Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies – serie

What does it mean to be a Navajo (Diné) person today? What does it mean to ""respect tradition""? How can a contemporary life be informed by the traditions of the past? These are the kinds of questions addressed by contributors to this unusual and pathbreaking book.All of the contributors are coming to personal terms with a phrase that underpins the matrix of Diné culture: Sa'ah Naagháí Bik'eh Hózh==n. Often referred to simply as SNBH, the phrase can be translated in many ways but is generally understood to mean ""one's journey of striving to live a long, harmonious life."" The book offers a variety of perspectives of Diné men and women on the Diné cultural paradigm that is embedded in SNBH. Their writings represent embodied knowledge grounded in a way of knowing that connects thought, speech, experience, history, tradition, and land. Some of the contributors are scholars. Some are Diné who are fighting for justice and prosperity for the Navajo Nation. Some are poets and artists. They are united in working to preserve both intellectual and cultural sovereignty for Diné peoples. And their contributions exemplify how Indigenous peoples are creatively applying tools of decolonization and critical research to re-create Indigenous thought and culture in a present day that rarely resembles the days of their ancestors.More than 300,000 people self-identify as Diné today. Every one must grapple with how to make a life that acknowledges Sa'ah Naagháí Bik'eh Hózh==n. Diné Perspectives is unique in bringing such personal journeys to the public eye.

Native Studies Keywords explores selected concepts in Native studies and the words commonly used to describe them, words whose meanings have been insufficiently examined. This edited volume focuses on the following eight concepts: sovereignty, land, indigeneity, nation, blood, tradition, colonialism, and indigenous knowledge. Each section includes three or four essays and provides definitions, meanings, and significance to the concept, lending a historical, social, and political context.Take sovereignty, for example. The word has served as the battle cry for social justice in Indian Country. But what is the meaning of sovereignty? Native peoples with diverse political beliefs all might say they support sovereignty—without understanding fully the meaning and implications packed in the word.The field of Native studies is filled with many such words whose meanings are presumed, rather than articulated or debated. Consequently, the foundational terms within Native studies always have multiple and conflicting meanings. These terms carry the colonial baggage that has accrued from centuries of contested words.Native Studies Keywords is a genealogical project that looks at the history of words that claim to have no history. It is the first book to examine the foundational concepts of Native American studies, offering multiple perspectives and opening a critical new conversation.

Despite centuries of colonization, many Indigenous peoples' cultures remain distinct in their ancestral territories, even in today's globalized world. Yet they exist often within countries that hardly recognize their existence. Struggles for political recognition and cultural respect have occurred historically and continue to challenge Native American nations in Montana and Sámi people of northern Scandinavia in their efforts to remain and thrive as who they are as Indigenous peoples. In some ways the Indigenous struggles on the two continents have been different, but in many other ways, they are similar.Mapping Indigenous Presence presents a set of comparative Indigenous studies essays with contemporary perspectives, attesting to the importance of the roles Indigenous people have played as overseers of their own lands and resources, as creators of their own cultural richness, and as political entities capable of governing themselves. This interdisciplinary collection explores the Indigenous experience of Sámi peoples of Norway and Native Americans of Montana in their respective contexts—yet they are in many ways distinctly different within the body politic of their respective countries. Although they share similarities as Indigenous peoples within nation-states and inhabit somewhat similar geographies, their cultures and histories differ significantly.Sámi people speak several languages, while Indigenous Montana is made up of twelve different tribes with at least ten distinctly different languages; both peoples struggle to keep their Indigenous languages vital. The political relationship between Sámi people and the mainstream Norwegian government and culture has historically been less contentious that that of the Indigenous peoples of Montana with the United States and with the state of Montana, yet the Sámi and the Natives of Montana have struggled against both the ideology and the subsequent assimilation policy of the savagery-versus-civilization model. The authors attempt to increase understanding of how these two sets of Indigenous peoples share important ontological roots and postcolonial legacies, and how research may be used for their own self-determination and future directions.

With increasing speed, the emerging discipline of Critical Indigenous Studies is expanding and demarcating its territory from Indigenous studies through the work of a new generation of Indigenous scholars. Critical Indigenous Studies makes an important contribution to this expansion, disrupting the certainty of disciplinary knowledge produced in the twentieth century, when studying Indigenous peoples was primarily the domain of non-Indigenous scholars.Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s introductory essay provides a context for the emerging discipline. The volume is organised into three sections: the first includes essays that interrogate the embedded nature of Indigenous studies within academic institutions; the second explores the epistemology of the discipline; and the third section is devoted to understanding the locales of critical inquiry and practice.Each essay places and contemplates Critical Indigenous Studies within the context of First World nations, which continue to occupy Indigenous lands in the twenty-first century. The contributors include Aboriginal, Metis, Maori, Kanaka Maoli, Filipino-Pohnpeian, and Native American scholars working and writing through a shared legacy born of British and later U.S. imperialism. In these countries, Critical Indigenous Studies is flourishing and transitioning into a discipline, a knowledge/power domain where distinct work is produced, taught, researched, and disseminated by Indigenous scholars.

The last few decades have given rise to an electrifying movement of Native American activism, scholarship, and creative work challenging five hundred years of U.S. colonization of Native lands. Indigenous communities are envisioning and building their nations and are making decolonial strides toward regaining power from colonial forces.The Navajo Nation is among the many Native nations in the United States pushing back. In this new book, Diné author Lloyd L. Lee asks fellow Navajo scholars, writers, and community members to envision sovereignty for the Navajo Nation. He asks, (1) what is Navajo sovereignty, (2) how do various Navajo institutions exercise sovereignty, (3) what challenges does Navajo sovereignty face in the coming generations, and (4) how did individual Diné envision sovereignty?Contributors expand from the questions Lee lays before them to touch on how Navajo sovereignty is understood in Western law, how various institutions of the Navajo Nation exercise sovereignty, what challenges it faces in coming generations, and how individual Diné envision power, authority, and autonomy for the people.A companion to Diné Perspectives: Revitalizing and Reclaiming Navajo Thought, each chapter offers the contributors’ individual perspectives. The book, which is organized into four parts, discusses Western law’s view of Diné sovereignty, research, activism, creativity, and community, and Navajo sovereignty in traditional education. Above all, Lee and the contributing scholars and community members call for the rethinking of Navajo sovereignty in a way more rooted in Navajo beliefs, culture, and values.Contributors: Raymond D. Austin, Bidtah N. Becker, Manley A. Begay, Jr,Avery Denny, Larry W. Emerson, Colleen Gorman, Michelle L. Hale, Michael Lerma, Leola Tsinnajinnie.

Navigating CHamoru Poetry focuses on Indigenous CHamoru (Chamorro) poetry from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). Poet and scholar Craig Santos Perez brings critical attention to a diverse and intergenerational collection of CHamoru poetry and scholarship. Throughout this book, Perez develops an Indigenous literary methodology called “wayreading” to navigate the complex relationship between CHamoru poetry, cultural identity, decolonial politics, diasporic migrations, and native aesthetics. Perez argues that contemporary CHamoru poetry articulates new and innovative forms of indigeneity rooted in CHamoru customary arts and values, while also routed through the profound and traumatic histories of missionization, colonialism, militarism, and ecological imperialism.This book shows that CHamoru poetry has been an inspiring and empowering act of protest, resistance, and testimony in the decolonization, demilitarization, and environmental justice movements of Guåhan. Perez roots his intersectional cultural and literary analyses within the fields of CHamoru studies, Pacific Islands studies, Native American studies, and decolonial studies, using his research to assert that new CHamoru literature has been—and continues to be—a crucial vessel for expressing the continuities and resilience of CHamoru identities. This book is a vital contribution that introduces local, national, and international readers and scholars to contemporary CHamoru poetry and poetics.

Girl of New Zealand presents a nuanced insight into the way violence and colonial attitudes shaped the representation of Maori women and girls. Michelle Erai examines more than thirty images of Maori women alongside the records of early missionaries and settlers in Aotearoa, as well as comments by archivists and librarians, to shed light on how race, gender, and sexuality have been ascribed to particular bodies.Viewed through Maori, feminist, queer, and film theories, Erai show how photographs such as Girl of New Zealand (1793) and later photographs, cartoons, and travel advertising created and deployed a colonial optic. Girl of New Zealand reveals how the phantasm of the Maori woman has shown up in historical images, how such images shape our imagination, and how impossible it has become to maintain the delusion of the 'innocent eye.' Erai argues that the process of ascribing race, gender, sexuality, and class to imagined bodies can itself be a kind of violence.In the wake of the Me Too movement and other feminist projects, Erai's timely analysis speaks to the historical foundations of negative attitudes toward Indigenous Maori women in the eyes of colonial 'others' - outsiders from elsewhere who reflected their own desires and fears in their representations of the Indigenous inhabitants of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Erai resurrects Maori women from objectification and locates them firmly within Maori whanau and communities.

In the decades following the Mexican Revolution, nation builders, artists, and intellectuals manufactured ideologies that continue to give shape to popular understandings of indigeneity and mestizaje today. Postrevolutionary identity tropes emerged as part of broader efforts to reunify the nation and solve pressing social concerns, including what was posited in the racist rhetoric of the time as the 'Indian problem.' Through a complex alchemy of appropriation and erasure, indigeneity was idealized as a relic of the past while mestizaje was positioned as the race of the future. This period of identity formation coincided with a boom in technology that introduced a sudden proliferation of images on the streets and in homes: there were more photographs in newspapers, movie houses cropped up across the country, and printing houses mass-produced calendar art and postcards. La Raza Cosmética traces postrevolutionary identity ideals and debates as they were dispersed to the greater public through emerging visual culture.Critically examining beauty pageants, cinema, tourism propaganda, photography, murals, and more, Natasha Varner shows how postrevolutionary understandings of mexicanidad were fundamentally structured by legacies of colonialism, as well as shifting ideas about race, place, and gender. This interdisciplinary study smartly weaves together cultural history, Indigenous and settler colonial studies, film and popular culture analysis, and environmental and urban history. It also traces a range of Indigenous interventions in order to disrupt top-down understandings of national identity construction and to 'people' this history with voices that have all too often been entirely ignored.

In the heart of the Pacific Ocean, Hawai‘i exists at a global crosscurrent of indigeneity and race, homeland and diaspora, nation and globalization, sovereignty and imperialism. In order to better understand how settler colonialism works and thus move decolonization efforts forward, Staking Claim analyzes competing claims of identity, belonging, and political status in Hawai‘i.  Author Judy Rohrer brings together an analysis of racial formation and colonization in the islands through a study of legal cases, contemporary public discourse (local media and literature), and Hawai‘i scholarship. Her analysis exposes how racialization works to obscure—with the ultimate goal of eliminating—native Hawaiian indigeneity, homeland, nation, and sovereignty.Staking Claim argues that the dual settler colonial processes of racializing native Hawaiians (erasing their indigeneity), and indigenizing non-Hawaiians, enable the staking of non-Hawaiian claims to Hawai‘i. It encourages us to think beyond a settler-native binary by analyzing the ways racializations of Hawaiians and various non-Hawaiian settlers and arrivants bolster settler colonial claims, structures, and white supremacist ideologies.

Winner of the Native American Literature Symposium's Beatrice Medicine Award for Published MonographIn this first extensive study of contemporary Hawaiian literature, Brandy Nalani McDougall examines a vibrant selection of fiction, poetry, and drama by emerging and established Hawaiian authors, including Haunani-Kay Trask, John Dominis Holt, Imaikalani Kalahele, and Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. At the center of the analysis is a hallmark of Hawaiian aesthetics—kaona, the intellectual practice of hiding and finding meaning that encompasses the allegorical, the symbolic, the allusive, and the figurative.With a poet’s attention to detail, McDougall interprets examples of kaona, guiding readers through olelo no'eau (proverbs), mo‘olelo (literature and histories), and mooku'auhau (genealogies) alongside their contemporary literary descendants, unveiling complex layers of Hawaiian identity, culture, history, politics, and ecology.Throughout, McDougall asserts that “kaona connectivity” not only carries bright possibilities for connecting the present to the past, but it may also ignite a decolonial future. Ultimately, Finding Meaning affirms the tremendous power of Indigenous stories and genealogies to give activism and decolonization movements lasting meaning.

Transcontinental Dialogues brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous anthropologists from Mexico, Canada, and Australia who work at the intersections of Indigenous rights, advocacy, and action research. These engaged anthropologists explore how obligations manifest in differently situated alliances, how they respond to such obligations, and the consequences for anthropological practice and action.This volume presents a set of pieces that do not take the usual political or geographic paradigms as their starting point; instead, the particular dialogues from the margins presented in this book arise from a rejection of the geographic hierarchization of knowledge in which the Global South continues to be the space for fieldwork while the Global North is the place for its systematization and theorization. Instead, contributors in Transcontinental Dialogues delve into the interactions between anthropologists and the people they work with in Canada, Australia, and Mexico. This framework allows the contributors to explore the often unintended but sometimes devastating impacts of government policies (such as land rights legislation or justice initiatives for women) on Indigenous people's lives.Each chapter's author reflects critically on their own work as activist-­scholars. They offer examples of the efforts and challenges that anthropologists—Indigenous and non-Indigenous—confront when producing ­knowledge in alliances with Indigenous peoples. Mi'kmaq land rights, pan-Maya social movements, and Aboriginal title claims in rural and urban areas are just some of the cases that provide useful ground for reflection on and critique of challenges and opportunities for scholars, policy-makers, activists, allies, and community members.This volume is timely and innovative for using the disparate anthropological traditions of three regions to explore how the interactions between anthropologists and Indigenous peoples in supporting Indigenous activism have the potential to transform the production of knowledge within the historical colonial traditions of anthropology.

The last two decades have witnessed two political transformations that have deeply affected the lives of the indigenous peoples of Latin America. First, a discourse on indigeneity has emerged that links local struggles across the continent with transnational movements whose core issues are racism and political and cultural rights. Second, recent constitutional reforms in several countries recognize the multicultural character of Latin American countries and the legal pluralism that necessarily follows.Multiple InJustices synthesizes R. Aída Hernández Castillo’s twenty-four years of activism and research among indigenous women’s organizations in Latin America. As both feminist and critical anthropologist, Hernández Castillo analyzes the context of legal pluralism wherein the indigenous women of Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia struggle for justice. Through ethnographical research in community, state, and international justice, she reflects on the possibilities and limitations of customary, national, and international law for indigenous women.Colonialism, racism, and patriarchal violence have been fundamental elements for the reproduction of capitalism, Hernández Castillo asserts. Only a social policy that offers economic alternatives based on distribution of wealth and a real recognition of cultural and political rights of indigenous peoples can counter the damage of outside forces such as drug cartels on indigenous lands.She concludes that the theories of indigenous women on culture, tradition, and gender equity—as expressed in political documents, event reports, public discourse, and their intellectual writings—are key factors in the decolonization of Latin American feminisms and social justice for all.

In 2012 Kateri Tekakwitha became the first North American Indian to be canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, an event that American Indian Catholics have awaited for generations. Saint Kateri, known as the patroness of the environment, was born in 1656 near present-day Albany, New York, to an Algonquin mother and a Mohawk father. Tekakwitha converted to Christianity at age nineteen and took a vow of perpetual virginity. Her devotees have advocated for her sainthood since her death in 1680. Within historical Catholic writings, Tekakwitha is portrayed as a model of pious, submissive femininity. Indian Pilgrims moves beyond mainstream narratives and shows that Saint Kateri is a powerful feminine figure who inspires decolonizing activism in contemporary Indigenous peoples' lives.Author Michelle M. Jacob examines Saint Kateri's influence on and relation to three important themes—caring for the environment, building community, and reclaiming the Native feminine as sacred—and brings a Native feminist perspective to the story of Saint Kateri. The book demonstrates the power and potential of Indigenous decolonizing activism, as Saint Kateri's devotees claim the space of the Catholic Church to revitalize traditional cultural practices, teach and learn Indigenous languages, and address critical issues such as protecting Indigenous homelands from environmental degradation. The book is based on ethnographic research at multiple sites, including Saint Kateri's 2012 canonization festivities in Vatican City and Italy, the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation (New York and Canada), the Yakama Reservation (Washington), and the National Tekakwitha Conferences in Texas, North Dakota, and Louisiana. Through narratives from these events, Jacob addresses issues of gender justice—such as respecting the autonomy of women while encouraging collectivist thinking and strategizing—and seeks collective remedies that challenge colonial and capitalist filters.

All communities are teeming with energy, spirit, and knowledge, and Spiral to the Stars taps into and activates this dynamism to discuss Indigenous community planning from a Mvskoke perspective. This book poses questions about what community is, how to reclaim community, and how to embark on the process of envisioning what and where the community can be.Geographer Laura Harjo demonstrates that Mvskoke communities have what they need to dream, imagine, speculate, and activate the wishes of ancestors, contemporary kin, and future relatives - all in a present temporality - which is Indigenous futurity.Organized around four methodologies - radical sovereignty, community knowledge, collective power, and emergence geographies - Spiral to the Stars provides a path that departs from traditional community-making strategies, which are often extensions of the settler state. Readers are provided a set of methodologies to build genuine community relationships, knowledge, power, and spaces for themselves. Communities don't have to wait on experts because this book helps them activate their own possibilities and expertise. A detailed final chapter provides participatory tools that can be used in workshop settings or one on one.This book offers a critical and concrete map for community making that leverages Indigenous way-finding tools. Mvskoke narratives thread throughout the text, vividly demonstrating that theories come from lived and felt experiences. This is a must-have book for community organizers, radical pedagogists, and anyone wishing to empower and advocate for their community.

In this volume, contributors demonstrate the real-world application of Indigenous theory to the work they do in their own communities and how this work is driven by urgency, responsibility, and justice--work that is from the skin.In From the Skin, contributors describe how they apply the theories and concepts of Indigenous studies to their communities, programs, and organizations. These individuals reflect on and describe the ways the discipline has informed and influenced their community programs and actions. They show the ways these efforts advance disciplinary theories, methodologies, and praxes. Their chapters cover topics that include librarianship, health programs, community organizing, knowledge recovery, youth programming, and gendered violence. Through their examples, the contributors show how they negotiate their peoples’ knowledge systems with knowledge produced in Indigenous studies programs, demonstrating how they understand the relationship between their people, their nations, and academia.Editors J. Jeffery Clark and Elise Boxer propose and develop the term practitioner-theorist to describe how the contributors theorize and practice knowledge within and between their nations and academia. Because they live and exist in their community, these practitioner-theorists always consider how their thinking and actions benefit their people and nations. The practitioner-theorists of this volume envision and labor toward decolonial futures where Indigenous peoples and nations exist on their own terms.ContributorsElise BoxerRandi Lynn Boucher-GiagoShawn BrigmanJ. Jeffery ClarkNick EstesEric HardyShalene JosephJennifer MarleyBrittani R. OronaAlexander Soto

In this volume, contributors demonstrate the real-world application of Indigenous theory to the work they do in their own communities and how this work is driven by urgency, responsibility, and justice—work that is from the skin.In From the Skin, contributors describe how they apply the theories and concepts of Indigenous studies to their communities, programs, and organizations. These individuals reflect on and describe the ways the discipline has informed and influenced their community programs and actions. They show the ways these efforts advance disciplinary theories, methodologies, and praxes. Their chapters cover topics that include librarianship, health programs, community organizing, knowledge recovery, youth programming, and gendered violence. Through their examples, the contributors show how they negotiate their peoples’ knowledge systems with knowledge produced in Indigenous studies programs, demonstrating how they understand the relationship between their people, their nations, and academia.Editors J. Jeffery Clark and Elise Boxer propose and develop the term practitioner-theorist to describe how the contributors theorize and practice knowledge within and between their nations and academia. Because they live and exist in their community, these practitioner-theorists always consider how their thinking and actions benefit their people and nations. The practitioner-theorists of this volume envision and labor toward decolonial futures where Indigenous peoples and nations exist on their own terms.ContributorsElise BoxerRandi Lynn Boucher-GiagoShawn BrigmanJ. Jeffery ClarkNick EstesEric HardyShalene JosephJennifer MarleyBrittani R. OronaAlexander Soto

Navigating CHamoru Poetry focuses on Indigenous CHamoru (Chamorro) poetry from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). Poet and scholar Craig Santos Perez brings critical attention to a diverse and intergenerational collection of CHamoru poetry and scholarship. Throughout this book, Perez develops an Indigenous literary methodology called “wayreading” to navigate the complex relationship between CHamoru poetry, cultural identity, decolonial politics, diasporic migrations, and native aesthetics. Perez argues that contemporary CHamoru poetry articulates new and innovative forms of indigeneity rooted in CHamoru customary arts and values, while also routed through the profound and traumatic histories of missionization, colonialism, militarism, and ecological imperialism.This book shows that CHamoru poetry has been an inspiring and empowering act of protest, resistance, and testimony in the decolonization, demilitarization, and environmental justice movements of Guåhan. Perez roots his intersectional cultural and literary analyses within the fields of CHamoru studies, Pacific Islands studies, Native American studies, and decolonial studies, using his research to assert that new CHamoru literature has been—and continues to be—a crucial vessel for expressing the continuities and resilience of CHamoru identities. This book is a vital contribution that introduces local, national, and international readers and scholars to contemporary CHamoru poetry and poetics.

The border region of the Sonoran Desert, which spans southern Arizona in the United States and northern Sonora, Mexico, has attracted national and international attention. But what is less discussed in national discourses is the impact of current border policies on the Native peoples of the region. There are twenty-six tribal nations recognized by the U.S. federal government in the southern border region and approximately eight groups of Indigenous peoples in the United States with historical ties to Mexico—the Yaqui, the O’odham, the Cocopah, the Kumeyaay, the Pai, the Apaches, the Tiwa (Tigua), and the Kickapoo.Divided Peoples addresses the impact border policies have on traditional lands and the peoples who live there—whether environmental degradation, border patrol harassment, or the disruption of traditional ceremonies. Anthropologist Christina Leza shows how such policies affect the traditional cultural survival of Indigenous peoples along the border. The author examines local interpretations and uses of international rights tools by Native activists, counterdiscourse on the U.S.-Mexico border, and challenges faced by Indigenous border activists when communicating their issues to a broader public.Through ethnographic research with grassroots Indigenous activists in the region, the author reveals several layers of division—the division of Indigenous peoples by the physical U.S.-Mexico border, the divisions that exist between Indigenous perspectives and mainstream U.S. perspectives regarding the border, and the traditionalist/nontraditionalist split among Indigenous nations within the United States. Divided Peoples asks us to consider the possibilities for challenging settler colonialism both in sociopolitical movements and in scholarship about Indigenous peoples and lands.

After centuries of colonization, this important new work recovers the literary record of Oceti Sakowin (historically known to some as the Sioux Nation) women, who served as their tribes’ traditional culture keepers and culture bearers. In so doing, it furthers discussions about settler colonialism, literature, nationalism, and gender.Women and land form the core themes of the book, which brings tribal and settler colonial narratives into comparative analysis. Divided into two parts, the first section of the work explores how settler colonizers used the printing press and boarding schools to displace Oceti Sakowin women as traditional culture keepers and culture bearers with the goal of internally and externally colonizing the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota nations. The second section focuses on decolonization and explores how contemporary Oceti Sakowin writers and scholars have started to reclaim Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota literatures to decolonize and heal their families, communities, and nations.

After centuries of colonization, this important new work recovers the literary record of Oceti Sakowin (historically known to some as the Sioux Nation) women, who served as their tribes’ traditional culture keepers and culture bearers. In so doing, it furthers discussions about settler colonialism, literature, nationalism, and gender.Women and land form the core themes of the book, which brings tribal and settler colonial narratives into comparative analysis. Divided into two parts, the first section of the work explores how settler colonizers used the printing press and boarding schools to displace Oceti Sakowin women as traditional culture keepers and culture bearers with the goal of internally and externally colonizing the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota nations. The second section focuses on decolonization and explores how contemporary Oceti Sakowin writers and scholars have started to reclaim Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota literatures to decolonize and heal their families, communities, and nations.

This insightful volume delves into land-based DinÉ and Dene imaginaries as embodied in stories—oral, literary, and visual. Like the dynamism and kinetic facets of hÓzhǪ́,* Restoring Relations Through Stories takes us through many landscapes, places, and sites. Renae Watchman introduces the book with an overview of stories that bring TsÉ BitʼaʼÍ, or Shiprock Peak, the sentinel located in what is currently the state of New Mexico, to life. The book then introduces the dynamic field of Indigenous film through a close analysis of two distinct DinÉ-directed feature-length films, and ends by introducing Dene literatures.While the DinÉ (those from the four sacred mountains in DinÉtah in the southwestern United States) are not now politically and economically cohesive with the Dene (who are in Denendeh in Canada), they are ancestral and linguistic relatives. In this book, Watchman turns to literary and visual texts to explore how relations are restored through stories, showing how literary linkages from land-based stories affirm DinÉ and Dene kinship. She explores the power of story to forge ancestral and kinship ties between the DinÉ and Dene across time and space through re-storying of relations.*A complex DinÉ worldview and philosophy that cannot be defined with one word in the English language. HÓzhǪ́ means to continually strive for harmony, beauty, balance, peace, and happiness, but most importantly the DinÉ have a right to it.

This insightful volume delves into land-based DinÉ and Dene imaginaries as embodied in stories—oral, literary, and visual. Like the dynamism and kinetic facets of hÓzhǪ́,* Restoring Relations Through Stories takes us through many landscapes, places, and sites. Renae Watchman introduces the book with an overview of stories that bring TsÉ BitʼaʼÍ, or Shiprock Peak, the sentinel located in what is currently the state of New Mexico, to life. The book then introduces the dynamic field of Indigenous film through a close analysis of two distinct DinÉ-directed feature-length films, and ends by introducing Dene literatures.While the DinÉ (those from the four sacred mountains in DinÉtah in the southwestern United States) are not now politically and economically cohesive with the Dene (who are in Denendeh in Canada), they are ancestral and linguistic relatives. In this book, Watchman turns to literary and visual texts to explore how relations are restored through stories, showing how literary linkages from land-based stories affirm DinÉ and Dene kinship. She explores the power of story to forge ancestral and kinship ties between the DinÉ and Dene across time and space through re-storying of relations.*A complex DinÉ worldview and philosophy that cannot be defined with one word in the English language. HÓzhǪ́ means to continually strive for harmony, beauty, balance, peace, and happiness, but most importantly the DinÉ have a right to it.

In Mapping Neshnabé Futurity Blaire Morseau weaves together on-the-ground insights and Indigenous speculative fiction to illustrate the profound ways in which Anishinaabé /Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Odawa, and Ojibwe) communities are reclaiming their sovereignty and crafting vibrant futures. Morseau lays out how Neshnabé k have marshaled dissent to hydrologic fracturing, oil pipelines, and other damaging infrastructures of capitalist settler futurity. The book positions these efforts as vital acts of nation building and visionary reclamation of space, both terrestrial and celestial. Morseau also challenges the hegemonic narratives of settler futurism found in mainstream science fiction, which often perpetuate colonial fantasies and exclude marginalized voices. By fusing ethnography of tribal nation-building projects and analysis of Indigenous speculative fiction, Morseau provides a path to Indigenous futurisms and its role in imagining decolonization. Morseau's analysis underscores the potency of Indigenous knowledge systems and ceremonial practices in imagining and actualizing alternative futures.Mapping Neshnabé Futurity is an essential read for scholars and activists alike, urging a rethinking of how we conceive of futurity and sovereignty. This work shows how counter-mapping projects both on the ground and in the skies reclaim space in the Great Lakes region— Neshnabé homelands— and are part of larger constellations of Indigenous futurities and stories of survivance.

In Mapping Neshnabé Futurity Blaire Morseau weaves together on-the-ground insights and Indigenous speculative fiction to illustrate the profound ways in which Anishinaabé /Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Odawa, and Ojibwe) communities are reclaiming their sovereignty and crafting vibrant futures. Morseau lays out how Neshnabé k have marshaled dissent to hydrologic fracturing, oil pipelines, and other damaging infrastructures of capitalist settler futurity. The book positions these efforts as vital acts of nation building and visionary reclamation of space, both terrestrial and celestial. Morseau also challenges the hegemonic narratives of settler futurism found in mainstream science fiction, which often perpetuate colonial fantasies and exclude marginalized voices. By fusing ethnography of tribal nation-building projects and analysis of Indigenous speculative fiction, Morseau provides a path to Indigenous futurisms and its role in imagining decolonization. Morseau’ s analysis underscores the potency of Indigenous knowledge systems and ceremonial practices in imagining and actualizing alternative futures.Mapping Neshnabé Futurity is an essential read for scholars and activists alike, urging a rethinking of how we conceive of futurity and sovereignty. This work shows how counter-mapping projects both on the ground and in the skies reclaim space in the Great Lakes region - Neshnabé homelands - and are part of larger constellations of Indigenous futurities and stories of survivance.

In 2007, the Department of Homeland Security began condemnation proceedings on the property of Dr. Eloisa Tamez, a Lipan Apache (Ndé ) professor, veteran, and title holder to land in South Texas deeded to her ancestors under the colonial occupation and rule of King Charles III of Spain in 1761, during a time when Indigenous lands were largely taken and exploited by Spanish colonizers. Crown grants of lands to Indigenous peoples afforded them the opportunity to reclaim Indigenous title and control. The federal government wanted Tamez's land to build a portion of the 'border wall' on the U.S.-Mexico border. She refused. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security sued her, but she countersued based on Aboriginal land rights, Indigenous inherent rights, the land grant from Spain, and human rights. This standoff continued for years, until the U.S. government forced Tamez to forfeit land for the wall. In response, Dr. Eloisa Tamez and her daughter, Dr. Margo Tamez, organized a gathering of Lipan tribal members, activists, lawyers, and allies to meet in El Calaboz, South Texas. This gathering was a response to the appropriation of the Tamez family land, but it also provided an international platform to dispute the militarization of Indigenous territory throughout the U.S.-Mexico bordered-lands. The gathering and years of ensuing resistance and activism produced an archive of scholarly analyses, testimonios, artwork, legal briefs, poetry, and other cultural productions. This unique collection spotlights powerful voices and perspectives from Ndé leaders, Indigenous elders, settler-allies, Native youth, and others associated with the Tamez family, the Ndé defiance, and the larger Indigenous rights movement to document their resistance expose, confront, and end racism and militarization and to foreground Indigenous women-led struggles for justice.