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This series of portraits of British Columbia Native chiefs and elders counters earlier depictions of "noble savages" or representatives of a "vanishing race". David Neel's photographs and conversations with his own people introduce us to a group of individuals who know who they are and whose comments on the present, coupled with their perspectives from the past, reveal a people who have a rich and unique heritage while fully realizing that they are living in the latter part of the 20th century....

This volume highlights the latest research on the foundations of sociopolitical complexity in coastal California. The populous maritime societies of southern California, particularly the groups known collectively as the Chumash, have gone largely unrecognised as prototypical complex hunter-gatherers, only recently beginning to emerge from the shadow of their more celebrated counterparts on the Northwest Coast of North America. While Northwest cultures are renowned for such complex institutions a...

Chronicles is a major work, a collection of current, pressing and inspirational stories of Indigenous communities from the Canadian subarctic to the heart of Dine Bii Kaya, Navajo Nation. Chronicles is a book literally risen from the ashes-beginning in 2008 after her home burned to the ground-and collectively is an accounting of Winona's personal path of recovery, finding strength and resilience in the writing itself as well as in her work. Long awaited, Chronicles is a labour of love, a tribute...

This new, expanded edition of The California Indians is a more comprehensive and thus more useful book than its predecessor, which first appeared in 1951 and was reprinted seven times. The editors have combined the selections, eighteen of which are new, into a general survey of California Indian native cultures. They have avoided highly technical studies because they intend their book for the general reading public rather than for scholars. The editors discuss the present-day Indians of Californ...

The moment of contact between two peoples, two alien societies, marks the opening of an epoch and the joining of histories. What if it had happened differently?The stories that indigenous peoples and Europeans tell about their first encounters with one another are enormously valuable historical records, but their relevance extends beyond the past. Settler populations and indigenous peoples the world over are engaged in negotiations over legitimacy, power, and rights. These struggles cannot be di...

Mohawk Interruptus is a bold challenge to dominant thinking in the fields of Native studies and anthropology. Combining political theory with ethnographic research among the Mohawks of Kahnawa:ke, a reserve community in what is now southwestern Quebec, Audra Simpson examines their struggles to articulate and maintain political sovereignty through centuries of settler colonialism. The Kahnawa:ke Mohawks are part of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy. Like many Iroquois peoples, they insist...

Ward Churchill has achieved an unparalleled reputation as a scholar-activist and analyst of indigenous issues in North America. Here, he explores the history of holocaust and denial in this hemisphere, beginning with the arrival of Columbus and continuing on into the present. He frames the matter by examining both "revisionist" denial of the nazi-perpatrated Holocaust and the opposing claim of its exclusive "uniqueness," using the full scope of what happened in Europe as a backdrop against whic...

In this provocative and passionate book, Dan Russell outlines the history of Aboriginal self-government in Canada. He compares it to that of the United States, where, for over 150 years, tribes have practised self-government -- domestic dependent nationhood. Russell provides specific examples of how those institutions of government operate, and eloquently explains, from an Aboriginal perspective, what his people hope to achieve through self-governing authority. After describing rights theory, Ru...

An “indescribably touching, extraordinarily intelligent" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) chronicle of a fatal gun-battle between FBI agents and American Indian Movement activists by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the novel In Paradise   On a hot June morning in 1975, a desperate shoot-out between FBI agents and Native Americans near Wounded Knee, South Dakota, left an Indian and two federal agents dead. Four members...

Long before lucrative tribal casinos sparked controversy, Native Americans amassed other wealth that provoked intense debate about the desirability, morality, and compatibility of Indian and non-Indian economic practices. Alexandra Harmon examines seven such instances of Indian affluence and the dilemmas they presented both for Native Americans and for Euro-Americans--dilemmas rooted in the colonial origins of the modern American economy. Harmon's study not only compels us to look beyond stereot...

Drawing on the traditional ways of Anishinaabe storytelling, acclaimed poet Gerald Vizenor illuminates the 1898 battle at Sugar Point in Minnesota in this epic poem. Fought between the Pillagers of the Leech Lake Reservation (one of the original five clans of the Anishinaabe tribe) and U.S. soldiers, the battle marked a turning point in relations between the government and Native Americans. Although out-numbered by more than three to one, the Pillager fighters won convincingly. Weaving togethe...