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Native American & Indigenous Studies

Finding Books

Indiscipline

In the last few years, there have been myriad media reports regarding Federal Indian boarding schools and their grisly history of violence and cultural erasure against Native people in the United States. The US government recently acknowledged its role for the first time with the Department of the Interior's publication of the "Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report." In this book, Alicia Carroll tells the history of one form of literary Native resistance to this violence, that of the collaboratively written autobiography. Focusing on work by Hopi boarding school residents, Carroll shows readers that collaborative autobiographical authorship is a practice of Indigenous intellectual sovereignty, using a method they dub indiscipline: a strategy of defying, refusing, or purposefully failing to follow mandates to conform to settler colonial sex and gender norms, including heteronormativity, the binary construct of sex and gender, and the idea of personhood itself. Through collaboratively written autobiography, Carroll argues that Native authors not only resisted colonial attempts to use sex and gender to alienate them from their homelands and bodies, they created an important Indigenous literary genre that informs our understanding of Native life and art today.

Never Whistle at Night

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST EDITED ANTHOLOGY * BRAM STOKER AWARD NOMINEE FOR SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN AN ANTHOLOGY * LOCUS AWARD FINALIST A bold, clever, and sublimely sinister collection that dares to ask the question: "Are you ready to be un-settled?" "Never failed to surprise, delight, and shock." --Nick Cutter, author of The Troop and Little Heaven Featuring stories by: Norris Black * Amber Blaeser-Wardzala * Phoenix Boudreau * Cherie Dimaline * Carson Faust * Kelli Jo Ford * Kate Hart * Shane Hawk * Brandon Hobson * Darcie Little Badger * Conley Lyons * Nick Medina * Tiffany Morris * Tommy Orange * Mona Susan Power * Marcie R. Rendon * Waubgeshig Rice * Rebecca Roanhorse * Andrea L. Rogers * Morgan Talty * D.H. Trujillo * Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. * Richard Van Camp * David Heska Wanbli Weiden * Royce K. Young Wolf * Mathilda Zeller Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai'po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear--and even follow you home. These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples' survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

The Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Film

"The Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Film is dedicated to bringing the work of Indigenous filmmakers around the world to a larger audience. By giving voice to transnational and transcultural Indigenous perspectives, this collection makes a significant contribution to the discourse on Indigenous filmmaking and provides an accessible overview of the contemporary state of Indigenous film. Comprising 37 chapters by an international team of contributors, the Handbook is divided into six clear parts: Decolonial Intermedialities and Revisions of Western Media Colonial Histories, Trauma, Resistances Indigenous Lands, Communities, Bodies Queer Cultures and Border Crossings Youth Cultures and Emancipation Art, Comedy, and Music. Within these sections Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts from around the world examine various aspects of Indigenous film cultures, analyze the works of Indigenous directors and producers worldwide, and focus on readings (contextual, historical, political, aesthetic, and activist) of individual Indigenous films. The Handbook specifically explores Indigenous film in Canada, Mexico, the United States, Central and South America, Northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific and the Philippines. This richly interdisciplinary volume is an essential resource for students and scholars of Indigenous Studies, Cultural Studies, Area Studies, Film and Media Studies, Feminist and Queer Studies, History, and anyone interested in Indigenous cultures and cinema"-- Provided by publisher.

Declarations of Independence

How Indigenous Americans and colonial settlers negotiated the meaning of independence in the Revolutionary era On July 4, 1776, two hundred miles northwest of Philadelphia, on Indigenous land along the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, a group of colonial squatters declared their independence. They were not alone in their efforts. This bold symbolic gesture was just a small part of a much broader and longer struggle in the Northern Susquehanna River Valley, where diverse peoples, especially Indigenous nations, fought tenaciously to safeguard their lands, sovereignty, and survival. This book immerses readers in that intense, decades-long struggle. By intertwining the experiences of Indigenous Americans, rebellious colonial squatters, opportunistic land speculators, and imperial government agents, Christopher Pearl reveals how conflicts within and between them all set the terms and ultimately shaped the meaning of the American Revolution. In the crucible of this conflict, memories, histories, and animosities collided and converged with tremendous consequences. Declarations of Independence delves into the racial violence over land and sovereignty that suffused the Revolutionary Age and helps restore Indigenous peoples to their central position at the founding of the United States.

Perennial Ceremony

Travel through a garden's seasons toward healing, reclamation, and wholeness--for us, and for our beloved relative, the Earth   In this rich collection of prose, poetry, and recipes, Teresa Peterson shares how she found refuge from the struggle to reconcile her Christianity and Dakota spirituality, discovering solace and ceremony in communing with the earth. Observing and embracing the cycles of her garden, she awakens to the constant affirmation that healing and wellness can be attained through a deep relationship with land, plants, and waters. Dakota people call this way of seeing and being in the world mitakuye owasin: all my relations. Perennial Ceremony brings us into this relationship, as Peterson guides us through the Dakota seasons to impart lessons from her life as a gardener, gatherer, and lover of the land.   We see the awakening of Wetu (spring), a transitional time when nature comes alive and sweet sap flows from maples, and the imperfect splendor of Bdoketu (summer), when rain becomes a needed and nourishing gift. We share in the harvesting wisdom of Ptaŋyetu (fall), a time to savor daylight and reap the garden's abundance, and the restorative solitude of Waniyetu (winter), when snow blankets the landscape and sharpens every sound. Through it all, Peterson walks with us along the path that both divides and joins Christian doctrine, everyday spiritual experience, and the healing powers of Indigenous wisdom and spirituality.   In this intimate seasonal cycle, we learn how the garden becomes a healing balm. Peterson teaches us how ceremony may be found there: how in the vegetables and flowers, the woods, the hillsides, the river valley--even in the feeding of friends and family--we can reclaim and honor our relationship with Mother Earth. She encourages us to bring perennial ceremony into our own lives, inviting us on a journey that brings us full circle to makoce kiŋ mitakuye: the land is my relative.

No Friday Night Lights

2024 American Writing Awards Finalist in Sports No Friday Night Lights is the story of a rural Nevada high school football team that never wins. Veteran reporter John M. Glionna examines the 2022 season in which the McDermitt Bulldogs practiced for weeks in the summer only to learn once again that they had come up short of the necessary players due to the dwindling population on the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation on the Nevada-Oregon border. Eight-man football helps give the coaches and kids a sense of community--despite a lack of wins, and despite their home's status as one of the most remote locations for a public school in the West. Glionna's relationships with coaches, players, parents--and even those McDermitt residents remotely connected to high school football--provide telling insights into local lives, many of them from the Paiute and Shoshone tribes of Fort McDermitt. Although victory and recognition elude the players, Glionna illuminates their hard work and dedication--leaving the reader with glimpses of life on the ground in "flyover" country.

Indigenous Health and Justice

Indigenous communities are practicing de facto sovereignty to resolve public health issues that are a consequence of settler colonialism. This work delves into health and justice through a range of topics and examples and demonstrates the resilience of Indigenous communities.

Heritage, Indigenous Doing, and Wellbeing

Heritage, Indigenous Doing and Wellbeing presents an Aboriginal Australian relational understanding of the world that offers a counter-narrative to the Western notion of heritage and new insights into the potential for sustaining the complex systems that support all life. From an Indigenous Australian perspective, the Western concept of heritage is intentionally exclusionary and supports social, political, economic, and environmental injustice. Aboriginal People engage with landscape every day in entirely, different ways, seeing Country as a living 'heritage', but in a unique relationship form that engages the individual with place, ancestors, language, and wellbeing. However, Country is most often relegated by heritage proponents to 'intangible heritage', and this results in the concept having little legislative, legal, or administrative weight. Drawing on a common understanding of Country as sacred, living, and sentient, rather than as objectified property or resource, the contributors to this book explore a diversity of relationships with Country that demonstrate the richness and the practical utility of this relational understanding. Heritage, Indigenous Doing, and Wellbeing foregrounds the voices of Australian Aboriginal People who are involved in 'Caring for Country'. It will be an essential resource for those engaged in the study of Country, heritage, museums, Indigenous Peoples, landscape architecture, environmental studies, planning, and archaeology. It will also be of great interest to heritage practitioners working around the globe.