June 9, 2021
Hello, virtual NAISA attendees! We are excited to share our new and recent Indigenous studies titles with you, and we think you’ll enjoy our conference discount as well. From now until July 15, 2021, use the code AZNAISA21 at checkout to receive 40% off all titles, plus free U.S. shipping. We hope to see you all again at a future NAISA conference.
If you have any questions about our publishing program, please visit this page. Alternatively, please contact our Editor-in-Chief, Kristen Buckles, at kbuckles@uapress.arizona.edu or our Senior Editor, Allyson Carter, at acarter@uapress.arizona.edu. If you have questions about course adoptions, please visit this page and/or send an email to shicks@uapress.arizona.edu.
“This collection is essential to American literature and should be required for anyone studying American, First Nations, or world literature.”—Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate
Watch an incredible book release celebration for The Diné Reader here, which features many of the contributors. Then, read a Publishers Weekly review of the book here, and read an excerpt from the book here.
Becoming Hopi is a comprehensive look at the history of the people of the Hopi Mesas as it has never been told before, and is the product of more than fifteen years of collaboration between tribal and academic scholars.
Watch a book trailer for Becoming Hopi on the book’s web page to learn more.
A Coalition of Lineages by Duane Champagne and Carole Goldberg shows how the experience of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians is an instructive model for scholars and provides a model for multicultural tribal development that may be of interest to recognized and nonrecognized Indian nations in the United States and elsewhere.
From the day he was born, Federico Jiménez Caballero was predicted to be a successful man. So, how exactly did a young boy from Tututepec, Oaxaca, become a famous Indigenous jewelry artist and philanthropist in Los Angeles? Federico tells the remarkable story of willpower, curiosity, hard work, and passion coming together to change one man’s life forever.
Watch a recorded book release event here, in which Federico recounts many details from his remarkable life.
Decolonizing “Prehistory” critically examines and challenges the paradoxical role that modern historical-archaeological scholarship plays in adding legitimacy to, but also delegitimizing, contemporary colonialist practices. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this volume empowers Indigenous voices and offers a nuanced understanding of the American deep past.
Carrying the Burden of Peace weaves together stories of Indigenous life, love, eroticism, pain, and joy to map the contours of diverse, empowered, and non-dominant Indigenous masculinities. It is from here that a more balanced world may be pursued.
This book was co-published in collaboration with the University of Regina Press.
A baffling museum murder that appears to be the work of twisted human killers results in an unexpected and violent confrontation with powerful shape-shifters for Choctaw detective Monique Blue Hawk. Blending tribal beliefs and myths into a modern context, The Hatak Witches continues the storyline of Choctaw cosmology and cultural survival that are prominent in Devon A. Mihesuah’s award-winning novel, The Roads of My Relations.
Read a Publisher’s Weekly review of the book here, then read an interview with Devon Mihesuah here. Sign up for the virtual book release event here!
Indigenous Women and Violence offers an intimate view of how settler colonialism and other structural forms of power and inequality created accumulated violences in the lives of Indigenous women. The chapters in this book are engaged, feminist, collaborative, and activism focused, conveying powerful messages about the resilience of Indigenous women in the face of violence and systemic oppression.
In 1924, the United States began a bold program in public health. The Indian Service of the United States hired its first nurses to work among Indians living on reservations. Strong Hearts and Healing Hands shows how field nurses and Native people formed a positive working relationship that resulted in the decline of mortality from infectious diseases. With strong hearts, Indians eagerly participated in the tuberculosis campaign of 1939–40 to x-ray tribal members living on twenty-nine reservations. Through their cooperative efforts, Indians and health-care providers decreased deaths, cases, and misery among the tribes of Southern California.
Read an excerpt from the book here.
Revitalization Lexicography is a unique look under the hood of lexicography in a small community, highlighting how the creation of the Tunica dictionary was intentionally leveraged to shape the revitalization of the Tunica language. It details both the theoretical and the practical aspects that contributed to the Tunica dictionary in manner compelling to readers from all walks of life.
Horsefly Dress is a meditation on the experience and beauty of suffering. Rich in the imagery of autumnal foliage, migrating birds, and frozen landscapes, Heather Cahoon’s collection calls forth the sensory experience of grief and metamorphosis. The transformative powers associated with the human experience of loss belong to the past, present, and future, as do the traditional Salish-Pend d’Oreille stories that create the backbone of these intricate poems.
Watch a recorded virtual book release with Heather Cahoon here, then read her interview with Poetry Northwest here, and her interview with us here.
Narrating Nature opens up dialogue that counters traditional conservation narratives. It offers conservation efforts that not only include people as beneficiaries but also demonstrate how they are essential and knowledgeable members of the conservation landscape itself.
Soldiers, Saints, and Shamans documents how and why the Indigenous Náayari, Wixárika, O’dam, and Mexicanero peoples took part in the Mexican Revolution as they struggled to preserve their cultures, lands, and political autonomy in the face of civil war, bandit raids, and radical political reform. In unpacking the ambiguities that characterize their participation in this tumultuous period, it sheds light on the inner contradictions of the revolution itself.
Read Nathaniel Morris’ field notes and see some photos from his research here, then watch Nathaniel Morris discuss the book with UCLAmericas here.
Chie Sakakibara shows how knots of connection came into being between humans and nonhuman others and how such intimate and intense relations will help humans survive the Anthropocene. Whale Snow offers an important and thought-provoking look at global climate change as it manifests in the everyday life of the Iñupiat in Arctic Alaska.
We are so thrilled that Whale Snow won the 2020 AAG Meridian Award! Read an interview with author Chie Sakakibara here.
La Raza Cosmética examines postrevolutionary identity construction as a project of settler colonialism that at once appropriated and erased indigeneity. In its critique of Indigenous representation, it also shows how Indigenous women strategically engaged with and resisted these projects as they played out in beauty pageants, films, tourism, art, and other realms of popular culture.
Read the introduction here.
Spiral to the Stars offers a critical and concrete map for community making that leverages Mvskoke way-finding tools of energy, kinship, knowledge, power, and spaces. It is must-have book for community organizers, radical pedagogists, and anyone wishing to empower and advocate for their community.
If you are attending the virtual NAISA conference, there will be a live roundtable about Spiral to the Stars at 1:00 p.m. EDT.
We are thrilled that Spiral to the Stars won the 2020 Beatrice Medicine Award! Read an excerpt from the book here.