Synopses & Reviews
Shadow Tribe offers the first in-depth history of the Pacific Northwest's Columbia River Indians -- the defiant River People whose ancestors refused to settle on the reservations established for them in central Oregon and Washington. Largely overlooked in traditional accounts of tribal dispossession and confinement, their story illuminates the persistence of off-reservation Native communities and the fluidity of their identities over time. Cast in the imperfect light of federal policy and dimly perceived by non-Indian eyes, the flickering presence of the Columbia River Indians has followed the treaty tribes down the difficult path marked out by the forces of American colonization.--Based on more than a decade of archival research and conversations with Native people, Andrew Fisher's groundbreaking book traces the waxing and waning of Columbia River Indian identity from the mid-nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries. Fisher explains how, despite policies designed to destroy them, the shared experience of being off the reservation and at odds with recognized tribes forged far-flung river communities into a loose confederation called the Columbia River Tribe. Environmental changes and political pressures eroded their autonomy during the second half of the twentieth century, yet many River People continued to honor a common heritage of ancestral connection to the Columbia, resistance to the reservation system, devotion to cultural traditions, and detachment from the institutions of federal control and tribal governance. At times, their independent and uncompromising attitude has challenged the sovereignty of the recognized tribes, earning Columbia River Indians a reputation as radicals and troublemakers even among their own people.--Shadow Tribe is part of a new wave of historical scholarship that shows Native American identities to be socially constructed, layered, and contested rather than fixed, singular, and unchanging. From his vantage point on the Columbia, Fisher has written a pioneering study that uses regional history to broaden our understanding of how Indians thwarted efforts to confine and define their existence within narrow reservation boundaries.--Andrew H. Fisher is assistant professor of history at the College of William and Mary.--"Andrew Fisher has written a superb book that tells a story of near-forgotten Indians who refused to move to the reservations and continued to live a traditional life along their beloved Columbia River. The dramatic story of their survival from the nineteenth deep into the twentieth centuries is a moving narrative that is both authentic and colorful." -Clifford Trafzer, University of California Riverside--"Shadow Tribe focuses on Indian communities that remained and evolved within important historic areas not on the reservations, in which the communities' complicated relationship with the Indian peoples on the reservations is as much a part of the story as the engagement with non-Indian society outside of the reservations." -John Shurts, author of Indian Reserved Water Rights-
Review
"He treats two significant but often neglected themes with great clarity: first, the status of off-reservation Indian communities . . . and second, the related and important topics of racial categorization and communal identity building in these off-reservation areas." -Brian Gillis, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Spring 2011
Review
and#8220;Hahnand#8217;s book is good ethnohistory. . . . His study should attract considerable debate among anthropologists.and#8221;and#8212;Gary Clayton Anderson, American Historical Review
Review
and#8220;This fascinating account of the early political history of the Creeks (Muscogee) is heavy reading. . . . This book contains extensive notes, bibliographical sources, maps, and an index. I recommend it for research collections on Native American Studies in tribal colleges and universities and highly recommend it for any Muscogee researching his/her roots.and#8221;and#8212;Betty J. Mason, Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education
Review
and#8220;The Invention of the Creek Nation is a scholarly piece of work augmented by archaeological evidence and a wealth of primary sources. . . . [It] is a valuable source of information not only for historical and political students of the Creek and Native American studies, but also for the general historian interested in relations within the colonial era of the American Southeast between 1670 and 1763.and#8221;and#8212;Dewi I. Ball, Southern Historian
Review
and#8220;This beautifully written book draws on the archeological evidence and uses the frequently neglected Spanish source material. . . . It is a truly important document on the history of the Creeks.and#8221;and#8212;Rodney M. Peck, The Chesopiean
Review
and#8220;This work takes Creek history to a whole new level.and#8221;and#8212;Michael P. Morris, Journal of Southern History
Review
and#8220;With fine-grained use of Spanish, English, and French sources, Hahn writes a compelling, page-turner narrative largely organized around a succession of Creek political personalities. . . . Hahnand#8217;s strong suit is his look at Creek international relations and how international relations led to the invention of the Creek nation.and#8221;and#8212;Robbie Ethridge, Journal of American History
Review
and#8220;Performing Indigeneities lays out a sophisticated treatment of the cross-cultural politics embodied in the productive but hard-to-define category and#8216;indigeneity.and#8217; Laura Graham and Glenn Pennyand#8217;s ground-breaking collection brilliantly guides readers through the emergence and renegotiation of such tropes as cultural heritage, human rights, environment, and aboriginality.and#8221;and#8212;Philip J. Deloria, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan and author of Indians in Unexpected Places
Review
and#8220;This terrific set of essays brings together some of the best and freshest thinking in a field burgeoning with creativity. Native arts and activism are flourishing, and so are interdisciplinary conversations about Indigeneity. Every chapter offers surprises: gems of insight from unexpected angles. This is a bold step forward.and#8221;and#8212;Beth A. Conklin, chair of the Department of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University and author of Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society
Review
and#8220;One is not born indigenous. Thatand#8217;s the far-reaching upshot of this remarkable collection, which radically expands our notion of indigeneity. Along with their collaborators, Laura Graham and Glenn Penny break with any sense of essential selfhood, giving us a performative and dialogic concept that sees the indigenous as a creative space of collective imagination.and#8221;and#8212;Matti Bunzl, professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois
Review
"Shorter breaks new ground in relating history and ethnography, in contributing to the study of Native American religions, and in emphasizing the significance of spatial relationships to cultural realities. The book will be appreciated as a contribution to Yoeme ethnography, but also for its general importance in religious studies, performance theory, ethnicity, and ethnohistory. Shorter's interests cross many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences; this is a book worth reading."and#8212;Raymond J. Demallie, Journal of Folklore Research
Review
and#8220;An extraordinary work of engaged ethnography, We Will Dance Our Truth questions familiar oppositions of myth and history, orality and writing. . . . He writes with poetic sensitivity, intellectual rigor, and a deep commitment to Yoeme sovereignty.and#8221;and#8212;James Clifford, author of The Predicament of Culture
Review
and#8220;Detailed and nuanced. David Shorter appropriately and impressively tips the balance in favor of the people whose stories he tells as he grapples with their history and how scholars can most effectively be in conversation with those they write about.and#8221;and#8212;Robert Warrior, author of Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions
Review
"I strongly recommend this book. It will break new ground and revive old ways of viewing narrative, religion, performance, and ethnography. It is a wonderful contribution to the literature of Native American and Indigenous studies and should prove incredibly useful in graduate (and some undergraduate) courses everywhere. I for one cannot wait to introduce my students to We Will Dance Our Truth."and#8212;Jeffrey P. Shepherd, Studies in American Indian Literatures
Review
"While the work is centrally about the Yoeme of Potam . . . it is also about how we might conduct anthropological work with indigenous peoples who are concerned more than ever that whatever we write be of use to them."and#8212;Kathleen Fine-Dare, Journal of Anthropological Research
Review
"We Will Dance Our Truth: Yaqui History in Yoeme Performances is an engagingly written and important book. . . . I enthusiastically recommend this book for those concerned with colonialism and conversion, ritual performances, indigenous epistemologies, religious studies, and Native American verbal art and performance."and#8212;Anthony K. Webster, Journal of American Folklore
Review
"[Murder State is] one of the most important works ever published on the history of American Indians in California in the mid-nineteenth century."and#8212;Steven Newcomb, Indian Country
Review
and#8220;A significant historical account detailing white pioneers perpetrating genocide against California Indians. . . . [Employs] compelling evidence.and#8221;and#8212;Clifford E. Trafzer,
Journal of American Studiesand#160;
Review
and#8220;Lindsayand#8217;s methodology and conclusions . . . highlight important questions for scholars to ask of frontier societies, their legal systems, and their citizens.and#8221;and#8212;Brenden Rensink,
Western Historical Quarterlyand#160;
Review
and#8220;Perhaps the most provocative aspect of his book is Lindsayand#8217;s connection of American democracy to the killing of Indians.and#8221;and#8212;Robert G. Lee,
American Historical ReviewReview
and#8220;Democracy and genocide are two activities that most would declare antagonistic. Yet Brendan Lindsay presents primary evidence that reveals the hatred and murderous acts committed by early Californians and government officials, as a grassroots movement, to settle the and#8216;Golden Stateand#8217; by exterminating and dispossessing Native peoples of their ancestral homelands.and#8221;and#8212;Jack Norton, Hupa historian and emeritus professor of Native American studies, Humboldt State University
Review
and#8220;Historian Brendan Lindsay has documented the attempted extermination of Californiaand#8217;s first people and provided a detailed, comprehensive historical treatment of Californiaand#8217;s genocide. He offers a groundbreaking study that will change the historiography of California and genocide studiesand#8212;a penetrating but readable book that will quickly become a classic.and#8221;and#8212;Larry Myers (Pomo), executive secretary of the California Native American Heritage Commission
Review
"Indian slavery was a real, prolonged, contradictory, catastrophic, and essential facet of native history and American colonial history. Unlike Hernando de Soto's slaving and stealing expedition in the mid-sixteenth-century Southeast, this collection leaves us with a wealth of pearls."and#8212;Tiya Miles, Journal of American History
Review
"A splendid anthology, full of rigorously researched and strongly written essays that will rapidly become must reading for historians of early America."and#8212;P. Harvey, CHOICE
Review
"These powerful and well-written essays, collected in a clearly organized volume, shed valuable light on a long-neglected aspect of colonial history. Indian slavery can no longer be ignored."and#8212;Mikaand#235;la M. Adams, North Carolina Historical Review
Review
"This collection brings much needed scholarly attention to the many faces of Indian slavery and hopefully indicates a growing interest on an exciting topic."and#8212;Janne Lahti, Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Review
"This volume is valuable to students and scholars who study North American Indians, New World slavery, European expansion and colonization, and the history of colonial North America more generally."and#8212;Heidi Scott Giusto, Florida Historical Quarterly
Review
"This is a tremendously valuable book. . . . There is no better single-volume introduction to the history of Indian slavery in early America. All serious students of early American history, the colonial South, and slavery in general will benefit from time spent with this edited collection."and#8212;Jon Parmenter, Journal of Southern History
Synopsis
Drawing on archaeological evidence and often-neglected Spanish source material,
The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670and#8211;1763 explores the political history of the Creek Indians of Georgia and Alabama and the emergence of the Creek Nation during the colonial era in the American Southeast. In part a study of Creek foreign relations, this book examines the creation and application of the and#8220;neutralityand#8221; policyand#8212;defined here as the Coweta Resolution of 1718and#8212;for which the Creeks have long been famous, in an era marked by the imperial struggle for the American South.
Also a study of the culture of internal Creek politics, this work shows the persistence of a and#8220;traditionaland#8221; kinship-based political system in which town and clan affiliation remained supremely important. These traditions, coupled with political intrusions by the regionand#8217;s three European powers, promoted the spread of Creek factionalism and mitigated the development of a regional Creek Confederacy. But while traditions endured, the struggle to maintain territorial integrity against Britain also promoted political innovation. In this context the territorially defined Creek Nation emerged as a legal concept in the era of the French and Indian War, as imperial policies of an earlier era gave way to the territorial politics that marked the beginning of a new one.
and#160;
Synopsis
This engaging collection of essays discusses the complexities of and#8220;beingand#8221; indigenous in public spaces. Laura R. Graham and H. Glenn Penny bring together a set of highly recognized junior and senior scholars, including indigenous scholars, from a variety of fields to provoke critical thinking about the many ways in which individuals and social groups construct and display unique identities around the world. The case studies in
Performing Indigeneity underscore the social, historical, and immediate contextual factors at play when indigenous people make decisions about when, how, why, and who can and#8220;beand#8221; indigenous in public spaces.
and#160;Performing Indigeneity invites readers to consider how groups and individuals think about performance and display and focuses attention on the ways that public spheres, both indigenous and nonindigenous ones, have received these performances. The essays demonstrate that performance and display are essential to the creation and persistence of indigeneity, while also presenting the conundrum that in many cases and#8220;indigeneityand#8221; excludes some of the voices or identities that the category purports to represent.
and#160;and#160;
Synopsis
In this innovative, performative approach to the expressive culture of the Yaqui (Yoeme) peoples of the Sonora and Arizona borderlands, David Delgado Shorter provides an altogether fresh understanding of Yoeme worldviews. Based on extensive field study, Shorterand#8217;s interpretation of the communityand#8217;s ceremonies and oral traditions as forms of and#8220;historical inscriptionand#8221; reveals new meanings of their legends of the Talking Tree, their Testamento narrative of myth and history, and their fabled deer dances, funerary rites, and church processions.
Working collaboratively with Yoeme communities, Shorter has produced a scrupulous investigation that challenges received wisdom from both anthropological and New Age perspectives, demonstrates how Yoeme performances provide a counterdiscourse to earlier understandings of colonialism and conquest, and updates our knowledge of contemporary Yoeme society. Shorterand#8217;s vivid descriptions and penetrating analyses vividly show how todayand#8217;s Yoeme peoples navigate the tribulations and opportunities of the twenty-first century.
Synopsis
When the U.S. government ended its relationship with dozens of Native American tribes and bands between 1953 and 1966, it was in fact engaging in a massive social experiment. Congress enacted the program, known as termination, in the name of and#8220;freeingand#8221; the Indians from government restrictions and improving their quality of life. Eliminating the federal status of more than nine dozen tribes across the country, however, plunged many of their nearly thirteen thousand members into even deeper levels of poverty and eroded the tribal peopleand#8217;s sense of Native identity. Beginning in 1973 and extending over a twenty-year period, the terminated tribes, one by one, persuaded Congress to restore their ties to the federal government. Nonetheless, so much damage had been done that even today the restored tribes struggle to overcome the problems created by those terminations more than half a century ago.
Roberta Ulrich provides a concise overview of all the terminations and restorations of Native American tribes from 1953 to 2006 and explores the enduring policy implications for Native peoples. This is the first book to consider all the terminations and restorations in the twentieth century as part of continuing policy while simultaneously detailing some of the individual tribal differences. Drawing from congressional records, interviews with tribal members, and other primary sources, Ulrich examines the causes and effects of termination and restoration from both sides.
Synopsis
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Euro-American citizenry of California carried out mass genocide against the Native population of their state, using the processes and mechanisms of democracy to secure land and resources for themselves and their private interests. The murder, rape, and enslavement of thousands of Native people were legitimized by notions of democracyand#8212;in this case mob ruleand#8212;through a discreetly organized and brutally effective series of petitions, referenda, town hall meetings, and votes at every level of California government.
and#160;Murder State is a comprehensive examination of these events and their early legacy. Preconceptions about Native Americans as shaped by the popular press and by immigrantsand#8217; experiences on the Overland Trail to California were used to further justify the elimination of Native people in the newcomersand#8217; quest for land. The allegedly and#8220;violent natureand#8221; of Native people was often merely their reaction to the atrocities committed against them as they were driven from their ancestral lands and alienated from their traditional resources.
and#160;In this narrative history employing numerous primary sources and the latest interdisciplinary scholarship on genocide, Brendan C. Lindsay examines the darker side of California history, one rarely studied in detail, and the motives of both Native Americans and Euro-Americans at the time. Murder State calls attention to the misuse of democracy to justify and commit genocide.
Synopsis
European enslavement of American Indians began with Christopher Columbusand#8217;s arrival in the New World. The slave trade expanded with European colonies, and though African slave labor filled many needs, huge numbers of Americaand#8217;s indigenous peoples continued to be captured and forced to work as slaves. Although central to the process of colony building in what became the United States, this phenomena has received scant attention from historians.
Indian Slavery in Colonial America, edited by Alan Gallay, examines the complicated dynamics of Indian enslavement. How and why Indians became both slaves of the Europeans and suppliers of slaveryand#8217;s victims is the subject of this book. The essays in this collection use Indian slavery as a lens through which to explore both Indian and European societies and their interactions, as well as relations between and among Native groups.
About the Author
Laura R. Graham is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Iowa. She is a filmmaker and author of
Performing Dreams: Discourses of Immortality among the Xavante Indians of Central Brazil.and#160;H. Glenn Penny is an associate professor of modern European history at the University of Iowa. His most recent book is
Kindred by Choice: Germans and American Indians since 1800.