Most fans of women's basketball would be startled to learn that girls' teams were making their mark more than a century ago--and that none was more prominent than a team from an isolated Indian boarding school in Montana. Playing like "lambent flames" across the polished floors of dance halls, armories, and gymnasiums, the girls from Fort Shaw stormed the state to emerge as Montana's first basketball champions. Taking their game to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, these young women introduced an international audience to the fledgling game and returned home with a trophy declaring them champions.

World champions. And yet their triumphs were forgotten--until Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith chanced upon a team photo and embarked on a ten-year journey of discovery. Their in-depth research and extensive collaboration with the teammates' descendents and tribal kin have resulted in a narrative as entertaining as it is authentic.

"Full-Court Quest" offers a rare glimpse into American Indian life and into the world of women's basketball before "girls' rules" temporarily shackled the sport. For anyone captivated by "Sea Biscuit," "A League of Their Own," and other accounts of unlikely champions, this book rates as nothing but net.

She was both guardian of the hearth and, on occasion, ruler and warrior, leading men into battle, managing the affairs of her people, sporting war paint as well as necklaces and earrings.

She built houses and ground corn, wove blankets and painted pottery, played field hockey and rode racehorses.

Frequently she enjoyed an open and joyous sexuality before marriage; if her marriage didn't work out she could divorce her husband by the mere act of returning to her parents. She mourned her dead by tearing her clothes and covering herself with ashes, and when she herself died was often shrouded in her wedding dress.

She was our native sister, the American Indian woman, and it is of her life and lore that Carolyn Niethammer writes in this rich tapestry of America's past and present.

Here, as it unfolded, is the chronology of the native American woman's life. Here are the birth rites of Caddo women from the Mississippi-Arkansas border, who bore their children alone by the banks of rivers and then immersed themselves and their babies in river water; here are Apache puberty ceremonies that are still carried on today, when the cost for the celebrations can run anywhere from one to six thousand dollars. Here are songs from the Night Dances of the Sioux, where girls clustered on one side of the lodge and boys congregated on the other; here is the Shawnee legend of the Corn Person and of Our Grandmother, the two female deities who ruled the earth. Far from the submissive, downtrodden "squaw" of popular myth, the native American woman emerges as a proud, sometimes stoic, always human individual from whom those who came after can learn much.

At a time when many contemporary American women are seeking alternatives to a life-style and role they have outgrown, Daughters of the Earth offers us an absorbing -- and illuminating -- legacy of dignity and purpose.

Contested Images: Women of Color in Popular Culture is a collection of 17 essays that analyze representations in popular culture of African American, Asian American, Latina, and Native American women. The anthology is divided into four parts: film images, beauty images, music, and television. The articles share two intellectual traditions: the authors, predominantly women of color, use an intersectionality perspective in their analysis of popular culture and the representation of women of color, and they identify popular culture as a site of conflict and contestation. Instructors will find this collection to be a convenient textbook for women's studies; media studies; race, class, and gender courses; ethnic studies; and more.

Africa has emerged as a prime arena of global health interventions that focus on particular diseases and health emergencies. These are framed increasingly in terms of international concerns about security, human rights, and humanitarian crisis. This presents a stark contrast to the 1960s and '70s, when many newly independent African governments pursued the vision of public health "for all," of comprehensive health care services directed by the state with support from foreign donors. These initiatives often failed, undermined by international politics, structural adjustment, and neoliberal policies, and by African states themselves. Yet their traces remain in contemporary expectations of and yearnings for a more robust public health.
This volume explores how medical professionals and patients, government officials, and ordinary citizens approach questions of public health as they navigate contemporary landscapes of NGOs and transnational projects, faltering state services, and expanding privatization. Its contributors analyze the relations between the public and the private providers of public health, from the state to new global biopolitical formations of political institutions, markets, human populations, and health. Tensions and ambiguities animate these complex relationships, suggesting that the question of what public health actually is in Africa cannot be taken for granted. Offering historical and ethnographic analyses, the volume develops an anthropology of public health in Africa.

Contributors: P. Wenzel Geissler; Murray Last; Rebecca Marsland; Lotte Meinert; Benson A. Mulemi; Ruth J. Prince; and Noemi Tousignant.

Non-Indians have amassed extensive records of Shawnee leaders dating back to the era between the French and Indian War and the War of 1812. But academia has largely ignored the stories of these leaders' descendants - including accounts from the Shawnees' own perspectives. The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma focuses on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century experiences of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, presenting a new brand of tribal history made possible by the emergence of tribal communities' own research centers and the resources afforded by the digital age. Offering various perspectives on the history of the Eastern Shawnees, this volume combines essays by leading and emerging scholars of Shawnee history with contributions by Eastern Shawnee citizens and interviews with tribal elders. Editor Stephen Warren introduces the collection, acknowledging that the questions and concerns of colonizers have dominated the themes of American Indian history for far too long. The essays that follow introduce readers to the story of the Eastern Shawnees and consider treaties with the U.S. government, laws impacting the tribe, and tribal leadership. They analyze the Eastern Shawnees' ways of telling the tribe's stories, detail Shawnee experiences of federal boarding schools, and recount stories of their chiefs. The book concludes with five tribal members' life histories, told in their own words. The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma is the culmination of years of collaboration between tribal citizens and Native as well as non-Native scholars. Providing a fuller, more nuanced, and more complete portrayal of Native American historical experiences, this book serves as a resource for both future scholars and tribal members to reconstruct the Eastern Shawnee past and thereby better understand the present. This book was made possible through generous funding from the Administration for Native Americans.

Until its use declined in the nineteenth century, Indians of the southeastern United States were devoted to a caffeinated beverage commonly known as black drink. Brewed from the parched leaves of the yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria), black drink was used socially and ceremonially. In certain ritual purification rites, Indians would regurgitate after drinking the tea. This study details botanical, clinical, spiritual, historical, and material aspects of black drink, including its importance not only to Native Americans, but also to many of their European-American contemporaries.

Ancient Mound Builders created thousands of sacred earthen structures all across America. These native Indian cultures flourished for 4000 years before the first settlers came, creating mysterious giant earthen shapes of birds, bears, snakes, and alligator mounds, along with great conical mounds that held the bones of their leaders and loved ones. Who were these sophisticated and spiritual ancient people? They were talented shamans, farmers, hunters, fishermen, artists, and midwives who held special reverence for Mother Earth. Learn more about them and see some of their amazing artistic achievements inside "The Mound Builders of Ancient North America." Study a detailed TimeLine that helps to place everything in exact perspective. See what was also happening elsewhere in the world during the Mound Builders heydays. Surprising fetes of engineering and geographic earthworks remind us that these ancient cultures held impressive worldviews.

This book details the intersections between the personal life and exceptional writing of Louise Erdrich, perhaps the most critically and economically successful American Indian author ever. Known for her engrossing explorations of Native American themes, Louise Erdrich has created award-winning novels, poetry, stories, and more for three decades. Tracks on a Page: Louise Erdrich, Her Life and Works examines Erdrich's oeuvre in light of her experiences, her gender, and her heritage as the daughter of a Chippewa mother and German-American father. The book covers Erdrich from her birth to the present, offering fresh information and perspectives based on original research. By interweaving biography and literary analysis, the author, who is herself Native American, gives readers a complete and nuanced understanding of the ways in which Erdrich's identity as a woman and an American Indian have influenced her life and her writing. Tracks on a Page is the first, book-length work to approach Erdrich and her works from a non-Euro-Western perspective. It contextualizes both life and writing through the lenses of American Indian history, politics, economics, and culture, offering readers new and intriguing ways to appreciate this outstanding author. Chronological organization takes the reader from Erdrich's childhood, through her years at Dartmouth College, her personal life, and her career as a writer

Lincoln's war, the North's attack on the South, took the life of 622,000 citizens and altered the government's structure. Marx and Engels watched the war from afar and applauded his efforts. The media and our government-controlled schools have presented a deceptive view of every historical event and have whitewashed the most scandalous political leaders and vilified leaders who have worked in the best interests of the people. Following Lincoln's precedent-setting war, we have been repeatedly lied into wars. Currently, our young men and women shed their blood in foreign lands while well-connected corporations make massive profits rebuilding the infrastructure that other corporations have demolished. Meanwhile, our politicians, possessing inside knowledge, grow richer through their investments and the bribes they accept from deep-pocketed lobbyists. They have not listened to their constituents for decades. CIA thugs, in behalf of the corporations, commit terrorist acts in other countries which the U.S. government and media blame on the so-called insurgents. In 2010, the Pentagon paid the following to the top five out of 100 (1) Lockheed Martin Corp. $16,700,588,328; (2) Northrop Grumman Corp. $11,145,533,497; (3) Boeing Co. $10,462,626,196; (4) Raytheon Co. $6,727,232,555; (5) Science Applications International Corp. $5,474,482,583. Yet, throughout the country, vital infrastructure is crumbling and politicians are selling taxpayer-funded public properties to private interests as a profitable venture. The new owners exploit the public by raising service rates while diminishing the services.