Book picks similar to
Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema & the Colonization of American Indians by Ward Churchill
race
history
non-fiction
native-american
Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means
Russell Means - 1995
Where White Men Fear to Tread is the well-detailed, first-hand story of his life, in which he did everything possible to dramatize and justify the American Indian aim of self-determination, such as storming Mount Rushmore, seizing Plymouth Rock, running for President in 1988, and—most notoriously—leading a 71-day takeover of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973.This visionary autobiography by one of our most magnetic personalities will fascinate, educate, and inspire. As Dee Brown has written, "A reading of Means's story is essential for any clear understanding of American Indians during the last half of the twentieth century."
Playing Indian
Philip J. Deloria - 1998
At the Boston Tea Party, colonial rebels played Indian in order to claim an aboriginal American identity. In the nineteenth century, Indian fraternal orders allowed men to rethink the idea of revolution, consolidate national power, and write nationalist literary epics. By the twentieth century, playing Indian helped nervous city dwellers deal with modernist concerns about nature, authenticity, Cold War anxiety, and various forms of relativism. Deloria points out, however, that throughout American history the creative uses of Indianness have been interwoven with conquest and dispossession of the Indians. Indian play has thus been fraught with ambivalence—for white Americans who idealized and villainized the Indian, and for Indians who were both humiliated and empowered by these cultural exercises. Deloria suggests that imagining Indians has helped generations of white Americans define, mask, and evade paradoxes stemming from simultaneous construction and destruction of these native peoples. In the process, Americans have created powerful identities that have never been fully secure.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
Dee Brown - 1970
A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.
Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity
David Hurst Thomas - 2001
The explosive controversy and resulting lawsuit also raised a far more fundamental question: Who owns history? Many Indians see archeologists as desecrators of tribal rites and traditions; archeologists see their livelihoods and science threatened by the 1990 Federal reparation law, which gives tribes control over remains in their traditional territories.In this new work, Thomas charts the riveting story of this lawsuit, the archeologists' deteriorating relations with American Indians, and the rise of scientific archeology. His telling of the tale gains extra credence from his own reputation as a leader in building cooperation between the two sides.
21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality
Bob Joseph - 2018
Bob Joseph’s book comes at a key time in the reconciliation process, when awareness from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities is at a crescendo. Joseph explains how Indigenous Peoples can step out from under the Indian Act and return to self-government, self-determination, and self-reliance—and why doing so would result in a better country for every Canadian. He dissects the complex issues around truth and reconciliation, and clearly demonstrates why learning about the Indian Act’s cruel, enduring legacy is essential for the country to move toward true reconciliation.
Ojibwe in Minnesota
Anton Treuer - 2010
He also tackles the complicated issue of identity and details recent efforts and successes in cultural preservation and language revitalization.A personal account from the state’s first female Indian lawyer, Margaret Treuer, tells her firsthand experience of much change in the community and looks ahead with renewed cultural strength and hope for the first people of Minnesota.Anton Treuer is professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and editor of Living Our Language: Ojibwe Tales and Oral Histories, Aaniin Ekidong: Ojibwe Vocabulary Project, Omaa Akiing, and Oshkaabewis Native Journal, the only academic journal of the Ojibwe language.
Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat
J. Sakai - 1983
First published in the 1980s by activists with decades of experience organizing in grassroots anticapitalist struggles against white supremacy, the book soon established itself as an essential reference point for revolutionary nationalists and dissident currents within the predominantly colonialist Marxist-Leninist and anarchist movements at that time.Always controversial within the establishment Left Settlers uncovers centuries of collaboration between capitalism and white workers and their organizations, as well as their neocolonial allies, showing how the United States was designed from the ground up as a parasitic and genocidal entity. Settlers exposes the fact that America’s white citizenry have never supported themselves but have always resorted to exploitation and theft, culminating in acts of genocide to maintain their culture and way of life. As recounted in painful detail by Sakai, the United States has been built on the theft of Indigenous lands and of Afrikan labor, on the robbery of the northern third of Mexico, the colonization of Puerto Rico, and the expropriation of the Asian working class, with each of these crimes being accompanied by violence.This new edition includes “Cash & Genocide: The True Story of Japanese-American Reparations” and an interview with author J. Sakai by Ernesto Aguilar.Please note that none of the illustrations from the paperback edition are included in the digital version.
The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History
Joseph M. Marshall III - 2004
Now, with the help of celebrated historian Joseph Marshall, we finally have the opportunity to know Crazy Horse as his fellow Lakota Indians knew him.Drawing on extensive research and a rich oral tradition that it rarely shared outside Native American circles, Marshall - himself a descendent of the Lakota community that raised Crazy Horse - creates a vibrant portrait of the man, his times, and his legacy. From the powerful vision that spurred him into battle to the woman he loved but lost to duty and circumstance, this is a compelling celebration of a culture, an enduring way of life, and the unforgettable hero who remains a legend among legends.Marshall's gloriously poetic and sweeping chronicle ushers in a new genre of American history...A tour de force. - Peter Nabakov, author of Native American TestimonyA remarkable portrait of a remarkable man. - Colin G. Calloway, professor of history and Samson Occom Professor of Native American Studies, Dartmouth College
Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World
Jack Weatherford - 1988
He traces the crucial contributions made by the Indians to our federal system of government, our democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture, and ecology, and in this astonishing, ground-breaking book takes a giant step toward recovering a true American history.
This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving
David J. Silverman - 2019
Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousamequin and 90 of his men then visited Plymouth for the “First Thanksgiving.” The treaty remained operative until King Philip's War in 1675, when 50 years of uneasy peace between the two parties would come to an end.400 years after that famous meal, historian David J. Silverman sheds profound new light on the events that led to the creation, and bloody dissolution, of this alliance. Focusing on the Wampanoag Indians, Silverman deepens the narrative to consider tensions that developed well before 1620 and lasted long after the devastating war-tracing the Wampanoags' ongoing struggle for self-determination up to this very day.This unsettling history reveals why some modern Native people hold a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving, a holiday which celebrates a myth of colonialism and white proprietorship of the United States. This Land is Their Land shows that it is time to rethink how we, as a pluralistic nation, tell the history of Thanksgiving.
Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada
Chelsea Vowel - 2016
Sixties Scoop. Bill C-31. Blood quantum. Appropriation. Two-Spirit. Tsilhqot’in. Status. TRC. RCAP. FNPOA. Pass and permit. Numbered Treaties. Terra nullius. The Great Peace…Are you familiar with the terms listed above? In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada. In 31 essays, Chelsea explores the Indigenous experience from the time of contact to the present, through five categories – Terminology of Relationships; Culture and Identity; Myth-Busting; State Violence; and Land, Learning, Law, and Treaties. She answers the questions that many people have on these topics to spark further conversations at home, in the classroom, and in the larger community.Indigenous Writes is one title in The Debwe Series.
The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650 - 1815
Richard White - 1991
It is, instead, about a search for accommodation and common meaning. It tells how Europeans and Indians met, regarding each other as alien, as other, as virtually nonhuman, and how between 1650 and 1815 they constructed a common, mutually comprehensible world in the region around the Great Lakes that the French called pays d'en haut. Here the older worlds of the Algonquians and of various Europeans overlapped, and their mixture created new systems of meaning and of exchange. Finally, the book tells of the breakdown of accommodation and common meanings and the re-creation of the Indians as alien and exotic
Unthinking Eurocentrism
Ella Shohat - 1994
The book 'multiculturalizes' media studies by looking at Hollywood movie genres such as the western, the musical and the imperial film from multicultural perspectives, examining issues from the racial politics of casting to colonialist discourse and gender and Empire.More than just a critique of Eurocentrism and racism, Unthinking Eurocentrism also confirms artistic, cultural and political alternatives, discussing a wide range of non-Eurocentric media including Third World films, rap video and indigenous media. Synthesising literary theory, meida theory and cultural studies to form a challenging interdisciplinary study, the authors argue that current debatess about Eurocentrism and Afrocentrism are merely surface manifestations of a deep-rooted shift: the decolonisation of global culture.
Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto
Taiaiake Alfred - 1999
It argues that indigenous peoples must return to their political traditions and use these traditions to educate a new generation of leaders committed to values and the preservation of indigenous nationhood.
The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America
James Wilson - 1998
Combining traditional historical sources with new insights from ethnography, archaeology, Indian oral tradition, and years of his original research, James Wilson weaves a historical narrative that puts Native Americans at the center of their struggle for survival against the tide of invading European peoples and cultures. The Earth Shall Weep charts the collision course between Euro-Americans and the indigenous people of the continent, from the early interactions at English settlements on the Atlantic coast, through successive centuries of encroachment and outright warfare, to the new political force of the Native American activists of today. It is a clash that would ultimately result in the reduction of the Native American population from an estimated seven to ten million to 250,000 over a span of four hundred years, and change the face of the continent forever. A tour de force of narrative history, The Earth Shall Weep is a powerful, moving telling of the story of Native Americans that has become the new standard for future work in the field.