New Books In Native American Studies

The Lakȟóta are among the best-known Native American peoples. In popular culture and even many scholarly works, they were once lumped together with others and called the Sioux. This book tells the full story of Lakȟóta culture and society, from their origins to the twenty-first century, drawing on Lakȟóta voices and perspectives. In Lakȟóta culture, "listening" is a cardinal virtue, connoting respect, and here authors Rani-Henrik Andersson and David C. Posthumus listen to the Lakȟóta, both past and present. The history of Lakȟóta culture unfolds in this narrative as the people lived it.  The book opens with an origin story, that of White Buffalo Calf Woman (Ptesanwin) and her gift of the sacred pipe to the Lakȟóta people. Drawing on winter counts, oral traditions and histories, and Lakȟóta letters and speeches, the narrative proceeds through such periods and events as early Lakȟóta-European trading, the creation of the Great Sioux Reservation, Christian missionization, the Plains Indian Wars, the Ghost Dan

A “deeply researched and bracing retelling” (Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian) of the American Revolution, showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters. Using more than a thousand eyewitness records, Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 2021) is a “spirited account” (Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution) that explores countless connections between the Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlo

Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O'Brien's book Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations Under Settler Siege (U Minnesota Press, 2021) collects more than two dozen chronicles of white imperialism and Indigenous resistance. Ranging from the historical to the contemporary and grappling with Indigenous land struggles around the globe, these narratives showcase both scholarly and creative forms of expression, constructing a multifaceted book of diverse perspectives that will inform readers while provoking them toward further research into Indigenous resilience. John Cable is assistant professor of history at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Georgia. He earned the Ph.D. in history at Florida State University in 2020. His forthcoming book, Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi (University Press of Kansas), will be out in December 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https

Bill Fowler, Chair of The New England Quarterly Board of Directors, and author David Naumec discuss his article "From Mashantucket to Appomattox: The Native American Veterans of Connecticut's Volunteer Regiments and the Union Army". The article appears in the December 2008 issue of The New England Quarterly. The conversation was recorded at the MIT Press on December 12, 2008. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

What does “development” mean for Indigenous peoples? Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands (U Arizona Press, 2022) lays out an alternative path showing that conscious attention to relationships among humans and the natural world creates flourishing social-ecological economies.  Economist Ronald L. Trosper draws on examples from North and South America, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Australia to argue that Indigenous worldviews centering care and good relationships provide critical and sustainable economic models in a world under increasing pressure from biodiversity loss and climate change. He explains the structure of relational Indigenous economic theory, providing principles based on his own and others’ work with tribal nations and Indigenous communities. Trosper explains how sustainability is created at every level when relational Indigenous economic theory is applied—micro, meso, and macro. Good relationships support personal and community autonomy, replacing the individualism/collectivism

On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe (Knopf, 2023) by Dr. Caroline Dodds Pennock presents a landmark work of narrative history that shatters our Eurocentric understanding of the Age of Discovery. We have long been taught to presume that modern global history began when the “Old World” encountered the “New”, when Christopher Columbus “discovered” America in 1492. But, as Dr. Pennock conclusively shows in this groundbreaking book, for tens of thousands of Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others—enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants, traders—the reverse was true: they discovered Europe. For them, Europe comprised savage shores, a land of riches and marvels, yet perplexing for its brutal disparities of wealth and quality of life, and its baffling beliefs. The story of these Indigenous Americans abroad is a story of abduction, loss, cultural appropriation, and, as they saw it, of apocalypse. From the Brazilian king who met Henry VIII to the Aztecs who mocked up human sacrifice at

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Indigenous rights litigator Jean Teillet on her book The Northwest is our Mother: The story of Louis Riel’s People, the Métis Nation published by Harper Collins in 2019. Covering the evolution of the Métis as a people and nation since the 1790s, Teillet presents us with an highly crafted epic narrative. The great-grandniece of Louis Riel, the author is a very well-known Indigenous rights litigator who has appeared in twelve separate cases before the Supreme Court of Canada. She is also  a visual artist who has also worked as a writer, dancer, actor, choreographer, director and producer. Currently, she is Senior Counsel to the law firm Pape Salter Teillet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

Spanning a century of fraught history, Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line (University of Oklahoma Press, 2022) by Dr. Laura J. Feller describes the critical strategic work that tidewater Virginia Indians, descendants of the seventeenth-century Algonquian Powhatan chiefdom, undertook to sustain their Native identity in the face of deep racial hostility from segregationist officials, politicians, and institutions. Like other Southeastern Native groups living under Jim Crow regimes, tidewater Native groups and individuals fortified their communities by founding tribal organizations, churches, and schools; they displayed their Indianness in public performances; and they enlisted whites, including well-known ethnographers, to help them argue for their Native distinctness. Describing an arduous campaign marked by ingenuity, conviction, and perseverance, Dr. Feller shows how these tidewater Native people drew on their shared histories as descendants of Powhatan peoples, and how

At the turn of the twentieth century, the US government viewed education as one sure way of civilizing “others” under its sway—among them American Indians and, after 1898, Filipinos. Teaching Empire: Native Americans, Filipinos, and Us Imperial Education 1879-1918 (UP of Kansas, 2019) considers how teachers took up this task, first at the Carlisle Indian Boarding School in Pennsylvania, opened in 1879, and then in a school system set up amid an ongoing rebellion launched by Filipinos. Drawing upon the records of fifty-five teachers at Carlisle and thirty-three sent to the Philippines—including five who worked in both locations—the book reveals the challenges of translating imperial policy into practice, even for those most dedicated to the imperial mission. These educators, who worked on behalf of the US government, sought to meet the expectations of bureaucrats and supervisors while contending with leadership crises on the ground. In their stories, Elisabeth Eittreim finds the problems common to all classroo

During the Cold War, U.S. intervention in Latin American politics, economics, and society grew in scope and complexity, with diplomatic legacies evident in today's hemispheric policies. Development became a key form of intervention as government officials and experts from the United States and Latin America believed that development could foster hemispheric solidarity and security. In parts of Latin America, its implementation was especially intricate because recipients of these programs were diverse Indigenous peoples with their own politics, economics, and cultures. Contrary to project planners' expectations, Indigenous beneficiaries were not passive recipients but actively engaged with development interventions and, in the process, redefined racialized ideas about Indigeneity.  In On Our Own Terms: Development and Indigeneity in Cold War Guatemala (UNC Press, 2022), Sarah Foss illustrates how this process transpired in Cold War Guatemala, spanning democratic revolution, military coups, and genocidal civil

Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes (Equinox Publishing, 2022) edited by Molly H. Bassett and Natalie Avalos aims to answer many of the questions that come to mind when we think about the religious lives of Native and Indigenous peoples of the world. Scholars from many fields answer dozens of questions about a wide variety of specific Indigenous religious traditions and an array of the ideas, practices, and beliefs many people associate with them. Do Native peoples have “creator Gods?” What is shamanism? Why are there so many spellings of “voodoo?” Is Paganism considered an Indigenous religious tradition? The volume also interrogates the concept of “Indigenous religious traditions,” by asking what the phrase means in relation to the larger fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies and Religious Studies, whether all religions were at some point “indigenous,” and what the value of studying Indigenous religious traditions is today. Specialists respond to questions like these and many others in

A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada–United States Border across Indigenous Lands (Oxford UP, 2021), is the recipient of the AHA’s Albert Corey Prize in the history of Canadian–American relations. In A Line of Blood and Dirt, Benjamin Hoy shows how the US-Canadian border was built across Indigenous lands. He explores the experiences of various indigenous groups, European settlers, African Americans, and Chinese immigrants.  Benjamin Hoy is an assistant professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan, where he directs the Historical GIS Lab. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

Feeling down about museums? We have so many reasons to, but Chris Newell, Tribal Community Member-in-Residence at UConn and Director of Education at the Akomawt Educational Initiative, gives a dose of optimism about the future of museums. Learn more about the Seeing Truth exhibition at our website. Follow us on Twitter @WhyArguePod and on Instagram @WhyWeArguePod Alexis L. Boylan is the director of academic affairs of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) and an associate professor with a joint appointment in the Art and Art History Department and the Africana Studies Institute Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

Today’s book is: The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature, which is the 2022 Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award Winner. The Diné Reader showcases the breadth, depth, and diversity of Diné creative artists and their poetry, fiction, and nonfiction prose, in a wide-ranging anthology. The collected works display a rich variety of and creativity in themes: home and history; contemporary concerns about identity, historical trauma, and loss of language; and economic and environmental inequalities. The Diné Reader developed as a way to demonstrate both the power of Diné literary artistry and the persistence of the Navajo people. The volume opens with a foreword by poet Sherwin Bitsui, who offers insight into the importance of writing to the Navajo people. The editors then introduce the volume by detailing the literary history of the Diné people, establishing the context for the tremendous diversity of the works that follow, which includes free verse, sestinas, limericks, haiku, prose poems, cre

In the early twenty-first century Bolivian social movements made streets, plazas, and highways into the decisively important spaces for acting politically, rivaling and at times exceeding voting booths and halls of government. The Sovereign Street documents this important period, showing how indigenous-led mass movements reconfigured the politics and racial order of Bolivia from 1999 to 2011.  Drawing on interviews with protest participants, on-the-ground observation, and documentary research, activist and scholar Carwil Bjork-James provides an up-close history of the indigenous-led protests that changed Bolivia. At the heart of the study is a new approach to the interaction between protest actions and the parts of the urban landscape they claim. These “space-claiming protests” both communicate a message and exercise practical control over the city. Bjork-James interrogates both protest tactics—as experiences and as tools—and meaning-laden spaces, where meaning is part of the racial and political geography of

The future of Honduras begins and ends on the white sand beaches of Tela Bay on the country's northeastern coast where Garifuna, a Black Indigenous people, have resided for over two hundred years. In The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras (Stanford UP, 2022), Christopher A. Loperena examines the Garifuna struggle for life and collective autonomy, and demonstrates how this struggle challenges concerted efforts by the state and multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank, to render both their lands and their culture into fungible tourism products. Using a combination of participant observation, courtroom ethnography, and archival research, Loperena reveals how purportedly inclusive tourism projects form part of a larger neoliberal, extractivist development regime, which remakes Black and Indigenous territories into frontiers of progress for the mestizo majority. The book offers a trenchant analysis of the ways Black dispossession and displacement are carried fo

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has always been globally situated, argues Montana State history professor Amanda Hendrix-Komoto in Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific (U Nebraska, 2022). Through mission work, polygamous marriage, and extensive kinship networks, LDS members sought to create Zions - holy Mormon spaces - throughout the world through relationships with Indigenous people from the Intermountain West to Tahiti and the Hawai'ian islands. This process found both successful conversions, as well as pain and violence, since despite LDS insistence that they offered an alternative to American settler colonialism, often church members could be just as imperially-minded as their non-Mormon peers. Nonetheless, Hendrix-Komoto argues that the history of Indigenous people and the LDS Church is complex, and cannot be understood without placing a uniquely Mormon idea of the family at the very center. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/ad

In far northeastern Alaska lies one of the most remarkable, and contested, places in North America: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This coastal arctic region is a place of great natural beauty, ecological importance, as well as being home and birthplace of the Gwich'in people. It's also thought to contain massive fossil fuel wealth, making it a site of fifty years and more political contestation.  In the award-winning book, Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, An Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice (UNC Press: 2021), Finis Dunaway explains how Indigenous people teamed up with the activist, photographer, and jazz drummer Lenny Kohm to build a grassroots movement to protect this sacred place from extractive industry. Using a humble photo slide show, Kohm and other activists, both Native people from the region and outsiders, marshaled the power of everyday people to convince critical and powerful actors that this was a place that deserved federal protection. While this fight is

In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner famously argued that the generational process of meeting and conquering the supposedly uncivilized western frontier is what forged American identity. In the late twentieth century, “new western” historians dissected the mythologized western histories that Turner and others had long used to embody American triumph and progress. While Turner’s frontier is no more, the West continues to present America with challenging processes to wrestle, navigate, and overcome. The North American West in the Twenty-First Century (U Nebraska Press, 2022), edited by Brenden W. Rensink, takes stories of the late twentieth-century “modern West” and carefully pulls them toward the present—explicitly tracing continuity with or unexpected divergence from trajectories established in the 1980s and 1990s. Considering a broad range of topics, including environment, Indigenous peoples, geography, migration, and politics, these essays straddle multiple modern frontiers, not least of which is the temporal f

Common understandings drawn from biblical references, literature, and art portray deserts as barren places that are far from God and spiritual sustenance. In our own time, attention focuses on the rigors of climate change in arid lands and the perils of the desert in the northern Mexican borderlands for migrants seeking shelter and a new life. Bountiful Deserts: Sustaining Indigenous Worlds in Northern New Spain (U Arizona Press, 2022) foregrounds the knowledge of Indigenous peoples in the arid lands of northwestern Mexico, for whom the desert was anything but barren or empty. Instead, they nurtured and harvested the desert as a bountiful and sacred space. Drawing together historical texts and oral testimonies, archaeology, and natural history, author Cynthia Radding develops the relationships between people and plants and the ways that Indigenous people sustained their worlds before European contact through the changes set in motion by Spanish encounters, highlighting the long process of colonial conflicts a