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The Best American Travel Writing 2014
By Paul Theroux, Jason Wilson. 2014
"Travel connoisseurs divide the world into those places they've been dying to visit or revisit and places they'd never set…
foot in but are glad someone else did. This year's volume of travel writing . . . focuses mostly on the latter with derring-do dispatches." -- USA Today A far-ranging collection of the best travel writing pieces published in 2013, collected by guest editor Paul Theroux. The Best American Travel Writing consistently includes a wide variety of pieces, illuminating the wonder, humor, fear, and exhilaration that greets all of us when we embark on a journey to a new place. Readers know that there is simply no other option when they want great travel writing.Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late-Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast
By Paige Raibmon. 2005
In this innovative history, Paige Raibmon examines the political ramifications of ideas about "real Indians. " Focusing on the Northwest…
Coast in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, she describes how government officials, missionaries, anthropologists, reformers, settlers, and tourists developed definitions of Indian authenticity based on such binaries as Indian versus White, traditional versus modern, and uncivilized versus civilized. They recognized as authentic only those expressions of "Indianness" that conformed to their limited definitions and reflected their sense of colonial legitimacy and racial superiority. Raibmon shows that Whites and Aboriginals were collaborators--albeit unequal ones--in the politics of authenticity. Non-Aboriginal people employed definitions of Indian culture that limited Aboriginal claims to resources, land, and sovereignty, while Aboriginals utilized those same definitions to access the social, political, and economic means necessary for their survival under colonialism. Drawing on research in newspapers, magazines, agency and missionary records, memoirs, and diaries, Raibmon combines cultural and labor history. She looks at three historical episodes: the participation of a group of Kwakwaka'wakw from Vancouver in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago; the work of migrant Aboriginal laborers in the hop fields of Puget Sound; and the legal efforts of Tlingit artist Rudolph Walton to have his mixed-race step-children admitted to the white public school in Sitka, Alaska. Together these episodes reveal the consequences of outsiders' attempts to define authentic Aboriginal culture. Raibmon argues that Aboriginal culture is much more than the reproduction of rituals; it also lies in the means by which Aboriginal people generate new and meaningful ways of identifying their place in a changing modern environment.Domination Without Dominance: Inca-Spanish Encounters in Early Colonial Peru
By Gonzalo Lamana. 2008
Offering an alternative narrative of the conquest of the Incas, Gonzalo Lamana both examines and shifts away from the colonial…
imprint that still permeates most accounts of the conquest. Lamana focuses on a key moment of transition: the years that bridged the first contact between Spanish conquistadores and Andean peoples in 1531 and the moment, around 1550, when a functioning colonial regime emerged. Using published accounts and array of archival sources, he focuses on questions of subalternization, meaning making, copying, and exotization, which proved crucial to both the Spaniards and the Incas. On the one hand, he re-inserts different epistemologies into the conquest narrative, making central to the plot often-dismissed, discrepant stories such as books that were expected to talk and year-long attacks that could only be launched under a full moon. On the other hand, he questions the dominant image of a clear distinction between Inca and Spaniard, showing instead that on the battlefield as much as in everyday arenas such as conversion, market exchanges, politics, and land tenure, the parties blurred into each other in repeated instances of mimicry. Lamana's redefinition of the order of things reveals that, contrary to the conquerors' accounts, what the Spanairds achieved was a "domination without dominance. " This conclusion undermines common ideas of Spanish (and Western) superiority. It shows that casting order as a by-product of military action rests on a pervasive fallacy: the translation of military superiority into cultural superiority. In constant dialogue with critical thinking from different disciplines and traditions, Lamana illuminates how this new interpretation of the conquest of the Incas revises current understandings of Western colonialism and the emergence of still-current global configurations.Nez Perce 1877
By Peter Dennis, Robert Forczyk. 2011
Osprey's examination of one of the most famous battles of the latter part of the American Indian Wars (1622-1918). With…
the wars between the US and the Native Americans drawing to a close, one tribe in Eastern Oregon continued to resist. The Nez Perce, led by the "Red Napoleon" Chief Joseph, refused to surrender and accept resettlement. Instead, Chief Joseph organized a band of 750 warriors and set off for the Canadian border, pursued by 2,000 US Army troops under Major-General Oliver Howard. The army chased the natives for three months, fighting 13 actions. Finally, just 40 miles from the Canadian border, the Army ran Chief Joseph to the ground, and forced him to surrender after a five-day battle near Bear Paw Mountain.Natural and Moral History of the Indies
By José De Acosta. 2002
The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, the classic work of New World history originally published by José de…
Acosta in 1590, is now available in the first new English translation to appear in several hundred years. A Spanish Jesuit, Acosta produced this account by drawing on his own observations as a missionary in Peru and Mexico, as well as from the writings of other missionaries, naturalists, and soldiers who explored the region during the sixteenth century. One of the first comprehensive investigations of the New World, Acosta's study is strikingly broad in scope. He describes the region's natural resources, flora and fauna, and terrain. He also writes in detail about the Amerindians and their religious and political practices. A significant contribution to Renaissance Europe's thinking about the New World, Acosta's Natural and Moral History of the Indies reveals an effort to incorporate new information into a Christian, Renaissance worldview. He attempted to confirm for his European readers that a "new" continent did indeed exist and that human beings could and did live in equatorial climates. A keen observer and prescient thinker, Acosta hypothesized that Latin America's indigenous peoples migrated to the region from Asia, an idea put forth more than a century before Europeans learned of the Bering Strait. Acosta's work established a hierarchical classification of Amerindian peoples and thus contributed to what today is understood as the colonial difference in Renaissance European thinking.Focusing on one of the most fascinating and debated figures in the history of modern Brazil, Stringing Together a Nation…
is the first full-length study of the life and career of Cndido Mariano da Silva Rondon (1865-1958) to be published in English. In the early twentieth century, Rondon, a military engineer, led what became known as the Rondon Commission in a massive undertaking: the building of telegraph lines and roads connecting Brazil's vast interior with its coast. Todd A. Diacon describes how, in stringing together a nation with telegraph wire, Rondon attempted to create a unified community of "Brazilians" from a population whose loyalties and identities were much more local and regional in scope. He reveals the work of the Rondon Commission as a crucial exemplar of the issues and intricacies involved in the expansion of central state authority in Brazil and in the construction of a particular kind of Brazilian nation. Using an impressive array of archival and documentary sources, Diacon chronicles the Rondon Commission's arduous construction of telegraph lines across more than eight hundred miles of the Amazon Basin; its exploration, surveying, and mapping of vast areas of northwest Brazil; and its implementation of policies governing relations between the Brazilian state and indigenous groups. He considers the importance of Positivist philosophy to Rondon's thought, and he highlights the Rondon Commission's significant public relations work on behalf of nation-building efforts. He reflects on the discussions--both contemporaneous and historiographical--that have made Rondon such a fundamental and controversial figure in Brazilian cultural history."All the Real Indians Died Off": And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans
By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Dina Gilio-Whitaker. 2016
Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native AmericansIn this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and…
Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors disrupt long-held and enduring myths such as: "Columbus Discovered America" "Thanksgiving Proves the Indians Welcomed Pilgrims" "Indians Were Savage and Warlike" "Europeans Brought Civilization to Backward Indians" "The United States Did Not Have a Policy of Genocide" "Sports Mascots Honor Native Americans" "Most Indians Are on Government Welfare" "Indian Casinos Make Them All Rich" "Indians Are Naturally Predisposed to Alcohol" Each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance. Accessibly written and revelatory, "All the Real Indians Died Off" challenges readers to rethink what they have been taught about Native Americans and history.From the Trade Paperback edition.Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community
By Brenda J. Child. 2012
A groundbreaking exploration of the remarkable women in Native American communities. Too often ignored or underemphasized in favor of their…
male warrior counterparts, Native American women have played a more central role in guiding their nations than has ever been understood. Many Native communities were, in fact, organized around women's labor, the sanctity of mothers, and the wisdom of female elders. In this well-researched and deeply felt account of the Ojibwe of Lake Superior and the Mississippi River, Brenda J. Child details the ways in which women have shaped Native American life from the days of early trade with Europeans through the reservation era and beyond. The latest volume in the Penguin Library of American Indian History, Holding Our World Together illuminates the lives of women such as Madeleine Cadotte, who became a powerful mediator between her people and European fur traders, and Gertrude Buckanaga, whose postwar community activism in Minneapolis helped bring many Indian families out of poverty. Drawing on these stories and others, Child offers a powerful tribute to the many courageous women who sustained Native communities through the darkest challenges of the last three centuries. .Waheenee: An Indian Girl's Story
By Jeffery R. Hanson, Gilbert Livingston Wilson. 1927
"I was born in an earth lodge by the mouth of the Knife River, in what is now North Dakota,…
three years after the smallpox winter." So begins the story of Waheenee, a Hidatsa Indian woman, born in 1839 amid a devastated tribe. In 1906 Gilbert L. Wilson first visited the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and began to study the remnants of the Hidatsa tribe. He returned in 1908, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, and for every summer of the next ten years he worked among the Hidatsas, making notes of all he saw. One of his chief informants was Waheenee-wea, or Buffalo-Bird Woman, who told him this, her life story.Moon of Popping Trees
By Rex Alan Smith. 1981
The last significant clash of arms in the American Indian Wars took place on December 29, 1890, on the banks…
of Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. Of the 350 Teton Sioux Indians there, two-thirds were women and children. When the smoke cleared, 84 men and 62 women and children lay dead, their bodies scattered along a stretch of more than a mile where they had been trying to flee. Of some 500 soldiers and scouts, about 30 were dead—some, probably, from their own crossfire. Wounded Knee has excited contradictory accounts and heated emotions. To answer whether it was a battle or a massacre, Rex Alan Smith goes further into the historical records and cultural traditions of the combatants than anyone has gone before. His work results in what Alvin Josephy Jr., editor of American Heritage, calls "the most definitive and unbiased" account of all, Moon of Popping Trees.Lewis and Clark among the Indians
By James P. Ronda. 2002
"Particularly valuable for Ronda's inclusion of pertinent background information about the various tribes and for his ethnological analysis. An appendix…
also places the Sacagawea myth in its proper perspective. Gracefully written, the book bridges the gap between academic and general audiences."—ChoiceMourning Dove: A Salishan Autobiography (American Indian Lives)
By Jay Miller, Mourning Dove. 1990
"An exciting story that transports the reader to another time and place. . . . Anyone interested in American Indian…
history, culture, religion, and literature should read this informative volume that was produced at such great cost. Mourning Dove literally gave her life to do this work, and Jay Miller has painstakingly edited it to share the words and wisdom of Humishuma with the non-Salish world."—American Indian Culture and Research JournalLeft Handed, Son of Old Man Hat: A Navaho Autobiography
By Edward Sapir, Left Handed, Walter Dyk. 1995
With a simplicity as disarming as it is frank, Left Handed tells of his birth in the spring "when the…
cottonwood leaves were about the size of my thumbnail," of family chores such as guarding the sheep near the hogan, and of his sexual awakening. As he grows older, his account turns to life in the open: nomadic cattle-raising, farming, trading, communal enterprises, tribal dances and ceremonies, lovemaking, and marriage. As Left Handed grows in understanding and stature, the accumulated wisdom of his people is made known to him. He learns the Navajo life founded upon principles: the necessity of honesty, foresightedness, self-discipline. The style of the narrative is almost biblical in its rhythms; but biblical, too, in many respects, is the traditional way of life it recounts.Navajo Coyote Tales: The Curly Tó Aheedlíinii Version
By Father Berard Haile, O. F. M., Karl W. Luckert. 1984
Coyote is easily the most popular character in the stories of Indian tribes from Canada to Mexico. This volume contains…
seventeen coyote tales collected and translated by Father Berard Haile, O.F.M., more than half a century ago. The original Navajo transcriptions are included, along with notes. The tales show Coyote as a warrior, a shaman, a trickster; a lecher, a thief; a sacrificial victim, and always as the indomitable force of life. He is the paradoxical hero and scamp whose adventures inspire laughter or awe, depending upon what shape he takes in a given story. In his introduction to Navajo Coyote Tales, Karl W. Luckert considers Coyote mythology in a theoretical and historical framework.When the Choctaws were removed from their Mississippi homeland to Indian Territory in 1830, several thousand remained behind, planning to…
take advantage of Article 14 in the removal treaty, which promised that any Choctaws who wished to remain in Mississippi could apply for allotments of land. When the remaining Choctaws applied for their allotments, however, the government reneged, and the Choctaws were left dispossessed and impoverished. Thus begins the history of the Mississippi Choctaws as a distinct people. Despite overwhelming poverty and significant racial prejudice in the rural South, the Mississippi Choctaws managed, over the course of a century and a half, to maintain their ethnic identity, persuade the Office of Indian Affairs to provide them with services and lands, create a functioning tribal government, and establish a prosperous and stable reservation economy. The Choctaws’ struggle against segregation in the 1950s and 1960s is an overlooked story of the civil rights movement, and this study of white supremacist support for Choctaw tribalism considerably complicates our understanding of southern history. Choctaw Resurgence in Mississippi traces the Choctaw’s remarkable tribal rebirth, attributing it to their sustained political and social activism.The Navajo and the Animal People
By Steve Pavlik, Will Tsosie. 1995
This text examines the traditional Navajo relationship to the natural world. Specifically, how the tribe once related to a category…
of animals they collectively referred to as the "ones who hunt." These animals, like Native Americans, were once viewed as impediments to progress requiring extermination.Steve Pavlik teaches Native American studies and Native environmental science at Northwest Indian College. He is the author or editor of four books including Destroying Dogma.The Savage and Modern Self: North American Indians in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
By Robbie Richardson. 2018
The Savage and Modern Self examines the representations of North American "Indians" in novels, poetry, plays, and material culture from…
eighteenth-century Britain. Author Robbie Richardson argues that depictions of "Indians" in British literature were used to critique and articulate evolving ideas about consumerism, colonialism, "Britishness," and, ultimately, the "modern self" over the course of the century. Considering the ways in which British writers represented contact between Britons and "Indians," both at home and abroad, the author shows how these sites of contact moved from a self-affirmation of British authority earlier in the century, to a mutual corruption, to a desire to appropriate perceived traits of "Indianess." Looking at texts exclusively produced in Britain, The Savage and Modern Self reveals that "the modern" finds definition through imagined scenes of cultural contact. By the end of the century, Richardson concludes, the hybrid Indian-Brition emerging in literature and visual culture exemplifies a form of modern, British masculinity.Strange Visitors: Documents In Indigenous - Settler Relations In Canada From 1876
By Keith D. Smith. 2014
Covering topics such as the Indian Act, the High Arctic relocation of 1953, and the conflict at Ipperwash, Keith D.…
Smith draws on a diverse selection of documents including letters, testimonies, speeches, transcripts, newspaper articles, and government records. In his thoughtful introduction, Smith provides guidance on the unique challenges of dealing with Indigenous primary sources by highlighting the critical skill of "reading against the grain." Each chapter includes an introduction and a list of discussion questions, and helpful background information is provided for each of the readings. Organized thematically into fifteen chapters, the reader also contains a list of key figures, along with maps and images.The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast
By Theda Perdue, Michael D Green. 2001
DON'T PRESS THAT BUTTON!: An Essay on James Bond
By J. A. Konrath. 2006