Violence and Indigenous Communities: Confronting the Past and Engaging the Present (Critical Insurgencies)

Review
"Deftly ranging across historical eras and transcending the imposition of national frameworks of analysis, Violence and Indigenous Communities offers essential new directions in the study of violence and settler colonialism. Researchers, educators, activists, and community members are certain to find useful the broad geographical reach of these rich studies and to benefit from the transformative interdisciplinarity within them. The collection's insistence on conceptualizing the quotidian, everyday forms of violence as well as accompanying forms of anti-capitalist resistance makes this a particularly timely and needed collection. I can't wait to teach it and to share these rich studies with new generations of learners." —Ned Blackhawk, author of Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West
“Too often, indigenous studies scholars focus on the damage and destruction caused by settler colonialism, but this collection offers a unique lens to view the accomplishments of tribal communities by focusing on the resilience of indigenous nations, who have developed many strategies and found ways to survive and flourish despite the violence of the past. This book is essential reading for indigenous scholars, students, and activists who wish to learn from, and build upon, the resilience of indigenous people throughout time.” —Sarah Deer, author of The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America
“Recommended.” —CHOICE
In contrast to past studies that focus narrowly on war and massacre, treat Native peoples as victims, and consign violence safely to the past, this interdisciplinary collection of essays opens up important new perspectives. While recognizing the long history of genocidal violence against Indigenous peoples, the contributors emphasize the agency of individuals and communities in genocide’s aftermath and provide historical and contemporary examples of activism, resistance, identity formation, historical memory, resilience, and healing. The collection also expands the scope of violence by examining the eyewitness testimony of women and children who survived violence, the role of Indigenous self-determination and governance in inciting violence against women, and settler colonialism’s promotion of cultural erasure and environmental destruction.
By including contributions on Indigenous peoples in the United States, Canada, the Pacific, Greenland, Sápmi, and Latin America, the volume breaks down nation-state and European imperial boundaries to show the value of global Indigenous frameworks. Connecting the past to the present, this book confronts violence as an ongoing problem and identifies projects that mitigate and push back against it.