Just as a basket's purpose determines its materials, weave, and shape, so too is the purpose of the essay related to its material, weave, and shape. Editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton ground this anthology of essays by Native writers in the formal art of basket weaving. Using weaving techniques such as coiling and plaiting as organizing themes, the editors have curated an exciting collection of imaginative, world-making lyric essays by twenty-seven contemporary Native writers from tribal nations across Turtle Island into a well-crafted basket. Shapes of Native Nonfiction features a dynamic combination of established and emerging Native writers, including Stephen Graham Jones, Deborah Miranda, Terese Marie Mailhot, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Eden Robinson, and Kim TallBear. Their ambitious, creative, and visionary work with genre and form demonstrate the slippery, shape-changing possibilities of Native stories. Considered together, they offer responses to broader questions of materiality, orality, spatiality, and temporality that continue to animate the study and practice of distinct Native literary traditions in North America.

Southern Anthropological Society James Mooney Award. As Native American history is primarily studied through the lens of European contact, the story of Virginia's Powhatans has traditionally focused on the English arrival in the Chesapeake. This has left a deeper indigenous history largely unexplored--a longer narrative beginning with the Algonquians' construction of places, communities, and the connections in between. The Powhatan Landscape breaks new ground by tracing Native placemaking in the Chesapeake from the Algonquian arrival to the Powhatan's clashes with the English. Martin Gallivan details how Virginia Algonquians constructed riverine communities alongside fishing grounds and collective burials and later within horticultural towns. Ceremonial spaces, including earthwork enclosures within the center place of Werowocomoco, gathered people for centuries prior to 1607. Even after the violent ruptures of the colonial era, Native people returned to riverine towns for pilgrimages commemorating the enduring power of place. For today's American Indian communities in the Chesapeake, this reexamination of landscape and history represents a powerful basis from which to contest narratives and policies that have previously denied their existence. A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson.

The Big Bend of Texas is a mysterious place in 1869. Legend has it that there's a lost gold mine in the Chisos Mountains. Twelve-year-old Fish Rawlings and his cousin Gid have heard all about it. But when they discover a dying Indian in the desert, they have reason to believe it. Suddenly the boys find themselves with a great secret. No one else knows the way to the last Chisos mines-but do they dare? To find it, they must cross a desert prowled by Apache warriors. They must ride a trail haunted by devil animals and Indian spooks. Even with the help of a young Apache boy, the journey won't be easy. And what will they do if they succeed?

Marie L. McLaughlin delivers a memorable selection of Native American stories infused with folklore and oral traditions passed on from one generation to the next. This book features vivid stories with larger-than-life characters and unforgettable adventures. Myths and Legends of the Sioux is a collection of vast stories rooted in indigenous culture. The tales are striking and memorable, featuring both human and animal protagonists. In one story, a small rabbit uses its wits to outsmart a large bear. In another tale, a crane saves a family from an unfortunate circumstance. Each legend delivers a powerful message that's applicable to children and adults. With nearly 40 titles to choose from, it's a robust display of classic lore. Myths and Legends of the Sioux is filled with notable figures and remarkable creatures. These stories have stood the test of time and continue to reach new and unexpected heights. McLaughlin's collection is a brilliant observation of Native American culture and identity. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Myths and Legends of the Sioux is both modern and readable.

Pagans in the Promised Land makes a unique challenge to U.S. federal Indian law and policy, attacking the presumption that American Indian nations are legitimately subject to the plenary power of the United States. Steve Newcomb puts forth a startling theory that U.S. federal Indian law and policy are premised on Old Testament narratives of the chosen people and the promised land, as exemplified in the 1823 Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. McIntosh, that the first "Christian people" to "discover" lands inhabited by "natives, who were heathens," have an ultimate title to and dominion over these lands and peoples. This important addition to legal scholarship asserts there is no separation of church and state in the United States, so long as U.S. federal Indian law and policy are premised on the ancient religious distinctions between "Christians" and "heathens."

Transborder Media Spaces offers a new perspective on how media forms like photography, video, radio, television, and the Internet have been appropriated by Mexican indigenous people in the light of transnational migration and ethnopolitical movements. In producing and consuming self-determined media genres, actors in Tamazulapam Mixe and its diaspora community in Los Angeles open up media spaces and seek to forge more equal relations both within Mexico and beyond its borders. It is within these spaces that Ayuujk people carve out their own, at times conflicting, visions of development, modernity, gender, and what it means to be indigenous in the twenty-first century.

Robert Brough Smyth (1830 1889) was a successful Melbourne-based mining engineer and civil servant whose international contacts included the geologist Adam Sedgwick. He also spent 16 years as Secretary of the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines. In this study of the society and customs of indigenous Australians in the Victoria region, first published in 1878, he combines his own observations with those of others who lived or worked closely with the Aboriginal population. Volume 1 discusses the Aborigines' physical and mental characteristics, demographics, social interaction, rituals, daily life and mythology. Comparisons are made throughout with other indigenous populations, particularly those of nearby Pacific and Indonesian islands. Illustrated throughout, the book takes into account the changes forced on the native population by the arrival of European settlers in the late eighteenth century and preserves much information that might otherwise have been lost.

Robert Brough Smyth (1830 1889) was a successful Melbourne-based mining engineer and civil servant who spent 16 years as Secretary of the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines. In this study of the society and customs of indigenous Australians in the Victoria region, first published in 1878, he combines his own observations with those of others who lived or worked closely with the Aboriginal population. The principal focus of volume 2 is language. Smyth discusses the similarities and differences between regional dialects, grammatical rules and the use of sign language, and the vocabularies of different regions. The nine essays by European settlers which form the appendices explore a variety of anthropological topics and shed light on the complex relationship that existed between the indigenous Australian population and the European immigrants. A final chapter outlines the customs and characteristics of the Aborigines of Tasmania.

A. W. Howitt's classic two-volume study, first published in 1904, investigates the organisation, practices and customs of the indigenous peoples he encountered during his forty years exploring Australia. He describes how he made 'close and friendly contact' with tribes who were, in his words, in a condition of 'complete savagery'. Howitt achieved considerable status among the Aborigines, and was even permitted to witness some of their sacred ceremonies. Focusing particularly on the social organisation of the tribes, their kinship systems and marriage rules, his book is a captivating account of a now-vanished civilisation.

The Sami are Europe s only recognized indigenous people living across regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Russian Kola peninsula. The subjects of a history of Christianization, land dispossession, and cultural assimilation, the Sami have through their self-organization since World War II worked towards Sami political self-determination across the Nordic states and helped forge a global indigenous community. Accompanying this process was the emergence of a Sami music scene, in which the revival of the distinct and formerly suppressed unaccompanied vocal tradition of joik was central. Through joiking with instrumental accompaniment, incorporating joik into forms of popular music, performing on stage and releasing recordings, Sami musicians have played a key role in articulating a Sami identity, strengthening Sami languages, and reviving a nature-based cosmology. Thomas Hilder offers the first book-length study of this diverse and dynamic music scene and its intersection with the politics of indigeneity. Based on extensive ethnographic research, Hilder provides portraits of numerous Sami musicians, studies the significance of Sami festivals, analyzes the emergence of a Sami recording industry, and examines musical projects and cultural institutions that have sought to strengthen the transmission of Sami music. Through his engaging narrative, Hilder discusses a wide range of issues revival, sovereignty, time, environment, repatriation and cosmopolitanism to highlight the myriad ways in which Sami musical performance helps shape notions of national belonging, transnational activism, and processes of democracy in the Nordic peninsula. Sami Musical Performance and the Politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe will not only appeal to enthusiasts of Nordic music, but, by drawing on current interdisciplinary debates, will also speak to a wider audience interested in the interplay of music and politics. Unearthing the challenges, contradictions and potentials presented by international indigenous politics, Hilder demonstrates the significance of this unique musical scene for the wider cultural and political transformations in twenty-first century Europe and global modernity."

Huaorani of the Western Snippet documents changes that the Huaorani culture of eastern Ecuador underwent over a period of fifty years. Part I focuses on the geographical, historical, sociological and economical background of the Ecuadorian Amazon as well as the problems that indigenous groups of this region face. Part II describes different aspects of Huaorani culture, and its consecutive subsections present research completed by anthropologists in different decades of twentieth century, and the data is reviewed and supplemented with data gathered during my research (2007-2013). Part III explores the life of a Huao man, Mine, who serves as a local shaman. His different social roles are discussed in consecutive subsections in order to understand what shaped him as a person of the Huaorani group.

Eminent biologist Sir Baldwin Spencer (1860 1929) was born in Lancashire but moved to Australia to take up the chair in biology at the University of Melbourne in 1887. As a member of the 1894 Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, Spencer made the acquaintance of F. J. Gillen, an advocate of Aboriginal rights, with whom he later formed a working partnership. Spencer and Gillen returned to Alice Springs in Central Australia in 1896 1897, to carry out observations on the local Aboriginal tribe, the Arunta. These observations were published in 1899, in The Native Tribes of Central Australia (also reissued in this series), which represented the most comprehensive study of Aboriginal customs. Gillen and Spencer continued to undertake fieldwork until 1903. Volume 2 of Across Australia (published in two volumes in 1912) describes Aboriginal tribes of the present-day Northern Territory, between Alice Springs and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The essays in Home Words explore the complexity of the idea of home through various theoretical lenses and groupings of texts. One focus of this collection is the relation between the discourses of nation, which often represent the nation as home, and the discourses of home in children's literature, which variously picture home as a dwelling, family, town or region, psychological comfort, and a place to start from and return to. These essays consider the myriad ways in which discourses of home underwrite both children's and national literatures. Home Words reconfigures the field of Canadian children's literature as it is usually represented by setting the study of English- and French-language texts side by side, and by paying sustained attention to the diversity of work by Canadian writers for children, including both Aboriginal peoples and racialized Canadians. It builds on the literary histories, bibliographical essays, and biographical criticism that have dominated the scholarship to date and sets out to determine and establish new directions for the study of Canadian children's literature.

Today, some 2 million American Indians inhabit the United States, less than 1 percent of the nation's population. Their origins have always been viewed from a 500-year-old perspective -- from the point of view of the Europeans who "discovered" the New World. Yet the true story of the American Indians begins some seventeen thousand years ago -- and it is past due for a telling that shows Indians as they are, rather than as westerners wish them to be.
Recent archaeological findings, newly discovered written accounts, and never-before-published records have contributed to a whole new understanding of our country's oldest ancestors. Drawing upon the latest research, as well as his own personal experience living among the Hopi tribes, acclaimed author and former "Natural History" magazine editor Jake Page covers all aspects of Indian life throughout the ages. From the Pleistocene era to Custer's Last Stand, the Trail of Tears to the Indian Civil Rights Act, the establishment of reservations to the negotiation of casino property, "In the Hands of the Great Spirit" reveals the astonishing endurance of a group of people whose experience is as varied as the world is old.

In Ontologies and Natures: Knowledge about Health in Visual Culture, Fernando Gonzalez Rodriguez argues that visual culture offers insights into how societies perceive the role of nature in their own and others' pursuits to cure and care for the human body. By using a set of visual surfaces and artefacts as entry points-such as vlogs, toys, cosmetics, psychotropics, stamps, posters, and animation, among others-the book sheds light on the evolution, circulation, and rootedness of ideas about nature as a healing source. The first part of the book considers how visual culture operates as a vehicle to diffuse, transmit, mediate, and communicate health-related knowledge and imaginaries about the role of nature in medicinal therapies (e.g., a dictionary). The second part explores the process by which nature becomes a consumable, encapsulated in objects defined by their visual and material traits. The author focuses on items such as labels on packages of herbal cosmetics and infographics about superfoods. In the third part, Gonzalez Rodriguez examines the situatedness of health within two physical contexts: geographical and mental. Methodologically, the book is informed by historical sources, visual-virtual ethnography, content analysis, and semiotic-linguistic analysis of objects from all corners of the globe, paying particular attention to Indigenous traditional knowledge(s).

A friend of Charles Darwin and a social activist respected by John Stuart Mill, Alfred R. Wallace (1823-1913) was an outstanding nineteenth-century intellectual. Wallace, renowned in his time as the co-discoverer of natural selection, was a young schoolteacher when he began his exciting career as an explorer-naturalist, and set off for Brazil in 1848 with Henry Walter Bates. A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (1853) is the stimulating and engaging result of this first expedition and a precursor to his best-selling Malay Archipelago (1869). The depth and breadth of Wallace's observations in this book as naturalist, anthropologist and geologist are remarkable, and it is tantalising to learn that half his notes and 'the greater part of [his] collections and sketches' were lost at sea when his ship was burned on his voyage home.

The removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families gained national attention in Australia following the Bringing Them Home Report in 1997. However, the voices of Indigenous parents were largely missing from the Report. The Inquiry attributed their lack of testimony to the impact of trauma and the silencing impact of parents' overwhelming sense of guilt and despair; a submission by Link-Up NSW commented on Aboriginal mothers being "unwilling and unable to speak about the immense pain, grief and anguish that losing their children had caused them." This book explores what happened to Aboriginal mothers who had children removed and why they have overwhelmingly remained silent about their experiences. Identifying the structural barriers to Aboriginal mothering in the Stolen Generations era, the author examines how contemporary laws, policies and practices increased the likelihood of Aboriginal child removal and argues that negative perceptions of Aboriginal mothering underpinned removal processes, with tragic consequences. This book makes an important contribution to understanding the history of the Stolen Generations and highlights the importance of designing inclusive truth-telling processes that enable a diversity of perspectives to be shared.

A landmark study of Spain's fortified settlements in West Florida from a lifelong specialist on the periodPresidios of Spanish West Florida provides the first comprehensive synthesis of historical and archaeological investigations conducted at the fortified settlements built by Spain in the Florida panhandle from 1698 to 1763. Combining intensive research by author Judith Bense, a lifelong specialist on the Spanish West Florida period, with a century's worth of additional data, this landmark study brings to light four presidio locations that have long been overshadowed by the presidio at St. Augustine to the east, revealing the rest of the story of early Spanish Florida. Bense details a history fraught with catastrophe-hurricanes, war against France and England, and treaties that forced the Spanish base in West Florida to be uprooted and rebuilt four times. Examining each presidio, including associated military outposts, shipwrecks, and refugee mission villages of the Apalachee and Yamasee Indians, this book provides four discrete, sequential windows into the Spanish presence in the region. Bense compares the population to that of Presidio San Agustin, established 133 years later, revealing very different communities, people, and local customs. Interwoven with these historical findings is an account of how the general public has participated in investigations in the region, providing readers with an understanding of eighteenth-century West Florida and the development of public archaeology in the state from the person who initiated and directed much of the research.

Walter E. Roth's 1897 study of the Aborigines of North-West-Central Queensland was among the first of its kind in Australia, and established his international reputation as a leading anthropologist and ethnologist. Roth, a physician who was later appointed 'protector of Aboriginals' by the government, gained the confidence and trust of the Aboriginal people among whom he lived, and tried to stop the exploitation and injustice they suffered, in the face of fierce political opposition. His book provides a fascinating and closely observed account of the Aborigines' traditional way of life, including their language, kinship and customs. It describes social organisation, food, tools and weapons, personal decoration, travel and trade, birth and death, and even cannibalism. Containing over 430 illustrations and a glossary summarising key vocabulary, this thoroughly-researched book is widely recognised as a valuable and enduring anthropological record.

In Sociology of Death and the American Indian, Gerry R. Cox examines dying, death, disposal, and bereavement as well describes these practices in various American Indian tribes both historically and currently, supplemented with oral histories from select tribes. The book focuses on what can be learned from the practices of traditional cultures, showing that understanding the ways of other cultures can enhance the understanding of one's own culture by comparing traditional and modern societies. Cox addresses that the centuries of injustices committed against American Indians have led to a neglect of learning about American Indian cultures and ways and attempts to fill the gaps in knowledge of American Indian dying, death, disposal, and bereavement practices.

Indigenous women from the Americas are on the frontlines of activism in battles ranging from environmental protection, cultural and language revitalization and preservation, sovereignty campaigns, sexual violence, and human rights. This book introduces voices of Native activists blazing trails of resistance in new fields of engagement. Interviews with contemporary Native women from the northern and southern hemispheres of the Americas highlight commonalities amongst them and diverse paths of resistance work. Artists, lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists, athletes, educators, economists, and legislators seek societal transformation and reframe modes of resistance from their areas of expertise and Indigenous identity. For students in ethnic studies, gender studies, Latin American and American studies, sociology and anthropology, the conversations provide insights of Native women dynamically involved in shifting the socio-cultural imaginary and the futures of their Nations.

Indigenous women from the Americas are on the frontlines of activism in battles ranging from environmental protection, cultural and language revitalization and preservation, sovereignty campaigns, sexual violence, and human rights. This book introduces voices of Native activists blazing trails of resistance in new fields of engagement. Interviews with contemporary Native women from the northern and southern hemispheres of the Americas highlight commonalities amongst them and diverse paths of resistance work. Artists, lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists, athletes, educators, economists, and legislators seek societal transformation and reframe modes of resistance from their areas of expertise and Indigenous identity. For students in ethnic studies, gender studies, Latin American and American studies, sociology and anthropology, the conversations provide insights of Native women dynamically involved in shifting the socio-cultural imaginary and the futures of their Nations.