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From the acclaimed novelist, a first-of-its-kind, deeply personal, and moving oral history of a generation of trans and gender nonconforming elders of color--from leading activists to artists to ordinary citizens--who tell their own stories of breathtaking courage, cultural innovations, and acts of resistance. So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate accounts of how they created space for themselves and their communities in the world. This singular project collects the testimonies of twenty elders, each a glimmering thread in a luminous tapestry, preserving their words for future generations--who can more fully exist in the world today because of these very trailblazers. De Robertis creates a collective coming-of-age story based on hundreds of hours of interviews, offering rare snapshots of ordinary life: kids growing up, navigating family issues and finding community, coming out and changing how they identify over the years, building movements and weathering the AIDS crisis, and sharing wisdom for future generations. Often narrating experiences that took place before they had the array of language that exists today to self-identify beyond the gender binary, this generation lived through remarkable changes in American culture, shaped American culture, and yet rarely takes center stage in the history books. Their stories feel particularly urgent in the current political moment, but also remind readers that their experiences are not new, and that young trans and nonbinary people today belong to a long lineage. The anecdotes in these pages are riveting, joyful, heartbreaking, full of personality and wisdom, and artfully woven together into one immersive narrative. In De Robertis's words, So Many Stars shares "behind-the-scenes tales of what it meant--and still means--to create an authentic life, against the odds."
Beloved Houma/Choctaw storyteller Grayhawk Perkins shares age-old wisdom in an unforgettable collection of folktales Grayhawk's Native American Folktales is the eagerly awaited collection of stories by Grayhawk Perkins, a noted Houma/Choctaw storyteller from Louisiana. Drawing on traditional Indigenous tales, Grayhawk transforms these narratives into stories that captivate contemporary readers and audiences. The collection features universal animal characters such as Deer, Rabbit, Bobcat, Turtle, and Snake that embody a variety of traits. Their adventures and challenges in the natural world reveal human behavior and lessons about how to treat others. Creation stories explain how the world and its inhabitants came to be, including the diligent Crawfish, the origin of skunk stripes, and why opossums are white. Although written for children ages 7 to 12 and their families, all will be charmed by Grayhawk's contributions to Indigenous literature.
In Turning the Power Nathan Sowry examines how some Native American students from the boarding school system, with its forced assimilationist education, became key cultural informants for anthropologists conducting fieldwork during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Salvage anthropologists of this era relied on Native informants to accomplish their mission of "saving" Native American cultures and ultimately turned many informants into anthropologists after years of fieldwork experience. Sowry investigates ten relatively unknown Native American anthropologists and collaborators who, from 1878 to 1930, attended a religiously affiliated mission school, a federal Indian boarding school, or both. He tells the stories of Native anthropologists Tichkematse, William Jones, and James R. Murie, who were alumni of the Hampton Institute in Virginia. Richard Davis and Cleaver Warden were among the first and second classes to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Amos Oneroad graduated from the Haskell Indian Industrial Training School in Lawrence, Kansas, after attending mission and boarding schools in South Dakota. D. C. Duvall, John V. Satterlee, and Florence and Louis Shotridge attended smaller boarding and mission schools in Montana, Wisconsin, and Alaska Territory, respectively. Turning the Power follows the forced indoctrination of Native American students and then details how each of them "turned the power," using their English knowledge and work experience in the anthropological field to embrace, document, and preserve their Native cultures rather than abandoning their heritage.
From author Carole Lindstrom and illustrator Michaela Goade comes a New York Times bestselling and Caldecott Medal winning picture book that honors Indigenous-led movements across the world. Powerfully written and gorgeously illustrated, We Are Water Protectors, issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth's water from harm and corruption--inviting young readers everywhere to join the fight. Water is the first medicine. It affects and connects us all . . . When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth And poison her people's water, one young water protector Takes a stand to defend Earth's most sacred resource. The fight continues with Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior, the must-read companion book to We Are Water Protectors. Written by Carole Lindstrom and illustrated by Bridget George, it tells the story of real-life water protectors, Autumn Peltier and her great-aunt Josephine Mandamin, two Indigenous Rights Activists who have inspired a tidal wave of change.
Loyalty to the community is the highest value in Native American cultures, argues Jace Weaver. In That the People Might Live, he explores a wide range of Native American literature from 1768 to the present, taking this sense of community as both a starting point and a lens. Weaver considers some of the best known Native American writers, such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, and Vine Deloria, as well as many others who are receiving critical attention here for the first time. He contends that the single thing that most defines these authors' writings, and makes them deserving of study.
Although cancer survival has improved markedly in developed countries in recent decades, not all groups have benefited equally. In particular, Indigenous and Tribal peoples continue to have poorer cancer outcomes than their non-Indigenous counterparts. The available evidence suggests these disparities are linked to a complex combination of factors, including higher incidence of cancers associated with a high case fatality, later stage of diagnosis, reduced access to cancer treatment, and poorer overall health. Much research is underway to explore approaches to improving health system responses for Indigenous and Tribal peoples. A developing evidence base is supporting effective translation of knowledge into practice. This book offers a global perspective on this evidence base, written from Indigenous perspectives. This book is the first comprehensive publication to report on cancer incidence, mortality, prevalence, survival, and inequities for Indigenous and Tribal peoples globally, with the aim of enhancing global efforts to improve outcomes for these populations. Its content and approach are led by Indigenous researchers with international reputations in health and cancer research. Chapters provide important information and data to support Indigenous-specific, targeted cancer awareness and early detection campaigns. This book goes beyond a discussion of the issues and challenges in Indigenous health, with a strengths-based approach to discussing successful health interventions, research projects, research translation, and living well - both with and beyond cancer. This is an open access book.
Music historian Craig Harris explores more than five hundred years of Indigenous history, religion, and cultural evolution in Rise Up! Indigenous Music in North America. More than powwow drums and wooden flutes, Indigenous music intersects with rock, blues, jazz, folk music, reggae, hip-hop, classical music, and more. Combining deep research with personal stories by nearly four dozen award-winning Indigenous musicians, Harris offers an eye-opening look at the growth of Indigenous music. Among a host of North America's most vital Indigenous musicians, the biographical narratives include new and well-established figures such as Mildred Bailey, Louis W. Ballard, Cody Blackbird, Donna Coane (Spirit of Thunderheart), Theresa "Bear" Fox, Robbie Robertson, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joanne Shenandoah, DJ Shub (Dan General), Maria Tallchief, John Trudell, and Fawn Wood.
The philosophy of Mesoamerica - the indigenous groups of precolonial North-Central America - is rich and varied but relatively little-known. In this ground-breaking book, Alexus McLeod introduces the philosophical traditions of the Maya, Nahua (Aztecs), Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and others, focussing in particular on their treatment of language, truth, time, creation, personhood, knowledge, and morality. His wide-ranging discussion includes important texts of world literature such as the K'iche Maya Popol Vuh and the Aztec Florentine Codex, as well as precolonial glyphic texts and imagery. This comprehensive and accessible book will give students, specialists and other interested readers an understanding of Mesoamerican philosophy and a sense of the current scholarship in the field.
Unpapered is a collection of personal narratives by Indigenous writers exploring the meaning and limits of Native American identity beyond its legal margins. Native heritage is neither simple nor always clearly documented, and citizenship is a legal and political matter of sovereign nations determined by such criteria as blood quantum, tribal rolls, or community involvement. Those who claim a Native cultural identity often have family stories of tenuous ties dating back several generations. Given that tribal enrollment was part of a string of government programs and agreements calculated to quantify and dismiss Native populations, many writers who identify culturally and are recognized as Native Americans do not hold tribal citizenship. With essays by Trevino Brings Plenty, Deborah Miranda, Steve Russell, and Kimberly Wieser, among others, Unpapered charts how current exclusionary tactics began as a response to "pretendians"--non-indigenous people assuming a Native identity for job benefits--and have expanded to an intense patrolling of identity that divides Native communities and has resulted in attacks on peoples' professional, spiritual, emotional, and physical states. An essential addition to Native discourse, Unpapered shows how social and political ideologies have created barriers for Native people truthfully claiming identities while simultaneously upholding stereotypes.
A photographic and narrative celebration of contemporary Native American life and cultures, alongside an in-depth examination of issues that Native people face, by celebrated photographer and storyteller Matika Wilbur of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes. "This book is too important to miss. It is a vast, sprawling look at who we are as Indigenous people in these United States."-Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapaho), author of There There Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal In 2012, Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and set out on a Kickstarter-funded pursuit to visit, engage, and photograph people from what were then the 562 federally recognized Native American Tribal Nations. Over the next decade, she traveled six hundred thousand miles across fifty states-from Seminole country (now known as the Everglades) to Inuit territory (now known as the Bering Sea)-to meet, interview, and photograph hundreds of Indigenous people. The body of work Wilbur created serves to counteract the one-dimensional and archaic stereotypes of Native people in mainstream media and offers justice to the richness, diversity, and lived experiences of Indian Country. The culmination of this decade-long art and storytelling endeavor, Project 562 is a peerless, sweeping, and moving love letter to Indigenous Americans, containing hundreds of stunning portraits and compelling personal narratives of contemporary Native people-all photographed in clothing, poses, and locations of their choosing. Their narratives touch on personal and cultural identity as well as issues of media representation, sovereignty, faith, family, the protection of sacred sites, subsistence living, traditional knowledge-keeping, land stewardship, language preservation, advocacy, education, the arts, and more. A vital contribution from an incomparable artist, Project 562 inspires, educates, and truly changes the way we see Native America.
A 50th anniversary revised edition of the beloved classic, God is Red. First published in 1973, Vine Deloria, Jr.'s God Is Red remains the seminal work on Native American religious views, asking the reader to think about our species and our ultimate fate in novel ways. Celebrating five decades of publication with this new edition, Deloria's classic work reminds us to understand "that we are a part of nature, not a transcendent species with no responsibilities to the natural world." It is time again to listen to Vine Deloria, Jr.'s powerful voice, informing us about a spiritual life that is independent of Western religion and that reveres the interconnectedness of all living things. This new edition includes critical essays engaging with the original material by well-known Indigenous thinkers - Philip Deloria, Suzan Shown Harjo, Daniel Wildcat, and David E. Wilkins. Inside, the book covers a wide variety of topics including: the problem of creation, the origin of religion, Death, and Human personality. "God is Red should be read and re-read by Americans who want to understand why the United States keeps losing the peace, war after war." - Leslie Marmon Silko
A magnificent selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's fifty years as a poet. Over a long, influential career in poetry, Joy Harjo has been praised for her "warm, oracular voice" (John Freeman, Boston Globe) that speaks "from a deep and timeless source of compassion for all" (Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR). Her poems are musical, intimate, political, and wise, intertwining ancestral memory and tribal histories with resilience and love. In this gemlike volume, Harjo selects her best poems from across fifty years, beginning with her early discoveries of her own voice and ending with moving reflections on our contemporary moment. Generous notes on each poem offer insight into Harjo's inimitable poetics as she takes inspiration from Navajo horse songs and jazz, reckons with home and loss, and listens to the natural messengers of the earth. As evidenced in this transcendent collection, Joy Harjo's "poetry is light and elixir, the very best prescription for us in wounded times" (Sandra Cisneros, Millions).
This book offers twenty original scholarly chapters featuring historical and biographical analyses of Native American women. The lives of women found her contributed significantly to their people and people everywhere. The book presents Native women of action and accomplishments in many areas of life. This work highlights women during the modern era of American history, countering past stereotypes of Native women. With the exceptions of Pocahontas and Sacajawea, historians have had little to say about American Indian women who have played key roles in the history of their tribes, their relationship with others, and the history of the United States. Indigenous women featured herein distinguished themselves as fiction and non-fiction writers, poets, potters, basket makers, musicians, and dancers. Other women contributed as notable educators and women working in health and medicine. They are representative of many women within the Native Universe who excelled in their lives to enrich the American experience.
Cherokee women wielded significant power, and history demonstrates that in what is now America, indigenous women often bore the greater workload, both inside and outside the home. During the French and Indian War, Cherokee women resisted a chief's authority, owned family households, were skilled artisans, produced plentiful crops, mastered trade negotiations, and prepared chiefs' feasts. Cherokee culture was lost when the Cherokee Nation began imitating the American form of governance to gain political favor, and white colonists reduced indigenous women's power. This book recounts long-standing Cherokee traditions and their rich histories. It demonstrates Cherokee and indigenous women as independent and strong individuals through feminist and historical perspectives. Readers will find that these women were far ahead of their time and held their own in many remarkable ways.
A collection of stories from nations and cultures across our two continents--the Sea-Ringed World, as the Aztecs called it--from the Andes all the way up to Alaska. Fifteen thousand years before Europeans stepped foot in the Americas, people had already spread from tip to tip and coast to coast. Like all humans, these Native Americans sought to understand their place in the universe, the nature of their relationship with the divine, and the origin of the world into which their ancestors had emerged. The answers lay in their sacred stories.