New Books in Native American Studies

Greg Marchildon interviews Molly P. Rozum, the author of Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies (U of Nebraska P & U of Manitoba P, 2021). Molly Rozum is currently the Ronald R. Nelson Chair of Great Plains and South Dakota History at the University of South Dakota. She received her PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has worked on the history of this transnational region throughout her career. Although she grew up and was educated in the United States, she has spent time in Canada as a visiting professor and researcher. In this book, Rozum explores how the northern grasslands in North America were perceived by second and third generations of those who settled in the region to live, work, farm and ranch, including their relationship with the Indigenous peoples.This interview was produced with the support of The Champlain Society. The mission of The Champlain Society is to increase public awareness of, and accessibility to, Canada’s rich store of historical records.Gregory P. Marchildon is the Ontario Research Chair in Health Policy and System Design with the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

A year after John Bradstreet’s raid of 1758—the first and largest British-American riverine raid mounted during the Seven Years’ War (known in North America as the French and Indian War)—Benjamin Franklin hailed it as one of the great “American” victories of the war. Bradstreet heartily agreed, and soon enough, his own official account was adopted by Francis Parkman and other early historians.In John Bradstreet's Raid 1758: A Riverine Operation in the French and Indian War (U Oklahoma Press, 2022), Ian Macpherson McCulloch uses never-before-seen materials and a new interpretive approach to dispel many of the myths that have grown up around the operation. The result is a closely observed, deeply researched revisionist microhistory—the first unvarnished, balanced account of a critical moment in early American military history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

Greg Marchildon interviews Benjamin Hoy, author of A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border across Indigenous Lands (Oxford UP, 2021). Hoy’s book is a history of the infrastructure, policies, and personnel that were put in place over the past three centuries to create a boundary between the United States and British North America and, subsequently, Canada after 1867. Hoy also examines the impact of this boundary on Indigenous peoples who lived on either side of this border, or on both sides simultaneously. A transnational historian and a dual citizen of both Canada and the United States, Benjamin Hoy is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Saskatchewan.This interview was produced with the support of The Champlain Society. The mission of The Champlain Society is to increase public awareness of, and accessibility to, Canada’s rich store of historical records.Gregory P. Marchildon is the Ontario Research Chair in Health Policy and System Design with the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

Greg Marchildon interviews historian and ethnographer Jennifer Brown on her two most recent books. The first, Ojibwe Stories from the Upper Berens River: A Irving Hallowell and Adam Bigmouth in Conversation (U of Nebraska Press, 2018) concerns the interactions of American anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell with the Berens River band on the east side of Lake Winnipeg. The second book, An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land: Unfinished Conversations (Athabasca UP, 2017), is a compilation of Professor Brown’s most influential articles– essays that have reshaped the historiography of Indigenous-settler relations and the role of women. From 1983 until 2008, Jennifer Brown was a professor as well as Director of the Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies at the University of Winnipeg. Since retirement, she has continued to research and write.This interview was produced with the support of The Champlain Society. The mission of The Champlain Society is to increase public awareness of, and accessibility to, Canada’s rich store of historical records.Gregory P. Marchildon is the Ontario Research Chair in Health Policy and System Design with the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

President Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest mass execution of Indigenous people in American history, following the 1862 uprising of hungry Dakota in Minnesota and suspiciously speedy trials. He also issued the largest commutation of executions in American history for the same act. But there is much more to the story of Lincoln’s interactions and involvement, personal and political, with Native Americans, as Michael S. Green shows. Lincoln and Native Americans (Southern Illinois UP, 2021) explains how Lincoln thought about Native Americans, interacted with them, and was affected by them.Although ignorant of Native customs, Lincoln revealed none of the hatred or single-minded opposition to Native culture that animated other leaders and some of his own political and military officials. Lincoln did far too little to ease the problems afflicting Indigenous people at the time, but he also expressed more sympathy for their situation than most other politicians of the day. Still, he was not what those who wanted legitimate improvements in the lives of Native Americans would have liked him to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

Today I talked to Dr. Mohamed Adhikari about his book Destroying to Replace: Settler Genocides of Indigenous Peoples (Hackett, 2022)."This book explores settler colonial genocides in a global perspective and over the long durée. It does so systematically and compellingly, as it investigates how settler colonial expansion at times created conditions for genocidal violence, and the ways in which genocide was at times perpetrated on settler colonial frontiers. This volume will prove invaluable to teachers and students of imperialism, colonialism, and human rights." — Lorenzo Veracini, Swinburne University of Technology, and author of The World Turned Inside Out: Settler Colonialism as a Political Idea"A succinct, insightful, and highly readable text discussing an issue that deserves to be integral to any world history course. Using four finely crafted, yet widely dispersed, case studies Adhikari strikingly shows how vulnerability and resistance occur as the waves of global capitalism hit indigenous societies." — Robert Gordon, University of Vermont“Illuminating and compelling. This is a volume about genocide, a recurrent phenomenon in world history that, disturbingly, has created our modernity. Mohamed Adhikari equips the reader with a sound conceptual introduction, then provides four detailed yet clear accounts of genocide in the Canary Islands, Queensland, California, and German Southwest Africa. He has expertly provided the big picture as well as the specifics true to each history. Primary sources from each episode invite the reader’s participation in analysis. A book with which to think and to teach others.” — Lora Wildenthal, Rice UniversityThis interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

A violent ex-con forces his son to commit crimes in this unforgettable memoir about family and survival.Growing up on the Navajo Indian Reservation, David Crow and his three siblings idolized their dad, a self-taught Cherokee who loved to tell his children about his World War II feats. But as time passed, David discovered the other side of Thurston Crow, the ex-con with his own code of ethics that justified cruelty, violence, lies—even murder. Intimidating David with beatings, Thurston coerced his son into doing his criminal bidding. David’s mom, too mentally ill to care for her children, couldn’t protect him.Through sheer determination, David managed to get into college and achieve professional success. When he finally found the courage to refuse his father’s criminal demands, he unwittingly triggered a plot of revenge that would force him into a deadly showdown with Thurston Crow. David would have only twenty-four hours to outsmart his father—the brilliant, psychotic man who bragged that the three years he spent in the notorious San Quentin State Prison had been the easiest time of his life.Raw and palpable, The Pale-Faced Lie: A True Story (Sandra Jonas Publishing, 2019) is an inspirational story about the power of forgiveness and the strength of the human spirit.David Crow spent his early years on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. Through grit, resilience, and a thirst for learning, he managed to escape his abusive childhood, graduate from college, and build a successful lobbying firm in Washington, DC. Today, David is a sought-after speaker, giving talks to various businesses and trade organizations around the world. Throughout the years, he has mentored over 200 college interns, performed pro bono service for the charitable organization Save the Children, and participated in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. An advocate for women, he donates a percentage of his royalties from The Pale-Faced Lie to Barrett House, a homeless shelter for women in Albuquerque. David and his wife, Patty, live in the suburbs of DC. Visit him at davidcrowauthor.com, on Facebook @authordavidcrow, on Twitter @author_crow, and on Instagram @dravidcrowauthor.Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found at https://fifteenminutefilm.podb... and on Twitter @15MinFilm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

Many scholars assert that Mexico’s complex racial hierarchy, inherited from Spanish colonialism, became obsolete by the turn of the nineteenth century as class-based distinctions became more prominent and a largely mestizo population emerged. But the residues of the colonial caste system did not simply dissolve after Mexico gained independence. Rather, Ana Sabau argues, ever-present fears of racial uprising among elites and authorities led to persistent governmental techniques and ideologies designed to separate and control people based on their perceived racial status, as well as to the implementation of projects for development in fringe areas of the country. Riot and Rebellion in Mexico: the Making of a Race War Paradigm (University of Texas Press, 2022) traces this race-based narrative through three historical flashpoints: the Bajío riots, the Haitian Revolution, and the Yucatan’s caste war. Sabau shows how rebellions were treated as racially motivated events rather than political acts and how the racialization of popular and indigenous sectors coincided with the construction of “whiteness” in Mexico. Drawing on diverse primary sources, Sabau demonstrates how the race war paradigm was mobilized in foreign and domestic affairs and reveals the foundations of a racial state and racially stratified society that persist today.Ethan Besser Fredrick is a graduate student in Modern Latin American history seeking his PhD at the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on the Transatlantic Catholic movements in Mexico and Spain during the early 20th century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

Expo 1967 was the centrepiece of Canada’s 100th birthday. Amid the crowds and the pageantry, one building stood out: The Indians of Canada Pavilion.This was more than a tall glass tipi. It revealed (at least partly) Canada's sordid colonial history, and it challenged the myth of Canada being a peace-loving and tolerant society. We tell the surprising story of the historical experts who put this thing together, and the public's reaction to their workThis episode was produced in May 2020 as part of Darts and Letters predecessor, Cited. Polly Leger is the co-host alongside regular host and editor Gordon Katic. This was before the wave of discoveries of unmarked graves across Canada as horrific as the descriptions of residential schools are in this episode… the reality is worse, and we made this show before all that additional evidence had been discovered.—————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————-You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button.If you want to do a little more we would love it if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too.——————-ABOUT THE SHOW——————For a full list of credits, contact information, and more, visit our about page. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) led the Ecuadoran Citizens’ Revolution that claimed to challenge the tenets of neoliberalism and the legacies of colonialism. The Correa administration promised to advance Indigenous and Afro-descendant rights and redistribute resources to the most vulnerable. In many cases, these promises proved to be hollow.Using two decades of ethnographic research, Undoing Multiculturalism: Resource Extraction and Indigenous Rights in Ecuador (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) by Dr. Carmen Martínez Novo examines why these intentions did not become a reality, and how the Correa administration undermined the progress of Indigenous people. A main complication was pursuing independence from multilateral organizations in the context of skyrocketing commodity prices, which caused a new reliance on natural resource extraction. Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and other organized groups resisted the expansion of extractive industries into their territories because they threatened their livelihoods and safety. As the Citizens’ Revolution and other “Pink Tide” governments struggled to finance budgets and maintain power, they watered down subnational forms of self-government, slowed down land redistribution, weakened the politicized cultural identities that gave strength to social movements, and reversed other fundamental gains of the multicultural era.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies