David Martinez – författare

Nobody around David Martinez saw how quickly he was breaking apart except for his younger brother, Mike. They stood out in Idaho: Black and Brazilian American in a Mormon community that, in the years before David’s birth, considered Black people ineligible for salvation. The Martinez brothers were raised to be “good boys,” definitely not to get high, skateboard all night, or get arrested, all of which they did with zeal. Then their paths diverged. David went on a two-year mission trip to Brazil, and Mike stayed in the States, finding himself in and out of prison. When David returned, in the middle of the still-unnamed opioid epidemic, things had irrevocably changed, and in 2021, Mike unexpectedly died in prison.Martinez writes with a serrated edge, as viscerally felt as an exposed nerve, and transforms from a stoic boy constantly seeking escape to a vulnerable man eager to contextualise the legacies and losses that have shaped his life. With a wild, ragged velocity, Martinez defies a linear telling of his life and tackles topics from abuse and racism to writing and capturing the meaning of the specific nostalgia of saudade.Bones Worth Breaking is a portrait of the unbreakable bond between brothers who were robbed of the chance to grow old together, and a reckoning with the brutal global forces that let so many poor young men of colour fall perilously through the cracks.

David MartÍnez's anthology is a terrific resource for all of us in Native American Studies and for American Indian people in general. These writings demonstrate the richness and depth of an intellectual heritage that deserves the sort of focus and attention offered so abundantly here.―Robert Warrior, University of IllinoisIn The American Indian Intellectual Tradition, David MartÍnez presents thirty-one essays that exemplify Native American intellectual culture across two centuries. The occasion for many of the pieces was the exertion of colonial and then federal power to limit or obliterate the authority and autonomy of American Indians. The writers featured were activists for their home communities and for all indigenous people.MartÍnez divides his book into three critical epochs of American Indian history with section introductions that provide political context for the selected readings. Works by Vine Deloria Jr., Elias Johnson, Laura Cornelius Kellogg, Susette La Flesche, D'Arcy McNickle, Samson Occom, John Ross, and twenty-one other writers and community leaders are accompanied by bibliographies. The essays display the diversity and sophistication of American Indian writers; although MartÍnez's approach is pan-Indian, each author is situated in terms of his or her specific culture, politics, and historical context. At the same time, throughout the book there are significant recurring themes that enable the reader to appreciate the scope of the American Indian intellectual tradition and the common cultural standpoints that bind these various writers together.

David MartÍnez's anthology is a terrific resource for all of us in Native American Studies and for American Indian people in general. These writings demonstrate the richness and depth of an intellectual heritage that deserves the sort of focus and attention offered so abundantly here.―Robert Warrior, University of IllinoisIn The American Indian Intellectual Tradition, David MartÍnez presents thirty-one essays that exemplify Native American intellectual culture across two centuries. The occasion for many of the pieces was the exertion of colonial and then federal power to limit or obliterate the authority and autonomy of American Indians. The writers featured were activists for their home communities and for all indigenous people.MartÍnez divides his book into three critical epochs of American Indian history with section introductions that provide political context for the selected readings. Works by Vine Deloria Jr., Elias Johnson, Laura Cornelius Kellogg, Susette La Flesche, D'Arcy McNickle, Samson Occom, John Ross, and twenty-one other writers and community leaders are accompanied by bibliographies. The essays display the diversity and sophistication of American Indian writers; although MartÍnez's approach is pan-Indian, each author is situated in terms of his or her specific culture, politics, and historical context. At the same time, throughout the book there are significant recurring themes that enable the reader to appreciate the scope of the American Indian intellectual tradition and the common cultural standpoints that bind these various writers together.

A major contribution to O’odham studies and Southwest history, Martínez offers a new perspective on the life and knowledge of Komal Hok, an important Akimel O'odham storyteller also known as “Thin Leather.”The Maze of History refers to the man-in-the-maze symbol that has adorned O’odham baskets for generations. According to O’odham oral tradition, the maze is the home to I’itoi, “our elder brother,” the sacred being that taught ancestral O’odham their way of doing things, their himdag. Moreover, I’itoi’s home is in the mountains everywhere that O’odham dwell, be it South Mountain, Baboquivari, or Sierra Pinacate.Komal Hok (born ca. 1827), also known as Thin Leather, was an Akimel O’odham elder and storyteller from Sacaton Village who shared his people’s origin narrative with anthropologist Frank Russell, archaeologist Jesse Walter Fewkes, and writer J. William Lloyd. With the help of translators Jose Lewis Brennan and Edward H. Wood (both O’odham), Komal Hok created an epic legacy that continues to inform the direction of O’odham studies to this day. However, his uniqueness in modern O’odham history has never been fully appreciated and honored until now.The culmination of David Martínez’s twenty-five years of studying, writing, and teaching about O’odham culture and history, The Maze of History at last captures the significance of Komal Hok’s work as an O’odham intellectual. Komal Hok’s recounting of O’odham origins forms the basis of an O’odham sense of history, which is based on their relationship with their jeved—the earth, soil, land—that was given them at the time of creation. Here is where I’itoi, along with Jeved mahkai (Earth medicine maker), Bán (Coyote), and Nuwi (Buzzard), shaped the first people into O’odham.

A major contribution to O’odham studies and Southwest history, Martínez offers a new perspective on the life and knowledge of Komal Hok, an important Akimel O'odham storyteller also known as “Thin Leather.” The Maze of History refers to the man-in-the-maze symbol that has adorned O’odham baskets for generations. According to O’odham oral tradition, the maze is the home to I’itoi, “our elder brother,” the sacred being that taught ancestral O’odham their way of doing things, their himdag. Moreover, I’itoi’s home is in the mountains everywhere that O’odham dwell, be it South Mountain, Baboquivari, or Sierra Pinacate. Komal Hok (born ca. 1827), also known as Thin Leather, was an Akimel O’odham elder and storyteller from Sacaton Village who shared his people’s origin narrative with anthropologist Frank Russell, archaeologist Jesse Walter Fewkes, and writer J. William Lloyd. With the help of translators Jose Lewis Brennan and Edward H. Wood (both O’odham), Komal Hok created an epic legacy that continues to inform the direction of O’odham studies to this day. However, his uniqueness in modern O’odham history has never been fully appreciated and honored until now. The culmination of David Martínez’s twenty-five years of studying, writing, and teaching about O’odham culture and history, The Maze of History at last captures the significance of Komal Hok’s work as an O’odham intellectual. Komal Hok’s recounting of O’odham origins forms the basis of an O’odham sense of history, which is based on their relationship with their jeved—the earth, soil, land—that was given them at the time of creation. Here is where I’itoi, along with Jeved mahkai (Earth medicine maker), Bán (Coyote), and Nuwi (Buzzard), shaped the first people into O’odham.

Charles Eastman (1858–1939) straddled two worlds in his life and writing. The author of Indian Boyhood was raised in the traditional Dakota (Sioux) way after the upheaval of the 1862 U.S.–Dakota War. His father later persuaded Ohiyesa to take a white name, study Christianity, and attend medical school. But when Eastman served as a government doctor during the Wounded Knee massacre, he became disillusioned about Americans' capacity to live up to their own ideals.While Eastman's contemporaries viewed him as "a great American and a true philosopher," Indian scholars have long dismissed Eastman's work as assimilationist. Now, for the first time, his philosophy as manifested in his writing is examined in detail. David Martínez explores Eastman's views on the U.S.–Dakota War, Dakota and Ojibwe relations, Dakota sacred history, and citizenship in the Progressive Era, claiming for him a long overdue place in America's intellectual pantheon.

2019 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleIn Life of the Indigenous Mind David MartÍnez examines the early activism, life, and writings of Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005), the most influential Indigenous activist and writer of the twentieth century and one of the intellectual architects of the Red Power movement. An experienced activist, administrator, and political analyst, Deloria was motivated to activism and writing by his work as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, and he came to view discourse on tribal self-determination as the most important objective for making a viable future for tribes.In this work of both intellectual and activist history, MartÍnez assesses the early life and legacy of Deloria’s “Red Power Tetralogy,” his most powerful and polemical works: Custer Died for Your Sins (1969), We Talk, You Listen (1970), God Is Red (1973), and Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties (1974). Deloria’s gift for combining sharp political analysis with a cutting sense of humor rattled his adversaries as much as it delighted his growing readership.Life of the Indigenous Mind reveals how Deloria’s writings addressed Indians and non-Indians alike. It was in the spirit of protest that Deloria famously and infamously confronted the tenets of Christianity, the policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the theories of anthropology. The concept of tribal self-determination that he initiated both overturned the presumptions of the dominant society, including various “Indian experts,” and asserted that tribes were entitled to the rights of independent sovereign nations in their relationship with the United States, be it legally, politically, culturally, historically, or religiously.

2019 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleIn Life of the Indigenous Mind David MartÍnez examines the early activism, life, and writings of Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005), the most influential Indigenous activist and writer of the twentieth century and one of the intellectual architects of the Red Power movement. An experienced activist, administrator, and political analyst, Deloria was motivated to activism and writing by his work as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, and he came to view discourse on tribal self-determination as the most important objective for making a viable future for tribes.In this work of both intellectual and activist history, MartÍnez assesses the early life and legacy of Deloria’s “Red Power Tetralogy,” his most powerful and polemical works: Custer Died for Your Sins (1969), We Talk, You Listen (1970), God Is Red (1973), and Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties (1974). Deloria’s gift for combining sharp political analysis with a cutting sense of humor rattled his adversaries as much as it delighted his growing readership.Life of the Indigenous Mind reveals how Deloria’s writings addressed Indians and non-Indians alike. It was in the spirit of protest that Deloria famously and infamously confronted the tenets of Christianity, the policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the theories of anthropology. The concept of tribal self-determination that he initiated both overturned the presumptions of the dominant society, including various “Indian experts,” and asserted that tribes were entitled to the rights of independent sovereign nations in their relationship with the United States, be it legally, politically, culturally, historically, or religiously.