Category: Native Amer./Indigenous Studies

“Sovereign Entrepreneurs: Economic Identities”

The following is an excerpt from Courtney Lewis’ “Sovereign Entrepreneurs: Cherokee Small-Business Owners and the Making of Economic Sovereignty“. By 2009, reverberations of economic crisis spread from the United States around the globe. As corporations across the United States folded, however, small businesses on the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) continued to thrive. In this… Continue Reading “Sovereign Entrepreneurs: Economic Identities”

“Crafting an Indigenous Nation: Beyond Feathered War Bonnets”

The following is an excerpt from Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote’s “Crafting an Indigenous Nation: Kiowa Expressive Culture in the Progressive Era”. In this in-depth interdisciplinary study, Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote reveals how Kiowa people drew on the tribe’s rich history of expressive culture to assert its identity at a time of profound challenge. Examining traditional forms such as beadwork, metalwork, painting, and dance, Tone-Pah-Hote… Continue Reading “Crafting an Indigenous Nation: Beyond Feathered War Bonnets”

“Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Adapting to Segregation”

The following is an excerpt from Malinda Maynor Lowery’s Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation. With more than 50,000 enrolled members, North Carolina’s Lumbee Indians are the largest Native American tribe east of the Mississippi River. Malinda Maynor Lowery, a Lumbee herself, describes how, between Reconstruction and the 1950s, the Lumbee… Continue Reading “Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Adapting to Segregation”

Sagwu (One): Alenihv (Beginnings)

The following is an excerpt from Christopher B. Teuton’s Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club. Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club paints a vivid, fascinating portrait of a community deeply grounded in tradition and dynamically engaged in the present. A collection of forty interwoven stories, conversations, and teachings about Western Cherokee life, beliefs, and the art of… Continue Reading Sagwu (One): Alenihv (Beginnings)

Happy National Native American Heritage Month: A Reading List

Since 1990, November has been nationally celebrated as Native American Heritage Month. We take this month to honor the cultures, histories and contributions that Native people have made throughout the years. To help celebrate, we’ve curated a reading list of books from all Native American authors touching on different aspects of Native American life. We would also like to highlight… Continue Reading Happy National Native American Heritage Month: A Reading List

UNC Libraries’ Off The Shelf Author Talk with Warren E. Milteer Jr.

Happy tenth anniversary to University Press Week! This year’s Association of University Presses annual celebration, running from November 8-12, “welcomes all to ‘Keep UP’ with a decade of excellence and innovation.”  For UP Week’s annual blog tour, today’s specific theme, Listicle, today’s bloggers list what 10 publications best represent their Press during the past decade. We encourage you to visit these fellow UP press blogs today… Continue Reading UNC Libraries’ Off The Shelf Author Talk with Warren E. Milteer Jr.

The Slide Show That Changed History: An Overview of Defending the Arctic Refuge

Reblogged with permission from Arctic Relations, the following is a guest blog post from Finis Dunaway, author of Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice. Tucked away in the northeastern corner of Alaska is one of the most contested landscapes in all of North America: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Considered sacred by Indigenous… Continue Reading The Slide Show That Changed History: An Overview of Defending the Arctic Refuge

Three UNC Press titles win American Historical Association 2021 Prizes!

Congratulations to these UNC Press titles who were American Historical Association 2021 Prize Winners! The AHA offers annual prizes honoring exceptional books, distinguished teaching and mentoring in the classroom, public history, and other historical projects. Since 1896, the Association has conferred over 1,000 awards. This year’s finalists were selected from a field of over 1,400 entries by nearly 150 dedicated… Continue Reading Three UNC Press titles win American Historical Association 2021 Prizes!

Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Removal and the British Empire

Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day! We’re happy to be celebrating the first-ever presidential proclamation of this day in which we appreciate Native Americans and their land that we colonized and continue to occupy. In an effort to help celebrate this new proclamation, read an excerpt from Samantha Seeley’s Omohundro Institute and UNC Press recently published book, Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the… Continue Reading Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Removal and the British Empire

Mental Illness Awareness Week Reading List

Today’s reading list is focused on mental health as we enter Mental Illness Awareness Week, recognized from October 3rd to October 9th. “Since 1990, when Congress officially established the first full week of October as MIAW, advocates have worked together to sponsor activities, large or small, to educate the public about mental illness.” Below you’ll find a list of various… Continue Reading Mental Illness Awareness Week Reading List

An Unexpected Mechanism of Native Dispossession

The following is a guest blog post by Jonathan Todd Hancock, author of Convulsed States: Earthquakes, Prophecy, and the Remaking of Early America. Through varied peoples’ efforts to come to grips with the New Madrid earthquakes, Hancock reframes early nineteenth-century North America as a site where all of its inhabitants wrestled with fundamental human questions amid prophecies, political reinventions, and… Continue Reading An Unexpected Mechanism of Native Dispossession

UNC Libraries’ Off The Shelf Author Talk with Finis Dunaway

In May, Finis Dunaway, author of Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice, was featured on UNC Libraries’ Off the Shelf series. In the Author Talk below, Finis discusses how his book wasn’t exactly the book he planned to write, how one image sparked the concept for his book and other topics.… Continue Reading UNC Libraries’ Off The Shelf Author Talk with Finis Dunaway

Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and beyond Institutions

Guest blog post by Susan Burch, author of Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and beyond Institutions “It is said to be the only institution of its kind,” announced the New York Daily Tribune, lauding the opening of the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians in South Dakota in 1902. The appreciation of its exceptionality that the Tribune expressed to its readers was not shared by… Continue Reading Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and beyond Institutions

Fictions of the Last Frontier: Alaska’s Gold Rush and the Legend of China Joe

In honor of Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, the following is an excerpt from Juliana Hu Pegues’ Space-Time Colonialism: Alaska’s Indigenous and Asian Entanglements. This book is one of five titles from a reading list we created celebrating Asian American and Asian studies; view the entire reading list here. Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, and the Cassiar… Continue Reading Fictions of the Last Frontier: Alaska’s Gold Rush and the Legend of China Joe

Happy National Guitar Month!

A little late to the party, but we would like to wish a happy national guitar month to all of you rockstar readers. We’ve created this reading list of some of our favorite guitar-related titles to hopefully inspire your next riff. STONE FREE: JIMI HENDRIX IN LONDON, SEPTEMBER 1966 – JUNE 1967 BY JAS OBRECHT A compelling portrait of rock’s… Continue Reading Happy National Guitar Month!

Earth Day 2021 Recommended Reading List

Happy Earth Day and Earth Week from the UNC Press Staff! In celebration of the times, we’ve created a recommended reading list of some of our latest environmental justice books. DEFENDING THE ARCTIC REFUGE: A PHOTOGRAPHER, AN INDIGENOUS NATION, AND A FIGHT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE BY FINIS DUNAWAY Tucked away in the northeastern corner of Alaska is one of the… Continue Reading Earth Day 2021 Recommended Reading List

Historian Comes Clean, Stay Dirty

Follow the UNC Press Blog for a celebration of women’s histories and women historians throughout March. This year we are celebrating the significant contributions of notable women, renown and lesser known, throughout history, as well as women historians past and present that have been published by UNC Press. The following excerpt is taken from Writing Kit Carson: Fallen Heroes in a… Continue Reading Historian Comes Clean, Stay Dirty

Gender, Family, and Kinship

Follow the UNC Press Blog for a celebration of women’s histories and women historians throughout March. The following excerpt is taken from Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century by Brianna Theobold In the nineteenth century, gender relationships in Crow society, as in many North American Indigenous cultures, are better described as complementary than… Continue Reading Gender, Family, and Kinship

Ryan Hall: Why Should Americans Bother Learning About Canada?

Today we welcome a guest post from Ryan Hall, author of Beneath the Backbone of the World: Blackfoot People and the North American Borderlands, 1720-1877, out now from UNC Press. For the better part of two centuries, between 1720 and 1877, the Blackfoot (Niitsitapi) people controlled a vast region of what is now the U.S. and Canadian Great Plains. As one… Continue Reading Ryan Hall: Why Should Americans Bother Learning About Canada?

Meet the Editors: A Conversation with Andrew R. Graybill and Benjamin H. Johnson on the David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History

We’re pleased to share a Q&A with Andrew R. Graybill and Benjamin H. Johnson, series editors of our David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History. This series explores contested boundaries and the intercultural dynamics surrounding them and includes projects in a wide range of time and space within North America and beyond, including Atlantic and Pacific worlds. Series… Continue Reading Meet the Editors: A Conversation with Andrew R. Graybill and Benjamin H. Johnson on the David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History