In this ethnography of Navajo (Dine) popular music culture, Kristina M. Jacobsen examines questions of Indigenous identity and performance by focusing on the surprising and vibrant Navajo country music scene. Through multiple first-person accounts, Jacobsen illuminates country music's connections to the Indigenous politics of language and belonging, examining through the lens of music both the politics of difference and many internal distinctions Dine make among themselves and their fellow Navajo citizens. As the second largest tribe in the United States, the Navajo have often been portrayed as a singular and monolithic entity. Using her experience as a singer, lap steel player, and Navajo language learner, Jacobsen challenges this notion, showing the ways Navajos distinguish themselves from one another through musical taste, linguistic abilities, geographic location, physical appearance, degree of Navajo or Indian blood, and class affiliations. By linking cultural anthropology to ethnomusicology, linguistic anthropology, and critical Indigenous studies, Jacobsen shows how Navajo poetics and politics offer important insights into the politics of Indigeneity in Native North America, highlighting the complex ways that identities are negotiated in multiple, often contradictory, spheres.

The disastrous Buffalo Creek Treaty of 1838 called for the Senecas' removal to Kansas (then part of the Indian Territory). From this low point, the Seneca Nation of Indians, which today occupies three reservations in western New York, sought to rebound. Beginning with events leading to the Seneca Revolution in 1848, which transformed the nation's government from a council of chiefs to an elected system, Laurence M. Hauptman traces Seneca history through the New Deal. Based on the author's nearly fifty years of archival research, interviews, and applied work, Coming Full Circle shows that Seneca leaders in these years learned valuable lessons and adapted to change, thereby preparing the nation to meet the challenges it would face in the post-World War II era, including major land loss and threats of termination. Instead of emphasizing American Indian decline, Hauptman stresses that the Senecas were actors in their own history and demonstrated cultural and political resilience. Both Native belief, in the form of the Good Message of Handsome Lake, and Christianity were major forces in Seneca life; women continued to play important social and economic roles despite the demise of clan matrons' right to nominate the chiefs; and Senecas became involved in national and international competition in long-distance running and in lacrosse. The Seneca Nation also achieved noteworthy political successes in this period. The Senecas resisted allotment, and thus saved their reservations from breakup and sale. They recruited powerful allies, including attorneys, congressmen, journalists, and religious leaders. They saved their Oil Spring Reservation, winning a U.S. Supreme Court case against New York State on the issue of taxation and won remuneration in their Kansas Claims case. These efforts laid the groundwork for the Senecas' postwar endeavor to seek compensation before the Indian Claims Commission and pursuit of a series of land claims and tax lawsuits against New York State.

Settler societies habitually frame Indigenous people as 'a people of the past'-their culture somehow 'frozen' in time, their identities tied to static notions of 'authenticity', and their communities understood as 'in decline'. But this narrative erases the many ways that Indigenous people are actively engaged in future-orientated practice, including through new technologies. Indigenous Digital Life offers a broad, wide-ranging account of how social media has become embedded in the lives of Indigenous Australians. Centring on ten core themes-including identity, community, hate, desire and death-we seek to understand both the practice and broader politics of being Indigenous on social media. Rather than reproducing settler narratives of Indigenous 'deficiency', we approach Indigenous social media as a space of Indigenous action, production, and creativity; we see Indigenous social media users as powerful agents, who interact with and shape their immediate worlds with skill, flair and nous; and instead of being 'a people of the past', we show that Indigenous digital life is often future-orientated, working towards building better relations, communities and worlds. This book offers new ideas, insights and provocations for both students and scholars of Indigenous studies, media and communication studies, and cultural studies.

The 1830s forced removal of Cherokees from their southeastern homeland became the most famous event in the Indian history of the American South, an episode taken to exemplify a broader experience of injustice suffered by Native peoples. In this book, Andrew Denson explores the public memory of Cherokee removal through an examination of memorials, historic sites, and tourist attractions dating from the early twentieth century to the present. White southerners, Denson argues, embraced the Trail of Tears as a story of Indian disappearance. Commemorating Cherokee removal affirmed white possession of southern places, while granting them the moral satisfaction of acknowledging past wrongs. During segregation and the struggle over black civil rights, removal memorials reinforced whites' authority to define the South's past and present. Cherokees, however, proved capable of repossessing the removal memory, using it for their own purposes during a time of crucial transformation in tribal politics and U. S. Indian policy. In considering these representations of removal, Denson brings commemoration of the Indian past into the broader discussion of race and memory in the South.

Samuel Wesley Gathing: A Closer Look is the moving true story of Sam and Beatrice Gathing and the struggles they faced rearing their fourteen children during the era of the Jim Crow laws. These laws meant that both society and the system enforced the damaging view that their children were just stupid black kids. In this climate of institutionalized discrimination, Sam had to maneuver his way through a massive minefield of irrational hatred intended to destroy him and his family.

Sam and Beatrice began their life together in December 1929, in Desoto County, Mississippi, taking the gift of a mule named Rock and a big red cow to start their farm. Over the years, as their family expanded, so did the land that they farmed. Sam learned to live by the rules of the day but was always a true leader to both his family and to his friends. Through all the challenges that Sam encountered, his faith in God never wavered-he believed that the truth could be found in God's words and actions, not in the laws that were meant to harm him and his people.

Born in 1922, Kenny Thomas Sr. has been a trapper, firefighter, road builder, river-freight hauler, and soldier. Today he is a respected elder and member of a northern Athabaskan tribal group residing in Tanacross, Alaska. As a song and dance leader for the Tanacross community, Thomas has been teaching village traditions at an annual culture camp for more than twenty years. Over a three-year period, folklorist Craig Mishler conducted a series of interviews with Thomas about his life experiences. Crow Is My Boss is the fascinating result of this collaboration. Written in a style that reflects the dialogue between Thomas and Mishler, Crow Is My Boss retains the authenticity of Thomas's voice, capturing his honesty and humor. Thomas reveals biographical details, performs and explains traditional folktales and the potlatch tradition, and discusses ghosts and medicine people. One folktale is presented in both English and Tanacross, Thomas's native language. A compelling personal story, Crow Is My Boss provides insight into the traditional and contemporary culture of Tanacross Athabaskans in Alaska.