The University of Arizona Press

December 17, 2024

The accolades just keep coming for University of Arizona Press author Sarah Hernandez!

We Are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Tradition has received an honorable mention for the Modern Language Association (MLA) Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, and Languages Winners.

The committee’s citation for Hernandez’s book reads:

“Sarah Hernandez’s We Are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Tradition illuminates how settler missionaries, policies, teachers, and writers worked to colonize Oceti Sakowin literary practice by attacking its foundations—Oceti Sakowin women and land. It then reconstructs an Oceti Sakowin literary tradition over a long period of time commonly understood as one of loss and lack. Hernandez first reveals the links between literary colonization and land colonization, showing how nineteenth-century missionary colonizers gained knowledge of Dakota language and literature, mistranslated stories, and helped translate and ratify treaties to serve their purposes, before turning to how Oceti Sakowin authors—largely women—later revitalized their literary traditions by decolonizing settler land narratives with attention to language, land knowledge, and women’s authority. Hernandez models a powerful method of literary recovery in the context of a colonized literary tradition.”

Earlier this year, We Are the Stars was also selected as the winner of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association’s (NAISA) 2024 Best First Book Award. Read an excerpt from the book on our website.

We Are the Stars is part of the University of Arizona Press’ Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies Series, which anchors intellectual work within an Indigenous framework that reflects Native-centered concerns and objectives.

Congratulations to Sarah on yet another incredible achievement!