Washington University Press Search Results Page

Tengautuli Atkuk / The Flying Parka

The Meaning and Making of Parkas in Southwest Alaska

By Ann Fienup-Riordan, Alice Rearden, and Marie Meade

Parkas are part of a living tradition in southwest Alaska. Some are ornamented with tassels, beads, and elaborate stitching; others are simpler fur or birdskin garments. Although fewer fancy parkas are sewn today, many people...

Skidegate House Models

From Haida Gwaii to the Chicago World's Fair and Beyond

By Robin K. Wright

In 1892 seventeen Haida artists were commissioned to carve a model of HlGaagilda Llnagaay (the village of Skidegate on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia) for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. The Skidegate model, featuring twenty-nine...

Not Native American Art

Fakes, Replicas, and Invented Traditions

By Janet Catherine Berlo. Foreword by Joe Horse Capture

The faking of Native American art objects has proliferated as their commercial value has increased, but even a century ago experts were warning that the faking of objects ranging from catlinite pipes to Chumash sculpture...

Stitching Love and Loss

A Gee's Bend Quilt

By Lisa Gail Collins

In 1942 Missouri Pettway, newly suffering the loss of her husband, pieced together a quilt out of his old, worn work clothes. Nearly six decades later her daughter Arlonzia Pettway, approaching eighty at the time...

Sharing Honors and Burdens

Renwick Invitational 2023

By Lara M. Evans, Miranda Belarde-Lewis, and Anya Montiel

This volume features the work of six Indigenous artists whose craft speaks to the responsibility of honoring cultural traditions while shaping the future. Joe Feddersen (Arrow Lakes/Okanagan) is a printmaker, glass artist, and basket maker...

Settler Cannabis

From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California

By Kaitlin Reed

Young countercultural back-to-the-land settlers flocked to northwestern California beginning in the 1960s, and by the 1970s, unregulated cannabis production proliferated on Indigenous lands. As of 2021, the California cannabis economy was valued at $3.5 billion....

Surviving the Sanctuary City

Asylum-Seeking Work in Nepali New York

By Tina Shrestha

Over the past several decades, the vibrant, multiethnic borough of Queens has seen growth in the community of Nepali migrants, many of whom are navigating the challenging bureaucratic process of asylum legalization. Surviving the Sanctuary...

Jesintel

Living Wisdom from Coast Salish Elders

By Children of the Setting Sun Productions. Edited by Darrell Hillaire and Natasha Frey. Photographs by Fay "Beau" Garreau, Jr.. Contributions by Lynda V. Mapes and Nicole Brown. Afterword by Danita Washington

Dynamic and diverse, Coast Salish culture is bound together by shared values and relations that generate a resilient worldview. Jesintel—"to learn and grow together"—characterizes the spirit of this book, which brings the cultural teachings of...

Cherokee Earth Dwellers

Stories and Teachings of the Natural World

By Christopher B. Teuton and Hastings Shade. With Loretta Shade and Larry Shade. Illustrated by MaryBeth Timothy

Ayetli gadogv—to "stand in the middle"—is at the heart of a Cherokee perspective of the natural world. From this stance, Cherokee Earth Dwellers offers a rich understanding of nature grounded in Cherokee creature names, oral...

Seattle from the Margins

Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City

By Megan Asaka

From the origins of the city in the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of World War II, Seattle's urban workforce consisted overwhelmingly of migrant laborers who powered the seasonal, extractive economy of the Pacific Northwest....

The Art of Ceremony

Voices of Renewal from Indigenous Oregon

By Rebecca J. Dobkins

The practice of ceremony offers ways to build relationships between the land and its beings, reflecting change while drawing upon deep relationships going back millennia. Ceremony may involve intricate and spectacular regalia but may also...

Black Lives in Alaska

A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest

By Ian C. Hartman and David Reamer. Foreword by Calvin E. Williams

The history of Black Alaskans runs deep and spans generations. Decades before statehood and earlier even than the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s, Black men and women participated in Alaska’s politics and culture. They...

George Tsutakawa

Early Works on Paper

By David F. Martin

One of the leading Northwest artists of his generation, George Tsutakawa (1910–97) is internationally known for his sculpture and fountain designs. However, a lesser-known aspect of his career was the production of blockprints, watercolors, and...

People of the Ecotone

Environment and Indigenous Power at the Center of Early America

By Robert Michael Morrissey. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

In People of the Ecotone, Robert Morrissey weaves together a history of Native peoples with a history of an ecotone to tell a new story about the roots of the Fox Wars, among the most...

Christina Fernandez

Multiple Exposures

By Rebecca Epstein

Christina Fernandez sees herself as equally artist and storyteller, one who employs photography to explore social and physical isolation and estrangement within marginalized communities while experimenting with composition and form. Her art is shaped by...

Picture Bride

A Novel

By Yoshiko Uchida. Foreword by Elena Tajima Creef

Seeking an escape from life in her small village in Japan, Hana Omiya arrives in California in 1917, one of thousands of Japanese “picture brides" whose arranged marriages brought them to the United States. When...

Unsettling Native Art Histories on the Northwest Coast

By Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Aldona Jonaitis

Inseparable from its communities, Northwest Coast art functions aesthetically and performatively beyond the scope of non-Indigenous scholarship, from demonstrating kinship connections to manifesting spiritual power. Contributors to this volume foreground Indigenous understandings in recognition of...

New Women of Empire

Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America

By Chrissy Yee Lau

Strong, bold, and vivacious—Japanese American young women were leaders and heroines of the Roaring Twenties. Controversial to the male immigrant elite for their rebellion against gender norms, these women made indelible changes in the community,...

The Forging of a Black Community

Seattle’s Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era

By Quintard Taylor. Forewords by Quin'Nita Cobbins-Modica and Norman Rice. Afterword by Albert S. Broussard

Seattle's first black resident was a sailor named Manuel Lopes who arrived in 1858 and became the small community's first barber. He left in the early 1870s to seek economic prosperity elsewhere, but as Seattle...

The River That Made Seattle

A Human and Natural History of the Duwamish

By BJ Cummings

With bountiful salmon and fertile plains, the Duwamish River has drawn people to its shores over the centuries for trading, transport, and sustenance. Chief Se’alth and his allies fished and lived in villages here and...