Indigenous Politics

Long before there was a Duluth, Minnesota, the massive outcropping that divides the city emerged from the ridge of gabbro rock running along the westward shore of Lake Superior. A great westward migration carried the Ojibwe people to the Point of Rocks. Against this backdrop—Misaabekong, the place of the giants—the lives chronicled in Linda LeGarde Grover's book unfold, some in myth, some in long-ago times, some in an imagined present, and some in the author's family history, all with a deep bond to the land, one another, and the Ojibwe culture.

Human? is the story of acclaimed Wik artist Ziggy Ramo's experience growing up under the weight of this lie. We've had 236 years of continued destruction in the name of 'civilised progress', under an oppressive colonial system that punches down on almost everyone. We all deserve more. But to move forward we have to be honest about the past.

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. In Settler Cannabis, Kaitlin Reed demonstrates how this "green rush" is only the most recent example of settler colonial resource extraction and wealth accumulation. Reed shares this history to inform the path toward an alternative future.

A riveting political thriller and love story. Set primarily in contemporary Russia and the United States, here is a novel that brilliantly knits together four seemingly unconnected lives: Adam, a CIA intelligence operative who suffers from albinism and searches for the Russian assassin who killed his mother, an act he witnessed as a child; Lily, a young Hawaiian Chinese journalist who falls in love with him; Bazil, an Indian intelligence operative from Mumbai who befriends Adam; and Zahira, a beautiful Afghani girl mutilated by the Taliban.

Nick Neely chronicles his 650-mile trek on foot from San Diego to San Francisco, following the route of the first overland Spanish expedition into what was soon called Alta California. Led by Gaspar de Portolá in 1769, the expedition sketched a route that would become, in part, the famous El Camino Real. It laid the foundation for the Golden State we know today, a place that remains as mythical and captivating as any in the world.

When the American government was founded, the Founders and Framers assumed a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That government is dying. It is under the authority of not we, the people, but rather a small elite that is trying to snuff out the great experiment of man ruling himself - the common man - the man that within the right system of government can attain his purpose to achieve happiness.

Child of Morning Star: Embers of an Ancient Dawn is a poetic collection of stories that draws on the author's travels and knowledge as a Dene artist and a lifelong student of history. In it, Antoine Mountain weaves stories about people and art and the moments when our world manages to pause just briefly enough that we can see the roots of our communal humanity. Each part of this book corresponds to the four directions of the Medicine Wheel and offers insight into history, social conditions, community, and the spiritual.

Philip Burnham tells the life story of the remarkable Packs the Dog, a member of the Minneconjou Lakotas who was born in 1864 east of the Black Hills. His father, Yellow Knife, died when the boy was five, and the family eventually enrolled at Pine Ridge Agency with the Oglalas under an uncle's name, Three Stars. In 1879 Packs the Dog joined the first class of Indian students to be admitted to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

In Mesa County, Nevada, the tide of history was about to change. A tiny tribe of Indigenous Americans had just beaten the white man in his own court—and won title to some of the richest land in America. But some people were poor losers. And if they couldn’t hold on to the land … they’d simply eliminate its rightful owners. With a handful of poorly armed Native Americans facing a lynch mob led by the county sheriff and backed by corporate millions, Mesa County might be the setting for another Wounded Knee. Until the Black Berets get in on the action and show how professionals handle a massacre.

Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to help them recover their looted heritage from museums across the country. As senior curator of anthropology, Chip Colwell navigated firsthand the questions of how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists and whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys a common heritage. His book reveals a dramatic process that involves negotiating the blurry lines between identity and morality, spirituality and politics.

Uncover the untold story of the Taíno, the first people of the Caribbean, in this riveting exploration of history, culture, and resilience. From their ancient migrations through South America to their thriving societies across the islands, this book brings to life the rich legacy of the Taíno people. Delve into the vibrant daily lives of the Taíno, their spiritual beliefs rooted in the natural world, and their mastery of sustainable living.

The Musician Healer resurrects a long-forgotten role for musicians and provides clear guidance for preparation and self-development as a musician healer in order to reactivate this role for the modern world. It begins with the author’s personal musical story that draws upon her Mi’kmaq/Abenaki First Nations and French Canadian roots, followed by the history of musician healers from ancient Egypt and India. Runningdeer then explores the energetic aspects of music healing, especially the quality of personal energies that a musician channels through her music.

“I love food” Nakkiah Lui says, and in the next breath whispers “so give us back our land”. In First Eat, a confrontational, raw and highly personal exploration of food politics, power and body sovereignty, Nakkiah Lui asks how our meals would look different if First Nations people owned the land from which the food came. First Eat is about more than just food, it’s an aural feast for a rich future.

How the West Was Drawn explores the geographic and historical experiences of the Pawnees, the Iowas, and the Lakotas during the European and American contest for imperial control of the Great Plains during the 18th and 19th centuries. David Bernstein argues that the American West was a collaborative construction between Native peoples and Euro-American empires that developed cartographic processes and culturally specific maps, which in turn reflected encounter and conflict between settler states and indigenous peoples.

Native Country of the Heart is the writer and activist Cherrie Moraga's love letter to her "unlettered" mother. It begins with her mother, Elvira Isabel Moraga, who as a child, along with her siblings, was hired out by her own father to pick cotton in California's Imperial Valley. The lives of Cherrie and her mother, and of their people, are woven together in a story of critical reflection and deep personal revelation as Moraga charts her own coming to consciousness alongside the heartbreaking story of her mother's decline.

After One Hundred Winters confronts the harsh truth that the United States was founded on the violent dispossession of Indigenous people and asks what reconciliation might mean in light of this haunted history. In this timely and urgent book, settler historian Margaret Jacobs tells the stories of the individuals and communities who are working together to heal historical wounds - and reveals how much we have to gain by learning from our history instead of denying it.

Aboriginal lawyer, writer and filmmaker Larissa Behrendt has long been fascinated by the story of Eliza Fraser, who was purportedly captured by the Butchulla people after she was shipwrecked on their island off the Queensland coast in 1836. In this deeply personal audiobook, Behrendt uses Eliza's tale as a starting point to interrogate how Aboriginal people – and indigenous people of other countries – have been portrayed in their colonisers' stories.

In Captives: How Stolen People Changed the World archaeologist Catherine M. Cameron provides an eye-opening comparative study of the profound impact captives of warfare and raiding have had on small-scale societies through time. Cameron provides a new point of orientation for archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and other scholars by illuminating the impact that captive-taking and enslavement have had on cultural change, with important implications for understanding the past.

In Extinction and the Human, Timothy Sweet ponders the realities of animal extinction and endangerment and the often divergent Native American and Euro-American narratives that surround them. He focuses especially on the force of human impact on megafauna—mammoths, whales, and the North American bison. Ultimately, he argues, it is the critical assessment of ideas of human exceptionalism that provides a necessary counterpoint both to apologies for human mastery over nature and deep ecology's attempts to erase the human.

In Colonizing Paradise, historian Jefferson Dillman charts the broad spectrum of sentiments that British citizens and travelers held regarding their colonial possessions in the West Indies. Because British sentiments in the Caribbean located danger and evil not just in indigenous populations but in Spanish Catholics as well, Dillman’s work begins with the arrival of Spanish explorers and conquistadors. Colonizing Paradise spans the arrival of English ships and continues through the early nineteenth century and the colonial era.