Indian Givers

How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World

Jack Weatherford

An utterly compelling story of how the cultural, social, and political practices of Native Americans transformed the way life is lived throughout the world, with a new introduction by the author “As entertaining as it is thoughtful . . . Few contemporary writers have Weatherford’s talent for making the deep sweep of history seem vital and immediate.”—The Washington Post After 500 years, the world’s huge debt to the wisdom of the Native Americans has finally been explored in all its vivid drama by anthropologist Jack Weatherford. He traces the crucial contributions made by the Native Americans 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.

New Worlds for All

Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America

Colin Gordon Calloway

He depicts the European emulation of Indian military tactics, the varied responses of Indian societies to Christianity, attempts made on all sides to learn the languages and customs of the other, and the intermingling of peoples at the fringes of competing cultures - through captivity and adoption, attempts to escape one's own society and embrace another, or intermarriage.

I Am the Grand Canyon

The Story of the Havasupai People

Stephen Hirst

I Am the Grand Canyon is the story of the Havasupai people. From their origins among the first group of Indians to arrive in North America some 20,000 years ago to their epic struggle to regain traditional lands taken from them in the nineteenth century, the Havasupai have a long and colorful history. The story of this tiny tribe once confined to a toosmall reservation depicts a people with deep cultural ties to the land, both on their former reservation below the rim of the Grand Canyon and on the surrounding plateaus. In the spring of 1971, the federal government proposed incorporating still more Havasupai land into Grand Canyon National Park. At hearings that spring, Havasupai Tribal Chairman Lee Marshall rose to speak. "I heard all you people talking about the Grand Canyon," he said. "Well, you're looking at it. I am the Grand Canyon!" Marshall made it clear that Havasu Canyon and the surrounding plateau were critical to the survival of his people; his speech laid the foundation for the return of thousands of acres of Havasupai land in 1975. I Am the Grand Canyon is the story of a heroic people who refused to back down when facing overwhelming odds. They won, and today the Havasupai way of life quietly continues in the Grand Canyon and on the surrounding plateaus.

Blood Struggle

The Rise of Modern Indian Nations

Charles F. Wilkinson

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Dispossession by Degrees

Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790

Jean M. O'Brien

O'Brien examines the centrality of land in both the transformation and persistence of Indian identity in New England.

The History of the American Indians

A Critical Edition

James Adair

James Adair was an Englishman who lived and traded among the southeastern Indians for more than 30 years, from 1735 to 1768. Adair's written work, first published in England in 1775, is considered one of the finest histories of the Native Americans.

City of Sacrifice

The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization

David Carrasco

At an excavation of the Great Aztec Temple in Mexico City, amid carvings of skulls and a dismembered warrior goddess, David Carrasco stood before a container filled with the decorated bones of infants and children. It was the site of a massive human sacrifice, and for Carrasco the center of fiercely provocative questions: If ritual violence against humans was a profound necessity for the Aztecs in their capital city, is it central to the construction of social order and the authority of city states? Is civilization built on violence? In City of Sacrifice, Carrasco chronicles the fascinating story of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, investigating Aztec religious practices and demonstrating that religious violence was integral to urbanization; the city itself was a temple to the gods. That Mexico City, the largest city on earth, was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, is a point Carrasco poignantly considers in his comparison of urban life from antiquity to modernity. Majestic in scope, City of Sacrifice illuminates not only the rich history of a major Meso american city but also the inseparability of two passionate human impulses: urbanization and religious engagement. It has much to tell us about many familiar events in our own time, from suicide bombings in Tel Aviv to rape and murder in the Balkans.

Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest

Ella Elizabeth Clark

A collection of over one hundred tribal tales drawn from government documents, old periodicals and histories, reports of anthropologists and folklorists, and personal interviews with Indians of Washington and Oregon.

Chippewa Child Life and Its Cultural Background

Mary Inez Hilger

"In the 1930s anthropologist Sister M. Inez Hilger traveled to nine reservations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan to record traditional Chippewa (Ojibway) methods of raising children. Her intriguing study captures the essential details of Chippewa child life-and provides a comprehensive overview of a fascinating culture. A new introduction by Jean M. O'Brien, assistant professor of history and American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota, assesses Hilger's contributions in this book, which was first published in 1951."-- Back cover.

Forgotten Allies

The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution

Joseph T. Glatthaar, James Kirby Martin

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Spreading Misandry

The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture

Paul Nathanson, Katherine K. Young

Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young argue that men have routinely been portrayed as evil, inadequate, or as honorary women in popular culture since the 1990s. These stereotypes are profoundly disturbing, the authors argue, for they both reflect and create a hatred and thus further fracture an already fractured society. In Spreading Misandry they show that creating a workable society in the twenty-first century requires us to rethink feminist and other assumptions about men. The first in an eventual three part series, Spreading Misandry offers an impressive array of evidence from everyday life – case studies from movies, television programs, novels, comic strips, and even greeting cards – to identify a phenomenon that is just now being recognised as a serious cultural problem. Discussing misandry – the sexist counterpart of misogyny – the authors make clear that this form of hatred must not be confused with reverse sexism or anger and should neither be trivialised nor excused. They break new ground by discussing misandry in moral terms rather than purely psychological or sociological ones and refer critically not only to feminism but to political ideologies on both the left and the right. They also illuminate the larger context of this problem, showing that it reflects the enduring conflict between the Enlightenment and romanticism, inherent flaws in postmodernism, and the dualistic ("us" versus "them") mentality that has influenced Western thought since ancient times. A groundbreaking study, Spreading Misandry raises serious questions about justice and identity in an increasingly polarised society. It is important for anyone in interested in ethics, gender, popular culture, or are just concerned about the society we are creating. "Spreading Misandry . . . does make a convincing argument that, since the 1990s, . . . Men, have become society's official scapegoats and held responsible for all evil . . . Women are society's official victims and held responsible for all good."--Independent on Sunday, 4 August, 2002

The Spirit and the Flesh

Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture

Walter L. Williams

Winner of the: Gay Book of the Year Award, American Library Association; Ruth Benedict Award, Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists; Award for Outstanding Scholarship, World Congress for Sexology Author’s note: Shortly after the second revised edition this book was published in 1992, the term "Two-Spirit Person" became more popular among native people than the older anthropological term "berdache." When I learned of this new term, I began strongly supporting the use of this newer term. I believe that people should be able to call themselves whatever they wish, and scholars should respect and acknowledge their change of terminology. I went on record early on in convincing other anthropologists to shift away from use of the word berdache and in favor of using Two-Spirit. Nevertheless, because this book continues to be sold with the use of berdache, many people have assumed that I am resisting the newer term. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless continued sales of this book will justify the publication of a third revised edition in the future, it is not possible to rewrite what is already printed, Therefore, I urge readers of this book, as well as activists who are working to gain more respect for gender variance, mentally to substitute the term "Two-Spirit" in the place of "berdache" when reading this text. -- Walter L. Williams, Los Angeles, 2006

Geronimo's Kids

A Teacher's Lessons on the Apache Reservation

Robert S. Ove, H. Henrietta Stockel

"Through the stories of the elders, he also learned how this way of life had changed since their capture, as many of the traditional ways of the Chiricahuas were altered or lost in the ensuing decades after Geronimo's people surrendered to the U.S. Army in 1886. Decades of incarceration followed - first in Florida, then in Alabama, and finally in Oklahoma. More than half died in hot, humid prison camps because the Chiricahuas had no inborn resistance to the virulent diseases brought to North America by Europeans. Then in 1913, with fewer than three hundred left, the Chiricahuas were released and received land allotments near their last prison site, Fort Sill, or on the Mescalero Apache Reservation where Ove arrived thirty-five years later."--BOOK JACKET.

Osage Grammar

Carolyn Quintero

Published in cooperation with the American Indian Studies Research Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington.

The Electronic Front Porch

An Oral History of the Arrival of Modern Media in Rural Appalachia and the Melungeon Community

Jacob J. Podber

The Electronic Front Porch examines the arrival of radio and television in Appalachia, and the Internet's role in the Melungeon community. It contributes to a variety of disciplines, including media, Appalachian, and popular culture studies, in addition to oral, Southern, and American history

The Montaukett Indians of Eastern Long Island

John A. Strong

"This book covers the period from the Montaukett's earliest contacts to the 1917 decision by the New York Appellate Court declaring the tribe extinct to their current battle for the federal recognition necessary to reclaim portions of their land." "Strong also looks at related issues such as cultural assimilation, political and social tensions, and patterns of economic dependency among the Montaukett."--BOOK JACKET.

The Darker Side of the Renaissance

Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization

Walter Mignolo

The role of the book, the map, and other European notions of literacy in the conquest of the New World

Time and the Highland Maya

Barbara Tedlock

Described as a landmark in the ethnographic study of the Maya, this study of ritual and cosmology among the contemporary Quiche Indians of highland Guatemala has now been updated to address changes that have occurred in the last decade. The Classic Mayan obsession with time has never been better known. Here, Barbara Tedlock redirects our attention to the present-day keepers of the ancient calendar. Combining anthropology with formal apprenticeship to a diviner, she refutes long-held ethnographic assumptions and opens a door to the order of the Mayan cosmos and its daily ritual. Unable to visit the region for over ten years, Tedlock returned in 1989 to find that observance of the traditional calendar and religion is stronger than ever, despite a brutal civil war. ." . . a well-written, highly readable, and deeply convincing contribution. . . ."--Michael Coe

America, Empire of Liberty

A New History

David Reynolds

This new, personal interpretation of American history - on the themes of Empire, Liberty and Faith - is David Reynolds' definitive work on the subject. The story begins in the eighteenth century, with an extended struggle among the rival empires of France, Britain and Spain for predominance in North America, which Britain eventually wins in the 'first world war' of 1756-63. Coming of age as a military power in its own right in the Second World War, the United States establishes a global American empire while waging the Cold War and does not dismantle it thereafter. From its founding, the colonies and the new nation enjoy greater economic and political liberty than Europe, especially through cheap land. But shortage of labour (the flip side of cheap land) makes the growth of the economy dependent on black slavery. Liberty therefore becomes a crucial issue in the history of this nascent nation. 'Whose liberty?' is the big question in the Twentieth century - causing often violent agitation about the rights of African-Americans. This debate then extends to women, homosexuals, guns, the unborn and multiculturalism. The driver behind the American way of life is so often its religious faith, derived from Calvinist Protestantism. Reynolds shows how it can be characterised by a providentialist sense of mission, so powerful in its reach it becomes the underlying evangelical ideology of America and its foreign policy, from Wilson to George W. Bush.

Landscape Traveled by Coyote and Crane

The World of the Schitsu'umsh

Rodney Frey

Anthropologist Rodney Frey culminates a decade of work with the Schitsu’umsh (the Coeur d’Alene Indians of Idaho) in this portrait of the unique bonds between a people and the landscape of their traditional homeland. The result of an intensive collaboration between investigator and Native people, the book includes many traditional stories that invite the reader’s participation in the world of the Schitsu’umsh.