Books in the Narrating Native Histories series

Analyzing the nuances of identity formation in rural Andean culture, Andrew Canessa draws on two decades of ethnographic research in a remote indigenous community in Bolivia's highlands.

Nancy van Deusen examines over one hundred lawsuits that indio slaves brought to the Spanish court in the mid-sixteenth century to gain their freedom. The category indio was largely constructed during these lawsuits, and van Deusen emphasizes the need to situate colonial indigenous subjects and slavery in a global context.

Now Peru is Mine is the account of the life of Manuel Llamojha Mitma, one of Peru's most creative and inspiring indigenous political activists. His compelling life story covers nearly eight decades, providing a window into many key developments in Peru's tumultuous twentieth-century history and political mobilization in Cold War Latin America.

Focuses on the lives of four indigenous activist-intellectuals in Bolivia, key leaders in the Alcaldes Mayores Particulares (AMP), a movement established to claim rights for indigenous education and reclaim indigenous lands from hacienda owners.

The Colombian activist Juan Gregorio Palechor (1923-1992) dedicated his life to championing indigenous rights in Cauca, a department in the southwest of Colombia, where he helped found the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca. This book traces his political awakening, his experiences in national politics, and the disillusionment that resulted.

Seeking to understand these transformations in the capacities of Native communities to resist cultural, economic, and political domination, this book offers an ethnographic analysis of aboriginal Canadians' changing experiences of historical violence.

An interdisciplinary collection that addresses the racial and ethnic politics of knowledge production and indigenous activism in the Americas, this book analyzes the relationship of language to power and advocates for collaboration between community members, scholars, and activists that prioritize the right of Native people to decide how their knowledge is used.

This book extends the conception of literacy beyond the written word to incorporate the visual. Focusing on the period of colonization in the Andean region the authors argue that the European cultural literacy that they imposed on the indigenous population was not just a tool for oppression and control but was used by the local people as a means to assert their own cultural identity.

Compares the experiences of three central Louisiana Indian tribes with federal tribal recognition policy to illuminate the complex relationship between recognition policy and American Indian racial and tribal identities.

Analyzes bilingual intercultural education in Bolivia.

An assessment of the legal and cultural effects of the arbitrary correlation of blood and race imposed by the US government on the indigenous peoples of Hawai'i. It demonstrates how blood quantum, a system originally intended to restore land to Native Hawaiians, has in fact become an extension of US imperial power in Hawai'i.

For Native peoples of California, the abalone found along the state's coast has significance as food, spirit, narrative symbol, tradable commodity, and material with which to make adornment and sacred regalia. This book presents perspectives on the multifaceted material.

A Nation Rising chronicles the political struggles and grassroots initiatives collectively known as the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, raising issues that resonate far beyond the Hawaiian archipelago, issues such as Indigenous cultural revitalization, environmental justice, and demilitarization.