Sioux
Synopsis:
The only book on award-winning Indigenous basket maker Jeremy Frey, accompanying his first major traveling exhibition.
Frey (Passamaquoddy) is one of the most respected Indigenous basket makers working today. Descended from a long line of basket makers, his work is known for its intricate design and exquisite artistry, which reflect both traditional techniques and his own creative vision.
This catalogue considers his work from a variety of perspectives. Secord, whom Frey credits for guiding his career as the founder of Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance, contributes a detailed biographical essay. DeSimone situates Frey’s work in the broader field of contemporary art, with a specific focus on the new video work he is making for the exhibition. Hoska focuses on Frey’s art in the broader context of Native basket and fiber arts. And Mize considers the ways in which his expanding practice registers ecological knowledge, time, and the impact of climate change.
Additional Information
160 pages | 8.85" x 11.91" | Hardcover
Synopsis:
Of Living Stone: Perspectives on Continuous Knowledge and the Work of Vine Deloria, Jr. is a collection of new essays on the legacy of Vine Deloria, Jr., one of the most influential thinkers of our time. This insightful collection features more than thirty original pieces, bringing together Tribal leaders, artists, scientists, activists, scholars, legal experts, and humorists. A group of French scholars offers surprising perspectives on Deloria’s continuing global influence. Readers will find thoughtful and creative views on his wide-ranging and world-changing body of work. Some build upon his ideas while others offer important criticisms. In addition to its content, this volume is unique in that it was designed to center the traditional exercise of continuous knowledge whereby information is routinely shared, considered, and pragmatically adapted as it flows between generations. In this way, people, ideas and traditions remain alive and relevant—not set in stone —as the past is honored by those living in the present as they prepare for the future.
The book includes contributions from a number of remarkable individuals, including:
- Climate expert Margaret Redsteer (Crow)
- Melanie Yazzie (Diné), host of The Red Power Hour podcast
- Cheryl Crazy Bull (Sicangu Lakota), president of the American Indian College Fund
- Activists Faith Spotted Eagle (Yankton Dakota) and Lauren Schad (Cheyenne River Lakota)
- Writer and producer Migizi Pensoneau (Ponca/Ojibwe)
- Environmental scientists Kyle Whyte (Citizen Potawatomi) and Ryan Emanuel (Lumbee)
- Experts on Tribal Governance Deron Marquez (Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel), Frank Ettawageshik (Little Traverse Bay), Norbert Hill (Oneida), Megan Hill (Oneida), and Marty Case.
- Artists Cannupa Hanska Luger (MHA-Three Affiliated Tribes) and James Johnson (Tlingit)
- Legal Scholars Sarah Deer (Muscogee), Rebecca Tsosie (Yaqui descent), and Gabe Galanda (Round Valley)
- Archaeologist Paulette Steeves (Cree-Metis)
- Scholars of Indigenous Traditions Noenoe Silva (Kānaka Maoli), Natalie Avalos (Chicana of Mexican Indigenous descent), Tom Holm (Cherokee), and Greg Cajete (Tewa-Santa Clara Pueblo).
Time magazine named Vine Deloria, Jr. as one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, and his research, writings, and teachings on history, law, religion, and science continue to influence generations of Indigenous peoples and their allies across the world.
Reviews
“For me as a young person in the 1980s and 1990s, Vine was the only stranger I thought of as family. He was funny and heart-stabbingly blunt. So we have Vine Deloria to thank for revitalizing Indigenous knowledge gathering. Inspired by Vine’s life work, Anishinaabe people now understand that we learn by listening (bzindamowin), observing (gnawaaminjigewin), and ceremony (manidookewin). We also know it’s important to have a LOT of fun (miiziiwapine). Of Living Stone is both a somber memorial and a raucous celebration of Vine’s work.”—Matthew Fletcher (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians), University of Michigan, and author of The Ghost Road
Additional Information
528 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback
Synopsis:
An exploration of Indigenous cosmology and history in North America
• Examines the complexities of Indigenous legends and creation myths and reveals common oral traditions across much of North America
• Explores the history of Cahokia, the Mississippian Mound Builder Empire of 1050-1300 CE, told through the voice of Honga, a Native leader of the time
• Presents an Indigenous revisionist history regarding Thomas Jefferson, expansionist doctrine, and Manifest Destiny
While Western accounts of North American history traditionally start with European colonization, Indigenous histories of North America—or Turtle Island—stretch back millennia. Drawing on comparative analysis, firsthand Indigenous accounts, extensive historical writings, and his own experience, Omaha Tribal member, Cherokee citizen, and teacher Taylor Keen presents a comprehensive re-imagining of the ancient and more recent history of this continent’s oldest cultures. Keen reveals shared oral traditions across much of North America, including among the Algonquin, Athabascan, Sioux, Omaha, Ponca, Osage, Quapaw, and Kaw tribes. He explores the history of Cahokia, the Mississippian Mound Builder Empire of 1050–1300 CE. And he examines ancient earthen works and ceremonial sites of Turtle Island, revealing the Indigenous cosmology, sacred mathematics, and archaeoastronomy encoded in these places that artfully blend the movements of the sun, moon, and stars into the physical landscape.
Challenging the mainstream historical consensus, Keen presents an Indigenous revisionist history regarding Thomas Jefferson, expansionist doctrine, and Manifest Destiny. He reveals how, despite being displaced as the United States colonized westward, the Native peoples maintained their vision of an intrinsically shared humanity and the environmental responsibility found at the core of Indigenous mythology.
Building off a deep personal connection to the history and mythology of the First Peoples of the Americas, Taylor Keen gives renewed voice to the cultures of Turtle Island, revealing an alternative vision of the significance of our past and future presence here.
Reviews
“Brother Keen, with his infinite Indigenous and academic knowledge, brings forth amazing truths about ancient North American cultures the modern world was unaware of. Not only are the ancient earthworks extensive and scientifically and astronomically complex but Keen unveils they are all connected across the entire continent, mirroring the heavens. Simply incredible research.” — Scott Wolter, host of History 2 (H2) Channel’s America Unearthed, world-renowned forensic geol
“Careful analysis by Taylor Keen of the placement and designs of earthworks of the Indigenous people of North America reveals far more complex planning and design was involved than just random location selection of mounds for burials, as we were taught to think. His geographical analysis reveals the sacred earthworks designs were far more advanced and esoteric in nature, something he is uniquely qualified to understand as Indigenous himself and a member of several esoteric orders. He proves definitively the intricate level of knowledge of astronomy, heavenly body movements, mathematics, and cosmology involved in the creation of these earthworks, not only at a local level, but incredibly as long-range alignments as well. This revelation, Keen explains, was something that was dismissed and suppressed by early nineteenth-century archaeologists who breached and destroyed the sacred earthworks and burial mounds as part of the promotion of ‘manifest destiny,’ with the intent being justification of taking tribal lands for settlement. Keen’s incredibly important work gives a whole new perspective on the history of North America.” — Janet Wolter, coauthor of America: Nation of the Goddess
“The official history of the United States begins with Spanish contact in the late fifteenth century. The oral traditions and legends of the various Native peoples of North America, however, stretch back much earlier, into the opaque mists of preliterate times. With a member of the Earthen Bison Clan of the Omaha Tribe to serve as our guide, Rediscovering Turtle Island leads the reader along near-forgotten, overgrown paths that twist and turn throughout a resacralized landscape, decorated with ancient landmarks, populated with whispering ghosts and supernatural beings. The sacred geography of America will never again appear the same.” — P. D. Newman, author of Native American Shamanism and the Afterlife Journey in the Mississippi Valle
“What could be more fascinating than the origin of mankind itself? The premise is staggering and the consequences far-reaching. Keen’s hard work pays off immensely in Rediscovering Turtle Island, and readers will be gripped by that experience on every page.” — Sidian M.S. Jones, coauthor of The Voice of Rolling Thunder
Additional Information
208 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 70 b&w illustrations | Paperback
Synopsis:
Drawing its title from the 1863 Federal Act that banished the Dakota people from their homelands, this remarkable debut collection reckons with the present-day repercussions of historical violence. Through an array of brief lyrics, visual forms, chronologies, and sequences, these virtuosic poems trace a path through the labyrinth of distances and absences haunting the American colonial experiment.
Removal Acts takes its speaker’s fraught methods of accessing the past as both subject and material: family photos, the fragile artifacts of primary documents, and the digital abyss of web browsers and word processors. Alongside studies of two of her Dakota ancestors, Lynch has assembled an intimate record of recovery from bulimia, insisting that self-erasure cannot be separated from the erasures of genocide. In these rigorous, scrutinizing examinations of “removal” in its many forms—as physical displacement, archival absence, Whiteness, and vomit—Lynch has crafted a harrowing portrait of the entwined relationship between the personal and historical. The result is a powerful affirmation of resilience and resolute presence in the face of eradication.
Reviews
"In this sharp debut, words are bracketed and struck through, placed in columns and alongside arrows. . . . With each deliberate letter, Lynch deconstructs a violent past and present, while allowing herself and the reader to search for paths toward an as-yet unknown future."—Dasia Moore, The Boston Globe
"Erin Marie Lynch’s debut poetry book, Removal Acts, is a deeply personal, formally inventive investigation into history, ancestry, and loss. . . . Throughout the work, Lynch’s language remains precise, compassionate, inquisitive, and vulnerable."—Mathangi Subramanian, BOMB Magazine
"Lynch interweaves the stories of two of her ancestors with her own recovery from bulimia to explore the twinned legacies of historical and self erasure. The result is a moving meditation on 'removal' in its many forms that melds together the personal and historical to craft a testament to Indigenous resilience and survival in the face of eradication."—Eliza Browning, Electric Literature
"Removal Acts is a rich and fraught collection that confronts the legacy of displacement and erasure with searing honesty. Debut author Erin Marie Lynch does not shy away from hard questions, including her right to some of the stories in her collection. . . . Removal Acts combines technical prowess and attention to craft with deliberate experimentation, signaling Lynch as a poet with talent that far surpasses expectations for a debut author."—Ronnie K. Stephens, The Poetry Question
Additional Information
136 pages | 7.05" x 8.97" | Paperback
Synopsis:
A teacher lesson plan that accompanies the book, The Seventh Direction. Includes comprehension questions, group activities, colouring pages, and more. In this enlightening legend shared by Lakota Elder Kevin Locke, Wakhan Thanka (The Great Spirit) created the entire world in seven days; leaving the most precious creation for last. In order to protect this precious creation, Wakhan Thanka needed to hide it where it would always be safe and turned to our animal relatives for help. Together, they found the perfect place. Do you know where they chose?
Educator Information
This lesson plan accompanies the book The Seventh Direction: A Legend of Creation.
This lesson plan is available in French: La septième direction Plan de cours
Additional Information
12 pages | 8.75" x 11.00" | Paper Packet
Synopsis:
The long-awaited, profoundly moving, and unforgettable new novel from PEN Award–winning Native American author Mona Susan Power, spanning three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women from the 19th century to the present day.
From the mid-century metropolis of Chicago to the windswept ancestral lands of the Dakota people, to the bleak and brutal Indian boarding schools, A Council of Dolls is the story of three women, told in part through the stories of the dolls they carried….
Sissy, born 1961: Sissy’s relationship with her beautiful and volatile mother is difficult, even dangerous, but her life is also filled with beautiful things, including a new Christmas present, a doll called Ethel. Ethel whispers advice and kindness in Sissy’s ear, and in one especially terrifying moment, maybe even saves Sissy’s life.
Lillian, born 1925: Born in her ancestral lands in a time of terrible change, Lillian clings to her sister, Blanche, and her doll, Mae. When the sisters are forced to attend an “Indian school” far from their home, Blanche refuses to be cowed by the school’s abusive nuns. But when tragedy strikes the sisters, the doll Mae finds her way to defend the girls.
Cora, born 1888: Though she was born into the brutal legacy of the “Indian Wars,” Cora isn’t afraid of the white men who remove her to a school across the country to be “civilized.” When teachers burn her beloved buckskin and beaded doll Winona, Cora discovers that the spirit of Winona may not be entirely lost…
A modern masterpiece, A Council of Dolls is gorgeous, quietly devastating, and ultimately hopeful, shining a light on the echoing damage wrought by Indian boarding schools, and the historical massacres of Indigenous people. With stunning prose, Mona Susan Power weaves a spell of love and healing that comes alive on the page.
Reviews
“A Council of Dolls reached out, grabbed me and did not let go. Power’s ability to make language sing, cry, scream, and laugh illuminates this heartstopper of a book that shines a light into the dark corners of America’s history. I wanted the generational journey I was taking with these unforgettable characters—and their dolls—to never end. Read it--and be healed." — Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of The Evening Hero
“A Council of Dolls absorbs through the skin, enters the bone, and disperses through the psyche—it perfectly captures the internal roots of the Native experience. Through the lives of three Dakota women, we grapple with the emotional, psychological, and spiritual toll on Indigenous peoples enduring an often brutal system and, moreover, how strength, healing, and love reverberate down each passing generation to dispense hope and resiliency. I cannot more highly recommend Power’s newest masterpiece.” — Oscar Hokeah, PEN/Hemingway award-winning author of Calling for a Blanket Dance
"Mona Susan Power’s new novel is an honor song to the love and strength of Native families and our stories, to our brilliant selves. I couldn’t have known how much I needed the wisdom and offerings of these pages." — Kelli Jo Ford, author of Crooked Hallelujah
“This tender and magical novel will stay with me for a long time. Mona Susan Power writes with dazzling empathy. The result is a heart-rending and many-layered narrative, a captivating story which is also a thrilling testimonial to the power of stories.” — Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field
"A resplendent novel about the spirited lives of three inspiring women who endure significant change and hardship. Each story so deeply compelling I wanted to read quickly but was magnetized by the transformative power of each voice. A mighty, dazzling whirlwind of storytelling. These stories lift from the page. Prepare to stay up all night. A Council of Dolls is mesmerizing. Take a deep breath! Mona Susan Power can peer into darkness and transform it." — Debra Magpie Earling — Debra Magpie Earling
“A work of exquisite beauty and courageous truth-telling, and an unforgettable homage to ancestral suffering and strength.”
— Sheila O’Connor, author of Evidence of V
“A talent like Susan Power comes along once in a lifetime, and lucky for us she's arrived. Here is a debut so stunning, so extraordinary in its depth and passion, you will swear there's a miracle on every page.” — Alice Hoffman, on The Grass Dancer
"This book is well-written. It includes elements of historical fiction and a bit of real life horror. The role of the dolls in these women's lives was the most thought-provoking aspect of the novel. It added a bit of a fantasy element to the story. I wondered what the author's intention was. The dolls seem to be symbolic in addition to invisible friends for the girls. They were also silent, supposedly inanimate witnesses to what the young women experienced. The parts of the story told from the dolls' POV were especially intriguing. I enjoyed the section about how the Shirley Temple doll was made, and the doll was presented as self-aware. The author wove mystery and symbolism around the dolls without being blatant. She left readers room to make their own interpretations. I really enjoyed and appreciated that. The book is also full of interesting philosophical statements." - Claudia, Goodreads Review
Additional Information
304 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Hardcover
Synopsis:
A 50th anniversary revised edition of the beloved classic, God is Red.
First published in 1973, Vine Deloria, Jr.’s God Is Red remains the seminal work on Native American religious views, asking the reader to think about our species and our ultimate fate in novel ways. Celebrating five decades of publication with this new edition, Deloria’s classic work reminds us to understand “that we are a part of nature, not a transcendent species with no responsibilities to the natural world.” It is time again to listen to Vine Deloria, Jr.’s powerful voice, informing us about a spiritual life that is independent of Western religion and that reveres the interconnectedness of all living things.
This new edition includes critical essays engaging with the original material by well-known Indigenous thinkers - Philip Deloria, Suzan Shown Harjo, Daniel Wildcat, and David E. Wilkins. Inside, the book covers a wide variety of topics including: the problem of creation, the origin of religion, Death, and Human personality.
“God is Red should be read and re-read by Americans who want to understand why the United States keeps losing the peace, war after war.” – Leslie Marmon Silko
Additional Information
360 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback
Synopsis:
“We need to learn and grow together, and if we are able to do this, we will create harmony,” counsels Tom Sampson, an elder of Tsartlip First Nation in British Columbia.
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 nineteen elders to new generations.
Featuring interviews that share powerful experiences and stories, Jesintel illuminates the importance of ethical reciprocal relationships and the interconnectedness of places, land, water, and the spirit within all things. Elders offer their perspectives on language revitalization, Coast Salish family values and naming practices, salmon, sovereignty, canoe racing, and storytelling. They also share traumatic memories, including of their boarding school experiences and the epidemics that ravished their communities. Jesintel highlights the importance of maintaining relations and traditions in the face of ongoing struggles. Collaboration is at the heart of this work and informs how the editors and community came together to honor the boundless relations of Coast Salish people and their territories.
Elders Interviewed:
Tom Sampson (Tsartlip First Nation)
Virginia Cross (Muckleshoot Tribe)
Ernestine Gensaw (Lummi Nation)
Steve and Gwen Point (Stó:lō Nation)
Gene and Wendy Harry (Malahat Nation)
Claude Wilbur (Swinomish Tribe)
Richard Solomon (Lummi Nation)
Elaine Grinell (Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe)
Arvid Charlie (Cowichan Nation)
Amy George (Tsleil-Waututh Nation)
Nancy Shippentower (Nisqually Tribe)
Nolan Charles (Musqueam Indian Band)
Andy de los Angeles (Snoqualmie Tribe)
Jewell James (Lummi Nation)
Kenny Moses Sr. Family (Tulalip Tribal Nation)
Ramona Morris (Lummi Nation)
Reviews
"A beautiful sharing of thriving Coast Salish communities. Indigenous elders, cultures, and languages have so much precious wisdom to share, and Jesintel celebrates these through storytelling and photos. It is a generous gift to anyone who wants to better understand the resilience of Indigenous communities."- Michelle M. Jacob (Yakama), author of The Auntie Way: Stories Celebrating Kindness, Fierceness, and Creativity
Educator Information
Nineteen elders from Coast Salish communities in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia offer a portrait of their perspectives on language, revitalization, and Coast Salish family values. Topics include naming practices, salmon, canoe journeys and storytelling.
Additional Information
224 pages | 9.00" x 10.00" | 144 colour illustrations | 1 map | Paperback
Synopsis:
An emerging Lakota scholar’s critical interrogation of settler-colonial nations that re-centers Oceti Sakowin (Dakota) women as the tribe’s traditional culture keepers and bearers.
We Are the Stars is a literary recovery project that seeks to reconstruct a genealogy of Oceti Sakowin (Dakota) literature, and study in-depth the linkages between settler colonialism, literature, nationalism, and gender via analysis of tribal and settler colonial narratives about women and land.
Sarah Hernandez begins by exploring how settler colonizers used the printing press and boarding schools to displace Oceti Sakowin women as traditional culture keepers and bearers, with the goal of assimilating completely the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota nations.
She then shifts her focus to decolonization, exploring how contemporary Oceti Sakowin writers and scholars have started to reclaim Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota literatures to decolonize and heal their families, communities, and nations.
Additional Information
256 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback
Synopsis:
In this revolutionary self-help guide, two beloved Native American wellness activists offer wisdom for achieving spiritual, physical, and emotional wellbeing rooted in Indigenous ancestral knowledge.
When wellness teachers and husband-wife duo Chelsey Luger and Thosh Collins founded their Indigenous wellness initiative, Well for Culture, they extended an invitation to all to honor their whole self through Native wellness philosophies and practices. In reclaiming this ancient wisdom for health and wellbeing—drawing from traditions spanning multiple tribes—they developed the Seven Circles, a holistic model for modern living rooted in timeless teachings from their ancestors. Luger and Collins have introduced this universally adaptable template for living well to Ivy league universities and corporations like Nike, Adidas, and Google, and now make it available to everyone in this wise guide.
The Seven Circles model comprises interconnected circles that keep all aspects of our lives in balance, functioning in harmony with one another. They are:
- Food
- Movement
- Sleep
- Ceremony
- Sacred Space
- Land
- Community
In The Seven Circles, Luger and Collins share intimate stories from their life journeys growing up in tribal communities, from the Indigenous tradition of staying active and spiritually centered through running and dance, to the universal Indigenous emphasis on a light-filled, minimalist home to create sacred space. Along the way, Luger and Collins invite readers to both adapt these teachings to their lives as well as do so without appropriating and erasing the original context, representing a critical new ethos for the wellness space. Each chapter closes with practical advice on how to engage with the teachings, as well as wisdom for keeping that particular circle in harmony with the others.
With warmth and generosity—and 75 atmospheric photographs by Collins throughout—The Seven Circles teaches us how to connect with nature, with our community, and with ourselves, and to integrate ancient Indigenous philosophies of health and wellbeing into our own lives to find healing and balance.
Reviews
“A life-changing holistic guide to wellness rooted in empowerment, resiliency, and ‘good medicine.’ This book is for any human being searching for wellness solutions in a chaotic world, a true antidote to colonization.” — Vina Brown, Indigenous Scholar, Entrepreneur, Artist, and Professor of Indigenous Studies at Northwest Indian College
“The Seven Circles is a true innovation in Indigenous thought; it brings our shared heritage and traditional teachings to life. Truly inspiring. Readers will find their journey to be a motivating guide for self-transformation.” — Taiaiake Alfred, Mohawk Philosopher
“While the term ‘wellness’ has been co-opted and diluted by (primarily white) social media influencers in recent years, Luger and Collins are recentering the conversation around how to use Indigenous cultural values, foods, and modalities of movement as tools for spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional healing.” — Vanity Fair
“[Two of the] faces in the health and wellness scene that are pushing for inclusivity, justice, and kindness, toppling old conventions to make their own…Luger and Collins rewrite modern narratives regarding Native health while addressing complex histories and ongoing disparities.” — Outside magazine
“Spellbinding. This may be the first book I’ve ever read that made me stop and decide, “I’m making this change now!” Seven Circles opened my eyes to a way of life that is tested by time, guided by nature, and urgently needed today." — Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run, Natural Born Heroes, and Running with Sherman
“Wisdom abounds in this stimulating offering.” — Publishers Weekly
“Luger and Collins provide a range of sensible, informed, accessible guidance for both small- and large-scale lifestyle changes. An appealing manual for healing the self through Indigenous traditions.” — Kirkus Reviews
Additional Information
256 pages | 7.00" x 9.00" | 75 Colour Photos | Hardcover
Synopsis:
The title of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It holds a double meaning that teasingly suggests the play can please all tastes. But is that possible? With his subversive updating of the Bard’s classic, Indigenous creator and cultural provocateur Cliff Cardinal seeks to find out. The show exults in bawdy humour, difficult subject matter, and raw emotion; Cardinal is not one to hold back when it comes to challenging delicate sensibilities.
Reviews
“It is anarchic and tender and seething and raw. And important for us now.” — Istvan Dugalin, Istvan Reviews
“Unlike any other production of the play, past or future.” — Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine
Additional Information
96 pages | 5.37" x 8.38" | Paperback
Synopsis:
We live in an astounding world of relations. We share these ties that bind with our fellow humans—and we share these relations with nonhuman beings as well. From the bacterium swimming in your belly to the trees exhaling the breath you breathe, this community of life is our kin—and, for many cultures around the world, being human is based upon this extended sense of kinship.
Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations is a lively series that explores our deep interconnections with the living world. These five Kinship volumes—Planet, Place, Partners, Persons, Practice—offer essays, interviews, poetry, and stories of solidarity, highlighting the interdependence that exists between humans and nonhuman beings. More than 70 contributors—including Robin Wall Kimmerer, Richard Powers, David Abram, J. Drew Lanham, and Sharon Blackie—invite readers into cosmologies, narratives, and everyday interactions that embrace a more-than-human world as worthy of our response and responsibility. These diverse voices render a wide range of possibilities for becoming better kin.
From the perspective of kinship as a recognition of nonhuman personhood, of kincentric ethics, and of kinship as a verb involving active and ongoing participation, how are we to live? “Practice,” Volume 5 of the Kinship series, turns to the relations that we nurture and cultivate as part of our lived ethics. The essayists and poets in this volume explore how we make kin and strengthen kin relationships through respectful participation—from creative writer and dance teacher Maya Ward’s weave of landscape, story, song, and body, to Lakota peace activist Tiokasin Ghosthorse’s reflections on language as a key way of knowing and practicing kinship, to cultural geographer Amba Sepie’s wrestling with how to become kin when ancestral connections have frayed. The volume concludes with an amazing and spirited conversation between John Hausdoerffer, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Sharon Blackie, Enrique Salmon, Orrin Williams, and Maria Isabel Morales on the breadth and qualities of kinship practices.
Proceeds from sales of Kinship benefit the nonprofit, non-partisan Center for Humans and Nature, which partners with some of the brightest minds to explore human responsibilities to each other and the more-than-human world. The Center brings together philosophers, ecologists, artists, political scientists, anthropologists, poets and economists, among others, to think creatively about a resilient future for the whole community of life.
Contributors are both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
Additional Information
194 pages | 5.27" x 7.75" | Paperback
Synopsis:
Red Nation Rising is the first book ever to investigate and explain the violent dynamics of bordertowns. Bordertowns are white-dominated towns and cities that operate according to the same political and spatial logics as all other American towns and cities. The difference is that these settlements get their name from their location at the borders of current-day reservation boundaries, which separate the territory of sovereign Native nations from lands claimed by the United States.
Bordertowns came into existence when the first US military forts and trading posts were strategically placed along expanding imperial frontiers to extinguish indigenous resistance and incorporate captured indigenous territories into the burgeoning nation-state. To this day, the US settler state continues to wage violence on Native life and land in these spaces out of desperation to eliminate the threat of Native presence and complete its vision of national consolidation “from sea to shining sea.” This explains why some of the most important Native-led rebellions in US history originated in bordertowns and why they are zones of ongoing confrontation between Native nations and their colonial occupier, the United States.
Despite this rich and important history of political and material struggle, little has been written about bordertowns. Red Nation Rising marks the first effort to tell these entangled histories and inspire a new generation of Native freedom fighters to return to bordertowns as key front lines in the long struggle for Native liberation from US colonial control. This book is a manual for navigating the extreme violence that Native people experience in reservation bordertowns and a manifesto for indigenous liberation that builds on long traditions of Native resistance to bordertown violence.
Reviews
“The authors of this brilliant exposition on bordertown violence are no ordinary academics, although academia would benefit from having more faculty scholars such as these. They are also master organizers, a part of a network of indigenous and other community organizers in Indian Country fueling the process of decolonization of Native lands and communities. Bordertown violence is as old as US colonization of the continent itself, and it persists today in the towns and cities that border Native reservations and communities all over US-claimed territory and is replicated in even more distant cities that have large Native populations, many of whom are homeless. This may be the most important organizing manual ever produced by a social movement in the United States.”—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
“The borders racking our world are in constant motion and, like the explosive grinding of tectonic plates, the violence of this movement and resistance to it emerges most sharply at the edges. This essential volume brings together militant intellectuals to provide an accessible introduction to the violent encirclement of indigenous communities, and to provide crucial concept-weapons to deepen ongoing collective resistance.” —George Ciccariello-Maher, author of Decolonizing Dialectics
“A remarkable body of work that effectively weaves long overdue native scholarship and historical analysis of settler colonialism with direct and timely frontline reports on the continuing bordertown wars and conflicts in occupied native territories. Offers a comprehensive framework for advancing present and future indigenous resistance and liberation struggles.”—John Redhouse (Diné)
Additional Information
176 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback
Synopsis:
A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most.
Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakota people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn’t return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they’ve inherited.
On a winter’s day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband’s farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron—women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools.
Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.
Reviews
“With compelling characters and images that linger long after the final page is turned, The Seed Keeper invokes the strength that women, land, and plants have shared with one another through the generations.”—Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
“As seeds are a gift from one generation to another, the song and the word of the seeds return to us, reminding us of our covenant, and also of the promise of love and rebirth. Always, I remember the Zapatista proverb ‘They thought they buried us, they forgot that we were seeds.’ That we are, and Diane Wilson’s narrative of intergenerational loss and rebirth fills my heart with gratitude.”—Winona LaDuke, author of Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming
“A gracefully told story of continuity through seeds saved and nurtured by Dakota women, The Seed Keeper is lush and sustaining—a read that feeds heart and spirit in the same way as do the gardens that are their legacy.”—Linda LeGarde Grover, author of Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year
Additional Information
440 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"
Synopsis:
A guide to integrating indigenous thinking into modern life for a more interconnected and spiritual relationship with our fellow beings, Mother Earth, and the natural ways of the universe.
With each generation, we have drifted further and further away from our ability to recognize and connect with the source of our original design. In this modern world, we spend our attention in ways that benefit the powers that be, and not ourselves or the earth.
This book's intention is not to teach you to "be Native American," but instead to use the indigenous culture of the Lakota to help you connect with your own indigenous roots and help you remember your ancestral knowing that all beings are divinely connected.
Thinking indigenously centers around three concepts:
1) The way of the seven generations--conscious living
2) The way of the buffalo--mindful consumption
3) The way of the village--collective impact
Author Doug Good Feather, with Doug Pineda, shares the knowledge that has been handed down through his Lakota elders to help you connect with your purpose in life, personal power, and place in this interconnected web with Spirit, Mother Earth, and humanity as a whole.
Additional Information
176 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"