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Unrecognized in California

Federal Acknowledgment and the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians

By Olivia M. Chilcote

With the largest number of Native Americans as well as the most non-federally recognized tribes in the United States, the state of California is a key site for sovereignty struggles, including federal recognition. In Unrecognized...

Preoccupied

Indigenizing the Museum

By Dare Turner, Leila Grothe

Published on the occasion of the "Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum" initiative at the Baltimore Museum of Art, this book centers Native artist voices and challenges collective understandings of Native peoples’ pivotal role in North American...

Alaska Native Resilience

Voices from World War II

By Holly Miowak Guise

The US government justified its World War II occupation of Alaska as a defense against Japan’s invasion of the Aleutian Islands, but it equally served to advance colonial expansion in relation to the geographically and...

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...

Treaty Justice

The Northwest Tribes, the Boldt Decision, and the Recognition of Fishing Rights

By Charles Wilkinson

In 1974, Judge George Boldt issued a ruling that affirmed the fishing rights and tribal sovereignty of Native nations in Washington State. The Boldt Decision transformed Indigenous law and resource management across the United States...

Resisting the Nuclear

Art and Activism across the Pacific

By Elyssa Faison, Alison Fields

From uranium mines on the Navajo Nation to craters caused by nuclear testing on the Bikini and Enewetak Atolls, the production and deployment of nuclear weapon technologies have disproportionately harmed Indigenous lands. Sustained exposure to...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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

**2nd place for the 2023 Chicago Folklore Prize** 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Louisiana Creole Peoplehood

Afro-Indigeneity and Community

By Rain Prud'homme-Cranford, Darryl Barthé, Andrew J. Jolivétte

Over the course of more than three centuries, the diverse communities of Louisiana have engaged in creative living practices to forge a vibrant, multifaceted, and fully developed Creole culture. Against the backdrop of ongoing anti-Blackness...

A Drum in One Hand, a Sockeye in the Other

Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast

By Charlotte Coté

In the dense rainforest of the west coast of Vancouver Island, the Somass River (c̓uumaʕas) brings sockeye salmon (miʕaat) into the Nuu-chah-nulth community of Tseshaht. C̓uumaʕas and miʕaat are central to the sacred food practices...

Urban Cascadia and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice

By Nik Janos, Corina McKendry

In Portland’s harbor, environmental justice groups challenge the EPA for a more thorough cleanup of the Willamette River. Near Olympia, the Puyallup assert their tribal sovereignty and treaty rights to fish. Seattle housing activists demand...

Painful Beauty

Tlingit Women, Beadwork, and the Art of Resilience

By Megan A. Smetzer

For over 150 years, Tlingit women artists have beaded colorful, intricately beautiful designs on moccasins, dolls, octopus bags, tunics, and other garments. Painful Beauty suggests that at a time when Indigenous cultural practices were actively...