Tag: Native American History

Native Americans and Enslaved Africans

The following is an excerpt from The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South by Charles Reagan Wilson, available everywhere books and ebooks are sold. Native Americans and Enslaved Africans Southern colonists, including Jefferson’s forebears, had been on the periphery of Western civilization at the beginning of settlement, but they self-consciously came as predominantly… Continue Reading Native Americans and Enslaved Africans

“Committed” Now Available as an Audiobook

Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and beyond Institutions by Susan Burch is now available as an audiobook from Audible, Kobo, and Libro.fm. Praise for Committed: 2021 Alison Piepmeier Book Prize, National Women’s Studies Association “A model of how to write histories that are as inclusive and broadly accessible as they are necessary.”—H-Net “This slim volume packs a powerful punch. .… Continue Reading “Committed” Now Available as an Audiobook

Grain and Fire

Rebecca Sharpless’s Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South is on sale this week wherever ebooks and books are sold. Sharpless weaves a brilliant chronicle, vast in perspective and entertaining in detail, revealing how three global food traditions—Indigenous American, European, and African—collided with and merged in the economies, cultures, and foodways of the South to create… Continue Reading Grain and Fire

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

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

Excerpt: Native American Whalemen and the World, by Nancy Shoemaker

Native Americans were one small constituency in a diverse whaling workforce brought together by ship owners for one purpose only—to cooperate in gathering whale products from the world’s oceans. The merchant investors, who did the initial hiring, sought trustworthy, skilled officers and cheap, hardy, and obedient laborers. With profit as their objective, they were open to hiring any man who could do the job but not if the crew’s social composition threatened orderly collaboration. From the top down, federal laws and industry standards applied measures to enhance productivity by dampening the volatility such diversity produced: they privileged rank over race and regulated the number of foreigners serving on American ships. From the bottom up, seamen brought prejudices on board with them. The color of one’s skin, the land of one’s birth, and the language one spoke inflected how shipmates interacted with each other and at any time could combust in conflict. Even though race had no formal role in how the ship operated, it loitered beneath the surface to bear on who was hired to do what job and shadowed shipboard relations with unspoken assumptions. Continue Reading Excerpt: Native American Whalemen and the World, by Nancy Shoemaker

Congratulations to Tiya Miles, 2011 MacArthur Fellow

We’re thrilled to offer our heartiest congratulations to historian Tiya Miles for being awarded a 2011 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (aka the “Genius Grant”). Miles is the author of “The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story”. From the announcement: “A scholar of range and promise, and increasingly an authoritative voice in reframing and reinterpreting the history of our diverse nation, Miles is adding texture and depth to the mosaic that was our shared past and that is our heritage.” Continue Reading Congratulations to Tiya Miles, 2011 MacArthur Fellow