trade Review"With Acts of Growth, Eric Hirsch beautifully navigates the shifting terrain of southern Peru as he critically examines neoliberal capitalism's prescriptions for local performances of plenitude and growth amid dispossession. His brilliant ethnography of development initiatives offers rich new insights into the region and broader contexts of change."—Florence E. Babb, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"Acts of Growth is a compelling account of how 'extractive care' insinuates itself into everyday structures of feeling in Andean Peru. Reframing conversations about extraction, Indigenous entrepreneurship, and Indigenous theorizations of non-human relations, Eric Hirsch sees one of the oldest stories in the Americas with fresh eyes. Powerful and insightful."—María Elena García, University of Washington

Read more less

Book SynopsisOver the last decade, Peru has experienced a spectacular mining boom and astronomical economic growth. Yet, for villagers in Peru's southern Andes, few have felt the material benefits. With this book, Eric Hirsch considers what growth means—and importantly how it feels. Hirsch proposes an analysis of boom-time capitalism that starts not from considerations of poverty, but from the premise that Peru is wealthy. He situates his work in a network of villages near new mining sites, agricultural export markets, and tourist attractions, where Peruvian prosperity appears tantalizingly close, yet just out of reach. This book centers on small-scale development investments working to transform villagers into Indigenous entrepreneurs ready to capitalize on Peru's new national brand and access the constantly deferred promise of national growth. That meant identifying as Indigenous, where few actively did so; identifying as an entrepreneur, in a place where single-minded devotion to a business went against the tendency to diversify income sources; and identifying every dimension of one's daily life as a resource, despite the unwelcome intimacy this required. Theorizing growth as an affective project that requires constant physical and emotional labor, Acts of Growth follows a diverse group of Andean residents through the exhausting work of making an economy grow.Trade Review"With Acts of Growth, Eric Hirsch beautifully navigates the shifting terrain of southern Peru as he critically examines neoliberal capitalism's prescriptions for local performances of plenitude and growth amid dispossession. His brilliant ethnography of development initiatives offers rich new insights into the region and broader contexts of change."—Florence E. Babb, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"Acts of Growth is a compelling account of how 'extractive care' insinuates itself into everyday structures of feeling in Andean Peru. Reframing conversations about extraction, Indigenous entrepreneurship, and Indigenous theorizations of non-human relations, Eric Hirsch sees one of the oldest stories in the Americas with fresh eyes. Powerful and insightful."—María Elena García, University of Washington

Read more less

Book SynopsisPalestinians living on different sides of the Green Line make up approximately one-fifth of Israeli citizens and about four-fifths of the population of the West Bank. In both groups, activists assert that they share a single political struggle for national liberation. Yet, obstacles inhibit their ability to speak to each other and as a collective. Geopolitical boundaries fragment Palestinians into ever smaller groups. Crossing a Line enters these distinct environments for political expression and action of Palestinians who carry Israeli citizenship and Palestinians subject to Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, and considers how Palestinians are differently impacted by dispossession, settler colonialism, and militarism. Amahl Bishara looks to sites of political practice—journalism, historical commemorations, street demonstrations, social media, in prison, and on the road—to analyze how Palestinians create collectivities in these varied circumstances. She draws on firsthand research, personal interviews, and public media to examine how people shape and reshape meanings in circumstances of constraint. In considering these different environments for political expression and action, Bishara illuminates how expression is always grounded in place—and how a people can struggle together for liberation even when they cannot join together in protest.Trade Review"Crossing a Line tells a story of connection and fragmentation, of joy and grief, and of Palestine and its impossible geographies. With a penetrating ethnographic eye and elegant prose, Amahl Bishara gives us an account of Palestinian political expression across barriers that should be widely read."—Ilana Feldman, George Washington University"This riveting and remarkable book transforms our understanding of the fragility and perseverance of Palestinian collectivities separated by the violence of Israeli settler colonialism. Amahl Bishara's eloquent ethnography examines political and expressive relationships between communities affected differentially by 1948 and by 1967, and in the diaspora."—Lisa Lowe, Yale University"In this deeply engaged ethnography, Amahl Bishara traces the varying modes and expressions of embodied protest among Palestinians fragmented across Israel's colonial geography. Offering a sensitive reading of Palestinian peoplehood and political difference, Crossing a Line brings social movement theory into critical engagement with settler colonial and native studies." —Rema Hammami, Birzeit University"This critical examination of Palestinian life in Israel and under occupation is accessible to a wide audience and deeply revealing of the relationship between place, people, and politics. Recommended."—P. Rowe, CHOICE"The very structure of occupation promotes atomization, which severely undermines the Palestinian cause. Bridging the divide among Palestinians, as Bishara and many others seek to do, is a necessary step in the way to a freer Palestine."—Marc Martorell Junyent, Informed Comment"Crossing a Line serves as a reminder for those committed to anti-imperialism to look beyond the corporate window-dressing version of sovereignty, to unearth alternative and emergent projects for liberation that are more firmly rooted in lived experience."—Leila Kawar, Against the Current"Bishara's ethnographic research, stretching over nearly two decades, has produced a meticulous study of Israel's continuing domination and steady appropriation through multiple forms of fragmentation, immobilisation, ghettoisation and violence.... Crossing a Line is an extraordinarily multi-layered and nuanced book in which she probes the particulars of the Palestinian experience and relates them to broader contexts of colonisation, dispossession, racism and violence within the USA and elsewhere."—Nancy Murray, Race and Class"Bishara's ultimate gift to the reader is a comprehensive story of Palestinian life. To the Palestinian reader, it grows faith in our cause and fortitude. To others, it is an invitation to witness...: not in the hope of an immediate departures, but to stay with us long enough to learn how to traverse the colonial situation—the thing that makes reality unlivable—and find life again in the company of the joys and pains of others."—Eman Ghanayem, Public BooksTable of ContentsPrologue Introduction Passage 1: Passage: Aida Refugee Camp to the Haifa Beach 1. The Shifting Ground of Palestine Passage 2: Passage: Aida Refugee Camp to the Northern Galilee 2. Protesting the War on Gaza Together, Apart Passage 3: Passage: Bethlehem to Lubiya 3. The Momentum of Commemoration Passage 4: Passage: Jaffa to Aida Refugee Camp 4. A Juxtaposition of Palestinian Places Passage 5: Passage: Jerusalem to Nablus 5. Territory and Mourning on Social Media Passage 6: Passage: Bethlehem to Jerusalem 6. Bonds of Care: Prison and the Green Line Passage 7: Driving North Conclusion

Read more less

Book SynopsisPalestinians living on different sides of the Green Line make up approximately one-fifth of Israeli citizens and about four-fifths of the population of the West Bank. In both groups, activists assert that they share a single political struggle for national liberation. Yet, obstacles inhibit their ability to speak to each other and as a collective. Geopolitical boundaries fragment Palestinians into ever smaller groups. Crossing a Line enters these distinct environments for political expression and action of Palestinians who carry Israeli citizenship and Palestinians subject to Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, and considers how Palestinians are differently impacted by dispossession, settler colonialism, and militarism. Amahl Bishara looks to sites of political practice—journalism, historical commemorations, street demonstrations, social media, in prison, and on the road—to analyze how Palestinians create collectivities in these varied circumstances. She draws on firsthand research, personal interviews, and public media to examine how people shape and reshape meanings in circumstances of constraint. In considering these different environments for political expression and action, Bishara illuminates how expression is always grounded in place—and how a people can struggle together for liberation even when they cannot join together in protest.Trade Review"Crossing a Line tells a story of connection and fragmentation, of joy and grief, and of Palestine and its impossible geographies. With a penetrating ethnographic eye and elegant prose, Amahl Bishara gives us an account of Palestinian political expression across barriers that should be widely read."—Ilana Feldman, George Washington University"This riveting and remarkable book transforms our understanding of the fragility and perseverance of Palestinian collectivities separated by the violence of Israeli settler colonialism. Amahl Bishara's eloquent ethnography examines political and expressive relationships between communities affected differentially by 1948 and by 1967, and in the diaspora."—Lisa Lowe, Yale University"In this deeply engaged ethnography, Amahl Bishara traces the varying modes and expressions of embodied protest among Palestinians fragmented across Israel's colonial geography. Offering a sensitive reading of Palestinian peoplehood and political difference, Crossing a Line brings social movement theory into critical engagement with settler colonial and native studies." —Rema Hammami, Birzeit University"This critical examination of Palestinian life in Israel and under occupation is accessible to a wide audience and deeply revealing of the relationship between place, people, and politics. Recommended."—P. Rowe, CHOICE"The very structure of occupation promotes atomization, which severely undermines the Palestinian cause. Bridging the divide among Palestinians, as Bishara and many others seek to do, is a necessary step in the way to a freer Palestine."—Marc Martorell Junyent, Informed Comment"Crossing a Line serves as a reminder for those committed to anti-imperialism to look beyond the corporate window-dressing version of sovereignty, to unearth alternative and emergent projects for liberation that are more firmly rooted in lived experience."—Leila Kawar, Against the Current"Bishara's ethnographic research, stretching over nearly two decades, has produced a meticulous study of Israel's continuing domination and steady appropriation through multiple forms of fragmentation, immobilisation, ghettoisation and violence.... Crossing a Line is an extraordinarily multi-layered and nuanced book in which she probes the particulars of the Palestinian experience and relates them to broader contexts of colonisation, dispossession, racism and violence within the USA and elsewhere."—Nancy Murray, Race and Class"Bishara's ultimate gift to the reader is a comprehensive story of Palestinian life. To the Palestinian reader, it grows faith in our cause and fortitude. To others, it is an invitation to witness...: not in the hope of an immediate departures, but to stay with us long enough to learn how to traverse the colonial situation—the thing that makes reality unlivable—and find life again in the company of the joys and pains of others."—Eman Ghanayem, Public BooksTable of ContentsPrologue Introduction Passage 1: Passage: Aida Refugee Camp to the Haifa Beach 1. The Shifting Ground of Palestine Passage 2: Passage: Aida Refugee Camp to the Northern Galilee 2. Protesting the War on Gaza Together, Apart Passage 3: Passage: Bethlehem to Lubiya 3. The Momentum of Commemoration Passage 4: Passage: Jaffa to Aida Refugee Camp 4. A Juxtaposition of Palestinian Places Passage 5: Passage: Jerusalem to Nablus 5. Territory and Mourning on Social Media Passage 6: Passage: Bethlehem to Jerusalem 6. Bonds of Care: Prison and the Green Line Passage 7: Driving North Conclusion

Read more less

Book SynopsisDuring his last years ethnohistorian Frank G. Speck turned to the study of Iroquois ceremonialism. This 1950 book investigates the religious rites of the Cayuga tribe, one of six in the Iroquois confederation that occupied upstate New York until the American Revolution. In the 1930s and the 1940s Frank Speck observed the Midwinter Ceremony, the Cayuga thanksgiving for the blessings of life and health, performed in long houses on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario. Collaborating with Alexander General (Deskáheh), the noted Cayuga chief, Speck describes vividly the rites and dances giving thanks to all spiritual entities. Of special interest are the medicine societies that not only prescribed herbs but used powerfully evocative masks in treating the underlying causes of sickness.Trade Review"The charm of [Dr. Speck's] book is matched only by the quiet dignity and poetic imagery of the Cayuga. Immersing himself in the native scene, the author entered sympathetically into the spirit of their thought. . . . Both the prayers and myths are remarkable for their power and loveliness." * Canadian Historical Review *"Since Speck's attitude toward native religion was charged with the highest respect and sympathy, he always was extremely successful in eliciting the cooperation of informants in securing reliable information. . . . Speck's linguistic gifts also facilitated such inquiries." * American Anthropologist *

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn The Great Power of Small Nations, Elizabeth N. Ellis (Peoria) tells the stories of the many smaller Native American nations that shaped the development of the Gulf South. Based on extensive archival research and oral histories, Ellis’s narrative chronicles how diverse Indigenous peoples—including Biloxis, Choctaws, Chitimachas, Chickasaws, Houmas, Mobilians, and Tunicas—influenced and often challenged the growth of colonial Louisiana. The book centers on questions of Native nation-building and international diplomacy, and it argues that Native American migration and practices of offering refuge to migrants in crisis enabled Native nations to survive the violence of colonization. Indeed, these practices also made them powerful. When European settlers began to arrive in Indigenous homelands at the turn of the eighteenth century, these small nations, or petites nations as the French called them, pulled colonists into their political and social systems, thereby steering the development of early Louisiana. In some cases, the same practices that helped Native peoples withstand colonization in the eighteenth century, including frequent migration, living alongside foreign nations, and welcoming outsiders into their lands, have made it difficult for their contemporary descendants to achieve federal acknowledgment and full rights as Native American peoples. The Great Power of Small Nations tackles questions of Native power past and present and provides a fresh examination of the formidable and resilient Native nations who helped shape the modern Gulf South.Trade Review"With remarkable alacrity, Ellis extends the transformation of early American history currently underway and examines the adaptations, incorporations, and skillful diplomatic efforts of Louisiana’s petites nations, or small nations, who comprised the majority of French Louisiana. Painstaking in its reconstruction of 18th-century village life, The Great Power of Small Nations identifies how numerous migratory and refugee communities from eastern North America sought refuge within Mississippi Valley societies, thereby redefining the nature of Indigenous affairs across the sprawling French empire—North America’s largest colony until 1763." * Publishers Weekly *"[A] vivid new account of the strengths and capacities that enabled small Native nations to survive the many cataclysms carried to their shores by European empires. The book is an intricate study of more than a dozen Petites Nations (so called by French colonists) with territories spread through the Lower Mississippi Valley...In The Great Power of Small Nations, Ellis gives us a new theory of Native power inspired by current Petites Nations’ struggles, not only for recognition but also for survival within the most recent cataclysm to arrive on their shores: a human-made climate catastrophe poised to consume the wetlands that they call home." * William and Mary Quarterly *"The Great Power of Small Nations is an exemplary work of ethnohistory. It features meticulous multilingual documentary research, informed by anthropology and archaeology. By balancing summaries of broader historical trends with more narrowly focused case studies and vignettes, Ellis writes in a way that, despite the book’s multitude of Native subjects and temporal and geographical breadth, enables the reader never to lose sight of its major themes...[Ellis] has demonstrated that writing about the Petites Nations is possible and that their stories are worth telling." * H-Early America *"The Great Power of Small Nations is an exhaustively researched, carefully analyzed, and compelling narrative about the petites nations of the Lower Mississippi River Valley that makes sense of an infinitely complex geopolitical landscape over the long sweep of history and, importantly, into the contemporary moment. Elizabeth N. Ellis grounds her book in the very best methodologies of social history and Indigenous studies in centering Indigenous lives to understand not just the intricacies of the seventeenth century but also how Indigenous strategies translated into their survival as nations into the present." * Jean M. O’Brien, University of Minnesota *"With ambitious research and vigorous argument, The Great Power of Small Nations brings fresh and innovative examination to the Indigenous peoples of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Elizabeth N. Ellis shows how these communities applied their traditional pattern of forming multinational settlements and maintaining local autonomy to their diplomacy and commerce with European empires. Equally significant is Ellis’s attentiveness to why such knowledge of early political formations and networks matters to descendant communities in North America to the present day." * Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Vanderbilt University *"Path-breaking. The Great Power of Small Nations offers new perspectives on war, colonialism, and Indigenous nation-building. To understand the Gulf South and the empires that sought to claim it, Ellis demonstrates, we must understand America’s deep and ongoing Native history." * Christina Snyder, Pennsylvania State University *

Read more less

Book SynopsisCultivating Empire charts the connections between missionary work, capitalism, and Native politics to understand the making of the American empire in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. It presents American empire-building as a negotiated phenomenon that was built upon the foundations of earlier Atlantic empires, and it shows how U.S. territorial and economic development went hand-in-hand. Lori. J. Daggar explores how Native authority and diplomatic protocols encouraged the fledgling U.S. federal government to partner with missionaries in the realm of Indian affairs, and she charts how that partnership borrowed and deviated from earlier imperial-missionary partnerships. Employing the terminology of speculative philanthropy to underscore the ways in which a desire to do good often coexisted with a desire to make profit, Cultivating Empire links eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century U.S. Indian policy—often framed as benevolent by its crafters—with the emergence of racial capitalism in the United States. In the process, Daggar argues that Native peoples wielded ideas of philanthropy and civilization for their own purposes and that Indian Country played a critical role in the construction of the U.S. imperial state and its economy. Rather than understand civilizing missions simply as tools for assimilation, then, Cultivating Empire reveals that missions were hinges for U.S. economic and political development that could both devastate Indigenous communities and offer Native peoples additional means to negotiate for power and endure.Trade Review"[A]n ambitious book...Cultivating Empire connects the United States’ civilizing mission among Shawnees and Miamis to the development of capitalism in those nations’ homelands in what is now western Ohio and Indiana...[This volume] is not the last word on the subjects it tackles, nor should it be. Daggar’s work opens doors, and historians of the early republic, of Indian policy, and of capitalism should read it." * H-Early America *"In Cultivating Empire, Lori Daggar illuminates the intertwined histories of missions, settler colonialism, and Indigenous survivance in the Northwest Territory. It is a deeply researched and carefully argued book that provides new insights into the early United States’ careful attempts to position itself as a ‘benevolent empire.’ Sure to become the standard text on the ‘civilization plan,’ Cultivating Empire is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of American imperialism." * Emily Conroy-Krutz, Michigan State University *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I. Foundations Chapter 1. Missionaries and the Making of a New Empire in North America Chapter 2. Resurrecting the “Chain of Friendship”: The International Politics of Intercultural Diplomacy Part II. Routes Chapter 3. Becoming Useful: Speculative Philanthropy, Civilization, and Educational Reform Chapter 4. The Mission Complex: The Material Consequences of Civilizing Work Part III. Negotiations Chapter 5. “A Damnd Rebelious Race”: Native Authority in the Aftermath of War Chapter 6. “The Best and Cheapest Way to Get Rid of Them”: Speculative Philanthropy and Indigenous Dispossession Chapter 7. “Of Mercy and of Sound Policy Too”: Cultivating American Empire on the Continent and Overseas Epilogue Notes Index Acknowledgments

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn popular mythology, the Overland Trail is typically a triumphant tale, with plucky easterners crossing the Plains in caravans of covered wagons. But not everyone reached Oregon and California. Some 6,600 migrants perished along the way and were buried where they fell, often on Indigenous land. As historian Sarah Keyes illuminates, their graves ultimately became the seeds of U.S. expansion. By the 1850s, cholera epidemics, ordinary diseases, and violence had remade the Trail into an American burial ground that imbued migrant deaths with symbolic power. In subsequent decades, U.S. officials and citizens leveraged Trail graves to claim Native ground. Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples pointed to their own sacred burial grounds to dispute these same claims and maintain their land. These efforts built on anti-removal campaigns of the 1820s and 30s, which had established the link between death and territorial claims on which the significance of the Overland Trail came to rest. In placing death at the center of the history of the Overland Trail, American Burial Ground offers a sweeping and long overdue reinterpretation of this historic touchstone. In this telling, westward migration was a harrowing journey weighed down by the demands of caring for the sick and dying. From a tale of triumph comes one of struggle, defined as much by Indigenous peoples’ actions as it was by white expansion. And, finally, from a migration to the Pacific emerges instead a trail of graves. Graves that ultimately undergirded Native dispossession.Trade Review"The great overland migration was one of the true epics of American history. In American Burial Ground, Sarah Keyes gives us a fresh and decidedly darker view of life and death on the trails to California and Oregon—what one traveler called this ‘boundless city of the dead.’ The story was as well a struggle between newcomers and Natives for the possession of sacred lands in the West." * Elliott West, author of The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado *"Anyone who thought there was nothing left to say about the Overland Trail is wrong. By focusing on death, Sarah Keyes brilliantly shows how the Overland Trail became a national cemetery that allowed white Americans to claim Indigenous territory for themselves. Against this erasure, Keyes also provides a deep engagement with Indigenous history, giving voice to Indigenous counternarratives opposing separation from their ancestors’ bones, revealing how their removals were marked by graves as well as tears, and registering how Indigenous people engaged with white nationalist politics in an effort to retain and regain their homelands. A sobering look at western history and a profound meditation on how deaths are remembered and forgotten." * Jeffrey Ostler, author of Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas *"American Burial Ground reminds us how much we can learn when a wise-eyed historian takes a new approach to the classic story of westward migration. Sarah Keyes deftly shifts the focus from the heroic pioneers who crossed the continent on the Overland Trail to the bodies of those they buried along the way. The dead, she tells us, bolstered white claims to the West, helping to turn Native places into an American place. But the Native dead have served their communities too, registering the costs of conquest and helping to fuel resistance to white settlement." * Ann Fabian, author of The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead *

Read more less

Book Synopsis“The age of transnational humanities has arrived.” According to Steven Salaita, the seemingly disparate fields of Palestinian Studses and American Indian studies have more in common than one may think. In Inter/Nationalism, Salaita argues that American Indian and Indigenous studies must be more central to the scholarship and activism focusing on Palestine. Salaita offers a fascinating inside account of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement—which, among other things, aims to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. In doing so, he emphasizes BDS’s significant potential as an organizing entity as well as its importance in the creation of intellectual and political communities that put Natives and other colonized peoples such as Palestinians into conversation. His discussion includes readings of a wide range of Native poetry that invokes Palestine as a theme or symbol; the speeches of U.S. President Andrew Jackson and early Zionist thinker Ze’ev Jabotinsky; and the discourses of “shared values” between the United States and Israel. Inter/Nationalism seeks to lay conceptual ground between American Indian and Indigenous studies and Palestinian studies through concepts of settler colonialism, indigeneity, and state violence. By establishing Palestine as an indigenous nation under colonial occupation, this book draws crucial connections between the scholarship and activism of Indigenous America and Palestine.Trade Review"This is a powerful and moving analysis of what it means to decolonize settler societies through an unflinchingly ethical and incisively original notion of inter/nationalism. Steven Salaita is, as always, bold, brilliant, and visionary. Inter/Nationalism offers a searing, comparative analysis of what liberation means in North America and Palestine-Israel. It is a must read for academics, activists, and anyone interested in challenging the logics of ethnic cleansing and settler civility."—Sunaina Maira, University of California, Davis"Steven Salaita grounds his analysis within various literatures, histories, and political movements in order to consider the ongoing, transnational circuits of liberalism and empire in the politics of critique, aspiration, and solidarity. Much to Salaita’s credit, his cases do not lose their specificity and their nuance as he considers specific efforts for land, global justice, and dignity. This is a welcome work of criticism and analysis from a truly transnational scholar of Indigenous politics and literature."—Audra Simpson, Columbia University"Although often specific in its geographical articulation, settler-colonialism is a global phenomena that requires a truly global response. This is the message powerfully hammered home in Steve Salaita's crucially important Inter/Nationalism. Building on years of research and activism in support of Native American and Palestinian self-determination, Salaita advances a radically transnational view of decolonization grounded in a richly comparative account of Native American/Indigenous solidarity and our mutual struggles for land, freedom, and dignity."—Glen Coulthard, author of Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition"Steven Salaita engages multiple layers of history, theory, and politics."—Indian Country Media Network"Simultaneously a worthwhile contribution to academic theory and a powerful articulation of the potentialities of inter/national solidarity. This is a notable feat at a moment where anti-intellectualism and progressive despair threaten to overwhelm, but Salaita’s work here ought serve as a hopeful reminder of the ongoing and truly global resistance."—Hong Kong Review of Books"The book is not only a brilliant study, it is also a needed incitement."—Journal of Palestine Studies"This is a thought-provoking book on comparative settler-colonial ideology and a persuasive plea for greater cooperation between American Indian and Palestine Studies."—Ethnic and Racial StudiesTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction1. How Palestine Became Important to American Indian Studies2. Boycotting Israel as Native Nationalism3. Ethnic Cleansing as National Uplift4. Inter/National Aesthetics: Palestinians in Native Poetry5. Why American Indian Studies Should Be Important to Palestine SolidarityConclusion: The Game of Our TimeAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Read more less

Book Synopsis“The age of transnational humanities has arrived.” According to Steven Salaita, the seemingly disparate fields of Palestinian Studses and American Indian studies have more in common than one may think. In Inter/Nationalism, Salaita argues that American Indian and Indigenous studies must be more central to the scholarship and activism focusing on Palestine. Salaita offers a fascinating inside account of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement—which, among other things, aims to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. In doing so, he emphasizes BDS’s significant potential as an organizing entity as well as its importance in the creation of intellectual and political communities that put Natives and other colonized peoples such as Palestinians into conversation. His discussion includes readings of a wide range of Native poetry that invokes Palestine as a theme or symbol; the speeches of U.S. President Andrew Jackson and early Zionist thinker Ze’ev Jabotinsky; and the discourses of “shared values” between the United States and Israel. Inter/Nationalism seeks to lay conceptual ground between American Indian and Indigenous studies and Palestinian studies through concepts of settler colonialism, indigeneity, and state violence. By establishing Palestine as an indigenous nation under colonial occupation, this book draws crucial connections between the scholarship and activism of Indigenous America and Palestine.Trade Review"This is a powerful and moving analysis of what it means to decolonize settler societies through an unflinchingly ethical and incisively original notion of inter/nationalism. Steven Salaita is, as always, bold, brilliant, and visionary. Inter/Nationalism offers a searing, comparative analysis of what liberation means in North America and Palestine-Israel. It is a must read for academics, activists, and anyone interested in challenging the logics of ethnic cleansing and settler civility."—Sunaina Maira, University of California, Davis"Steven Salaita grounds his analysis within various literatures, histories, and political movements in order to consider the ongoing, transnational circuits of liberalism and empire in the politics of critique, aspiration, and solidarity. Much to Salaita’s credit, his cases do not lose their specificity and their nuance as he considers specific efforts for land, global justice, and dignity. This is a welcome work of criticism and analysis from a truly transnational scholar of Indigenous politics and literature."—Audra Simpson, Columbia University"Although often specific in its geographical articulation, settler-colonialism is a global phenomena that requires a truly global response. This is the message powerfully hammered home in Steve Salaita's crucially important Inter/Nationalism. Building on years of research and activism in support of Native American and Palestinian self-determination, Salaita advances a radically transnational view of decolonization grounded in a richly comparative account of Native American/Indigenous solidarity and our mutual struggles for land, freedom, and dignity."—Glen Coulthard, author of Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition"Steven Salaita engages multiple layers of history, theory, and politics."—Indian Country Media Network"Simultaneously a worthwhile contribution to academic theory and a powerful articulation of the potentialities of inter/national solidarity. This is a notable feat at a moment where anti-intellectualism and progressive despair threaten to overwhelm, but Salaita’s work here ought serve as a hopeful reminder of the ongoing and truly global resistance."—Hong Kong Review of Books"The book is not only a brilliant study, it is also a needed incitement."—Journal of Palestine Studies"This is a thought-provoking book on comparative settler-colonial ideology and a persuasive plea for greater cooperation between American Indian and Palestine Studies."—Ethnic and Racial StudiesTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction1. How Palestine Became Important to American Indian Studies2. Boycotting Israel as Native Nationalism3. Ethnic Cleansing as National Uplift4. Inter/National Aesthetics: Palestinians in Native Poetry5. Why American Indian Studies Should Be Important to Palestine SolidarityConclusion: The Game of Our TimeAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisWinner: Native American and Indigenous Studies Association's Best Subsequent Book 2017 Honorable Mention: Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award 2017 Across North America, Indigenous acts of resistance have in recent years opposed the removal of federal protections for forests and waterways in Indigenous lands, halted the expansion of tar sands extraction and the pipeline construction at Standing Rock, and demanded justice for murdered and missing Indigenous women. In As We Have Always Done, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson locates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice rooted in uniquely Indigenous theorizing, writing, organizing, and thinking.Indigenous resistance is a radical rejection of contemporary colonialism focused around the refusal of the dispossession of both Indigenous bodies and land. Simpson makes clear that its goal can no longer be cultural resurgence as a mechanism for inclusion in a multicultural mosaic. Instead, she calls for unapologetic, place-based Indigenous alternatives to the destructive logics of the settler colonial state, including heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation.Trade Review"This is an astonishing work of Indigenous intellectualism and activism—by far the most provocative, defiant, visionary, and generous of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's impressive corpus to date."—Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee Nation), University of British Columbia"I have learned more about this battered world from reading Leanne Betasamosake Simpson than from almost any writer alive today. A dazzlingly original thinker and an irresistible stylist, Simpson has gifted us with a field guide not to mere political resistance but to deep and holistic transformation. It arrives at the perfect time."—Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything"A remarkable achievement that illuminates what is possible when we engage in the revolutionary act of indigenous self-love, As We Have Always Done asks the simple question, ‘What if no one sided with colonialism?’ The many possible answers to that question are reflected in Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s beautifully written book in which she kindly challenges indigenous people to reclaim their lives and bodies from the settler colonial state."—Sarah Deer (Muscogee [Creek] Nation), author of The Beginning and End of Rape"Incisive. Unmitigated. Inspiring. Simpson gives no quarter to colonialism. No quarter to a nasty Western narrative. She provides a pure, Indigenous lens—a lens that the white man tried to kill and bury. This book is a reminder that they failed in that rotten endeavor. It belongs on every Canadian bookshelf. On every American coffee table. Simpson's words are an affirmation of Indigenous resilience and resolve."—Simon Moya-Smith (Lakota and Chicano), culture editor at Indian Country Media Network "Leanne Betasamosake Simpson confronts colonialism from the perspective of Indigenous nationhood, but goes beyond arguing for changes in politics, writing in a way that enacts changes in our thinking about politics."—Indian Country Today "While her intended audience is other Indigenous peoples, I think non-Indigenous Canadians will find it inspiring as they take up her challenge of decolonization."—Watershed Sentinel "As We Have Always Done is an in-depth look into Indigenous resistance and what is possible when that resistance embraces Indigenous culture. It gives us a glimmer of hope. Hope that there is another way to live. That we can forge relationships, be with each other, and live for much more than what neo-liberal capitalism tells us life is about."—The Collective "This book will not only offer the Indigenous community much courage, but it will also open the eyes of many non-Indigenous people. We have here not just a description of a state of affairs, but also a practical guide. A very important, successful publication."—Amerindian Research "The book is essential for anyone studying any aspect of Indigenous decolonization, politics, law, and settler colonialism, and signals a vital shift away from current neoliberal discussions and policies of indigenization and reconciliation in order to rebuild and recover indigenous nationhoods."—Transmotion "Simpson reminds us to be present, accept our battle scars and confusion, and move forward to our most beautiful. Love is present throughout her work. Her words convey compassion for our grief, our mistakes, our self-hatred, and our misdeeds, as well as an understanding of what it is to be Indigenous, to be Anishinaabeg."—Tribal College Journal "Simpson writes about women who are skilled at hunting, fishing and medicine, women who hold political influence and live public lives, women who enjoy body sovereignty and sexual relationships beyond the confines of heterosexual monogamy; about people who do not fit the ‘colonial gender binary’ of male and female (123), who experience and express gender and sexual variance; about children who are separated from their communities and placed in residential schools, where they are prevented from speaking their own languages and learning about their own cultures. "—Wasafiri "As We Have Always Done is a profound intellectual achievement, a roadmap out of colonialism that should be required reading for everyone. Beautifully written and unapologetically Indigenous, the book is a love letter to the joy and resilience of Native people, and their enduring strength in the face of white settler supremacy."—The Mantle "As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance is both an exceptional critical achievement and a joy to read."—Oxford University Press Journals "As We Have Always Done is a stunning accomplishment that will no doubt inform Native political thought for years to come."—American Indian Quarterly "A radical book that takes its Indigenous audience seriously."—Women’s Studies Quarterly "As We Have Always Done is grounded in its own critical embodied research, writing outside of the framework of academics and institutions. Yet still, her words and the indigenous lessons within them are developed in a format that feels familiar, like the empirical scientific system."—Nature Book Guide Table of ContentsIntroduction: My Radical Resurgent Present1. Nishnaabeg Brilliance as Radical Resurgence Theory2. Kwe as Resurgent Method3. The Attempted Dispossession of Kwe4. Nishnaabeg Internationalism5. Nishnaabeg Anticapitalism6. Endlessly Creating Our Indigenous Selves7. The Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples’ Bodies8. Indigenous Queer Normativity9. Land as Pedagogy10. “I See Your Light”: Reciprocal Recognition and Generative Refusal11. Embodied Resurgent Practice and Coded Disruption12. Constellations of CoresistanceConclusion: Toward Radical Resurgent Struggle AcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Read more less

Book Synopsis“A lesson in how to practice recognizing the fundamental truth that every inch of the Americas is Indigenous territory” —Robert Warrior, from the Foreword Many people learn about Indigenous politics only through the most controversial and confrontational news: the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s efforts to block the Dakota Access Pipeline, for instance, or the battle to protect Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, a site sacred to Native peoples. But most Indigenous activism remains unseen in the mainstream—and so, of course, does its significance. J. Kēhaulani Kauanui set out to change that with her radio program Indigenous Politics. Issue by issue, she interviewed people who talked candidly and in an engaging way about how settler colonialism depends on erasing Native peoples and about how Native peoples can and do resist. Collected here, these conversations speak with clear and compelling voices about a range of Indigenous politics that shape everyday life.Land desecration, treaty rights, political status, cultural revitalization: these are among the themes taken up by a broad cross-section of interviewees from across the United States and from Canada, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Australia, and New Zealand. Some speak from the thick of political action, some from a historical perspective, others from the reaches of Indigenous culture near and far. Writers, like Comanche Paul Chaat Smith, author of Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong, expand on their work—about gaming and sovereignty, for example, or protecting Native graves, the reclamation of land, or the erasure of Indian identity. These conversations both inform and engage at a moment when their messages could not be more urgent.Contributors: Jessie Little Doe Baird (Mashpee Wampanoag), Omar Barghouti, Lisa Brooks (Abenaki), Kathleen A. Brown-Pérez (Brothertown Indian Nation), Margaret “Marge” Bruchac (Abenaki), Jessica Cattelino, David Cornsilk (Cherokee Nation), Sarah Deer (Muskogee Creek Nation), Philip J. Deloria (Dakota), Tonya Gonnella Frichner (Onondaga Nation), Hone Harawira (Ngapuhi Nui Tonu), Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee), Rashid Khalidi, Winona LaDuke (White Earth Ojibwe), Maria LaHood, James Luna (Luiseño), Aileen Moreton-Robinson (Quandamooka), Chief Mutáwi Mutáhash (Many Hearts) Marilynn “Lynn” Malerba (Mohegan), Steven Newcomb (Shawnee/Lenape), Jean M. O’Brien (White Earth Ojibwe), Jonathan Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio (Kanaka Maoli), Steven Salaita, Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche), Circe Sturm (Mississippi Choctaw descendant), Margo Taméz (Lipan Apache), Chief Richard Velky (Schaghticoke), Patrick Wolfe. Trade Review "A highly recommended work offering diverse perspectives on issues of great import to peoples around the world. Regardless of political perspective, readers will find much to mull over here."—Library Journal "As a polyvocal chronicle, critique, and catalyst at the intersections between global and local Indigenous politics, Kanaka Maoli scholar J. Kēhaulani Kauanui’s collection is a reinvigorating contribution that limns the ongoing importance of the topics discussed within. As such I want to make clear that Speaking of Indigenous Politics is vital."—Transmotion "This is an excellent book for readers sick of the same old narratives of old white historians telling the story of Indigenous people. These are the voices of those fighting."—International Viewpoint "This is an excellent book for readers sick of the same old narratives of old white historians telling the story of Indigenous people."—Against the Current Table of ContentsContentsForewordIntroduction: Indigenous Politics from Native New England and BeyondChief Richard Velky—Part IChief Richard Velky—Part IIDavid CornsilkSarah Deer—Part ISarah Deer—Part IITonya Gonnella FrichnerMargaret (Marge) BruchacJames LunaSteven NewcombAileen Moreton RobinsonWinona LaDukeMargo Taméz—Part IMargo Taméz—Part IIJonathan Kay Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio Philip J. DeloriaJessie Little Doe BairdOmar Barghouti Steven SalaitaPaul Chaat SmithLisa BrooksJessica CattelinoKathleen Brown-PerezRobert Warrior Patrick WolfeHone HarawiraJean M. O’BrienSuzan Shown HarjoChief Many Hearts, Lynn Malerba Maria Lahood and Rashid KhalidiCirce SturmAcknowledgments

Read more less

Book Synopsis“A lesson in how to practice recognizing the fundamental truth that every inch of the Americas is Indigenous territory” —Robert Warrior, from the Foreword Many people learn about Indigenous politics only through the most controversial and confrontational news: the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s efforts to block the Dakota Access Pipeline, for instance, or the battle to protect Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, a site sacred to Native peoples. But most Indigenous activism remains unseen in the mainstream—and so, of course, does its significance. J. Kēhaulani Kauanui set out to change that with her radio program Indigenous Politics. Issue by issue, she interviewed people who talked candidly and in an engaging way about how settler colonialism depends on erasing Native peoples and about how Native peoples can and do resist. Collected here, these conversations speak with clear and compelling voices about a range of Indigenous politics that shape everyday life.Land desecration, treaty rights, political status, cultural revitalization: these are among the themes taken up by a broad cross-section of interviewees from across the United States and from Canada, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Australia, and New Zealand. Some speak from the thick of political action, some from a historical perspective, others from the reaches of Indigenous culture near and far. Writers, like Comanche Paul Chaat Smith, author of Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong, expand on their work—about gaming and sovereignty, for example, or protecting Native graves, the reclamation of land, or the erasure of Indian identity. These conversations both inform and engage at a moment when their messages could not be more urgent.Contributors: Jessie Little Doe Baird (Mashpee Wampanoag), Omar Barghouti, Lisa Brooks (Abenaki), Kathleen A. Brown-Pérez (Brothertown Indian Nation), Margaret “Marge” Bruchac (Abenaki), Jessica Cattelino, David Cornsilk (Cherokee Nation), Sarah Deer (Muskogee Creek Nation), Philip J. Deloria (Dakota), Tonya Gonnella Frichner (Onondaga Nation), Hone Harawira (Ngapuhi Nui Tonu), Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee), Rashid Khalidi, Winona LaDuke (White Earth Ojibwe), Maria LaHood, James Luna (Luiseño), Aileen Moreton-Robinson (Quandamooka), Chief Mutáwi Mutáhash (Many Hearts) Marilynn “Lynn” Malerba (Mohegan), Steven Newcomb (Shawnee/Lenape), Jean M. O’Brien (White Earth Ojibwe), Jonathan Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio (Kanaka Maoli), Steven Salaita, Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche), Circe Sturm (Mississippi Choctaw descendant), Margo Taméz (Lipan Apache), Chief Richard Velky (Schaghticoke), Patrick Wolfe. Trade Review "A highly recommended work offering diverse perspectives on issues of great import to peoples around the world. Regardless of political perspective, readers will find much to mull over here."—Library Journal "As a polyvocal chronicle, critique, and catalyst at the intersections between global and local Indigenous politics, Kanaka Maoli scholar J. Kēhaulani Kauanui’s collection is a reinvigorating contribution that limns the ongoing importance of the topics discussed within. As such I want to make clear that Speaking of Indigenous Politics is vital."—Transmotion "This is an excellent book for readers sick of the same old narratives of old white historians telling the story of Indigenous people. These are the voices of those fighting."—International Viewpoint "This is an excellent book for readers sick of the same old narratives of old white historians telling the story of Indigenous people."—Against the Current Table of ContentsContentsForewordIntroduction: Indigenous Politics from Native New England and BeyondChief Richard Velky—Part IChief Richard Velky—Part IIDavid CornsilkSarah Deer—Part ISarah Deer—Part IITonya Gonnella FrichnerMargaret (Marge) BruchacJames LunaSteven NewcombAileen Moreton RobinsonWinona LaDukeMargo Taméz—Part IMargo Taméz—Part IIJonathan Kay Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio Philip J. DeloriaJessie Little Doe BairdOmar Barghouti Steven SalaitaPaul Chaat SmithLisa BrooksJessica CattelinoKathleen Brown-PerezRobert Warrior Patrick WolfeHone HarawiraJean M. O’BrienSuzan Shown HarjoChief Many Hearts, Lynn Malerba Maria Lahood and Rashid KhalidiCirce SturmAcknowledgments

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow were indigenous social practices deemed queer and aberrant by colonial forces? In Queering Colonial Natal, T.J. Tallie travels to colonial Natalestablished by the British in 1843, today South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal provinceto show how settler regimes “queered” indigenous practices. Defining them as threats to the normative order they sought to impose, they did so by delimiting Zulu polygamy; restricting alcohol access, clothing, and even friendship; and assigning only Europeans to government schools. Using queer and critical indigenous theory, this book critically assesses Natal (where settlers were to remain a minority) in the context of the global settler colonial project in the nineteenth century to yield a new and engaging synthesis. Tallie explores the settler colonial history of Natal’s white settlers and how they sought to establish laws and rules for both whites and Africans based on European mores of sexuality and gender. At the same time, colonial archives reveal that many African and Indian people challenged such civilizational claims. Ultimately Tallie argues that the violent collisions between Africans, Indians, and Europeans in Natal shaped the conceptions of race and gender that bolstered each group’s claim to authority. Trade Review"Brilliant, generous, and generative, Queering Colonial Natal seamlessly demonstrates why scholars of nineteenth-century South African history should read contemporary North American queer and indigenous history and vice versa. T.J. Tallie shows how and why South Africa should be in discussions of settler colonialism as well as how and why a global queer studies needs to pay attention to the history of a place like Natal."—Neville Hoad, author of African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization"Sophisticated and brilliant. Queering Colonial Natal offers much needed interventions to ongoing conversations in settler colonial studies, queer studies, and Indigenous studies by expanding the geographies, political contexts, and theoretical stakes for historical analyses of white settlement and Indigenous resistances. In foregrounding case studies that expose the normative constraints white settlers imposed on Zulu as the exclusionary standards for civilized belonging, T.J. Tallie advances how critical Indigenous theory understands the colonial cacophonies of race, gender, and sexuality."—Jodi A. Byrd, author of The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism "All in all, this is a wonderful and important book. It helps the audience understand and redefine contemporary heterosexual normativity beyond colonial Africa and links settler queering of indigenous Africans in Natal with Africa’s anti-gay rhetoric today (Tallie 2019, 188-189). Tallie’s depiction of the heteronormativity and global nature of settler colonization is truly valuable to anthropology, European Studies, and many other humanities and social science disciplines. Anyone who is interested in race in post-colonial societies or want to better understand today’s issue with race should read this book."—EuropeNow "Queering Colonial Natal masterfully details the kinds of perpetual settler labor and vigilance required to respond to the indigenous African majority and the Indian migrant populations who were continually manipulating and shaping the settler order from the margins."—GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies "Tallie’s book contributes to an in-depth understanding of the machinations of settler control as well as the deep fears and desires of the settler state."—Gender & History "Throughout the book, Tallie’s style is clear and elegant. When each chapter ended, I found myself wanting more of his commentary and analysis of the intricate race and gender dynamics that permeated nearly every part of life in Natal."—Ethnic Studies Review "This book is genuinely invaluable to diverse fields such as history, African queer studies, anthropology, and many other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences."—Journal of African History

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow were indigenous social practices deemed queer and aberrant by colonial forces? In Queering Colonial Natal, T.J. Tallie travels to colonial Natalestablished by the British in 1843, today South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal provinceto show how settler regimes “queered” indigenous practices. Defining them as threats to the normative order they sought to impose, they did so by delimiting Zulu polygamy; restricting alcohol access, clothing, and even friendship; and assigning only Europeans to government schools. Using queer and critical indigenous theory, this book critically assesses Natal (where settlers were to remain a minority) in the context of the global settler colonial project in the nineteenth century to yield a new and engaging synthesis. Tallie explores the settler colonial history of Natal’s white settlers and how they sought to establish laws and rules for both whites and Africans based on European mores of sexuality and gender. At the same time, colonial archives reveal that many African and Indian people challenged such civilizational claims. Ultimately Tallie argues that the violent collisions between Africans, Indians, and Europeans in Natal shaped the conceptions of race and gender that bolstered each group’s claim to authority. Trade Review"Brilliant, generous, and generative, Queering Colonial Natal seamlessly demonstrates why scholars of nineteenth-century South African history should read contemporary North American queer and indigenous history and vice versa. T.J. Tallie shows how and why South Africa should be in discussions of settler colonialism as well as how and why a global queer studies needs to pay attention to the history of a place like Natal."—Neville Hoad, author of African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization"Sophisticated and brilliant. Queering Colonial Natal offers much needed interventions to ongoing conversations in settler colonial studies, queer studies, and Indigenous studies by expanding the geographies, political contexts, and theoretical stakes for historical analyses of white settlement and Indigenous resistances. In foregrounding case studies that expose the normative constraints white settlers imposed on Zulu as the exclusionary standards for civilized belonging, T.J. Tallie advances how critical Indigenous theory understands the colonial cacophonies of race, gender, and sexuality."—Jodi A. Byrd, author of The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism "All in all, this is a wonderful and important book. It helps the audience understand and redefine contemporary heterosexual normativity beyond colonial Africa and links settler queering of indigenous Africans in Natal with Africa’s anti-gay rhetoric today (Tallie 2019, 188-189). Tallie’s depiction of the heteronormativity and global nature of settler colonization is truly valuable to anthropology, European Studies, and many other humanities and social science disciplines. Anyone who is interested in race in post-colonial societies or want to better understand today’s issue with race should read this book."—EuropeNow "Queering Colonial Natal masterfully details the kinds of perpetual settler labor and vigilance required to respond to the indigenous African majority and the Indian migrant populations who were continually manipulating and shaping the settler order from the margins."—GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies "Tallie’s book contributes to an in-depth understanding of the machinations of settler control as well as the deep fears and desires of the settler state."—Gender & History "Throughout the book, Tallie’s style is clear and elegant. When each chapter ended, I found myself wanting more of his commentary and analysis of the intricate race and gender dynamics that permeated nearly every part of life in Natal."—Ethnic Studies Review "This book is genuinely invaluable to diverse fields such as history, African queer studies, anthropology, and many other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences."—Journal of African History

Read more less