Description
Book SynopsisIncludes twenty-five original essays that bring a modern perspective to Native American histories that were at one time related exclusively by Euro-American settlers. This title covers the breadth of American Indian history, including contacts with settlers, religion, family, economy, law, education, gender issues, and culture.
Trade Review"Philip Deloria and Neal Salisbury have brought together some of the best scholars writing about American Indian peoples and given them topics that both reflect and expand the new scholarship on Indian history and culture. The volume is a virtual compass for readers and scholars interested in American Indians."
Richard White, Stanford University "If you need to know where the practice of American Indian history has been; better yet, if you need and want to catch up with where it's going, you will need A Companion to American Indian History. Each essay, in its own right, gives an important stylistic and substantive shove to the new writing of American Indian history while it offers the latest, best word in dutiful exegetical historiography. The Companion is the bridge-building, critical, enlightened, reflexive work the editors hoped for, and more, since its bridge-dynamiting challenges to Indian history are graceful and graciously delivered." Rayna Green, National Museum of American History.
"Historians are exceedingly well served by this companion on Native peoples of the USA, north-western Mexico, Canada and Western Greenland." Antiquity
"This volume testifies to the strength and comprehensiveness of the "Blackwell Companions to American History" series... The selection of writers and topics is excellent, and the quality of the historiographical essays matches or supersedes the spate of recently published books that have attempted similar tasks... The essays go beyond a mere listing of sources to intelligently integrate shifts in interpretation over time and to indicate weaknesses in the existing canon of knowledge. Academic researchers, general readers, and members of Native American communities can all profit from these sophisticated essays... this reference work deserves a place in all libraries, and it should be widely used to spaark further debate." Choice
"I heartily endorse this anthology as a textbook for graduate and undergraduate classes, and as a refresher for anyone seriously interested in Native American studies." John H. Moore, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Table of ContentsList of Contributors vii
Introduction 1
1 Historiography 6
Philip J. Deloria
Part One: Contacts 25
2 First Contacts 27
John E. Kicza
3 Wag the Imperial Dog: Indians and Overseas Empires in North America, 1650–1776 46
Gregory Evans Dowd
4 Health, Disease, and Demography 68
Russell Thornton
Part Two: Native Practice and Belief 85
5 Native American Systems of Knowledge 87
Clara Sue Kidwell
6 Native American Spirituality: History, Theory, and Reformulation 103
Lee Irwin
7 Indians and Christianity 121
Willard Hughes Rollings
8 Kinship, Family Kindreds, and Community 139
Jay Miller
9 American Indian Warfare: The Cycles of Conflict and the Militarization of Native North America 154
Tom Holm
Part Three: Language, Identity, and Expression 173
10 Languages: Linguistic Change and the Study of Indian Languages from Colonial Times to the Present 175
Regna Darnell
11 Performative Traditions in American Indian History 193
L. G. Moses
12 Indigenous Art: Creating Value and Sharing Beauty 209
Nancy Parezo
13 Native American Literatures 234
P. Jane Hafen
14 Wanted: More Histories of Indian Identity 248
Alexandra Harmon
Part Four: Exchange and Social Relations 267
15 Labor and Exchange in American Indian History 269
Patricia Albers
16 The Nature of Conquest: Indians, Americans, and Environmental History 287
Louis S. Warren
17 Gender in Native America 307
Betty Bell
18 Métis, Mestizo, and Mixed-Blood 321
Jennifer Brown and Theresa Schenck
19 Transforming Outsiders: Captivity, Adoption, and Slavery Reconsidered 339
Pauline Turner Strong
20 Translation and Cultural Brokerage 357
Eric Hinderaker
Part Five: Governmental Relations 377
21 Federal and State Policies and American Indians 379
Donald Fixico
22 Native Americans and the United States, Canada, and Mexico 397
R. David Edmunds
23 American Indian Education: by Indians versus for Indians 422
K. Tsianina Lomawaima
24 Indian Law, Sovereignty, and State Law: Native People and the Law 441
Sidney L. Harring
25 Sovereignty 460
Taiaiake Alfred
Bibliography 475
Index 495
