ABOUT THIS BOOK

This important collection makes a compelling argument for the importance of theory in Native studies. Within the field, there has been understandable suspicion of theory stemming both from concerns about urgent political issues needing to take precedence over theoretical speculations and from hostility toward theory as an inherently Western, imperialist epistemology. The editors of Theorizing Native Studies take these concerns as the ground for recasting theoretical endeavors as attempts to identify the larger institutional and political structures that enable racism, inequities, and the displacement of indigenous peoples. They emphasize the need for Native people to be recognized as legitimate theorists and for the theoretical work happening outside the academy, in Native activist groups and communities, to be acknowledged. Many of the essays demonstrate how Native studies can productively engage with others seeking to dismantle and decolonize the settler state, including scholars putting theory to use in critical ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, and postcolonial studies. Taken together, the essays demonstrate how theory can serve as a decolonizing practice.

Contributors. Christopher Bracken, Glen Coulthard, Mishuana Goeman, Dian Million, Scott Morgensen, Robert Nichols, Vera Palmer, Mark Rifkin, Audra Simpson, Andrea Smith, Teresia Teaiwa

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Andrea Smith is Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of Native Americans and the Christian Right, published by Duke University Press, and Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide.

Audra Simpson is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. She is the author of Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States, also published by Duke University Press.

REVIEWS

“Theory might be read as ever-present according to this collection, but practice is clearly important too—Native practice in Native ways; Native activism, projects, scholarship. … In effect, the book allows theory and practice to lean against each other as steadfast partners in the Native matters that make Native studies important beyond the academy, double-underlining the Native-ness on which its chapters are grounded.”

-- Aroha Harris Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History

"Given that academics continue to debate the efficacy of theory, Theorizing Native Studies supplies a necessary contribution to the field.... The editors have achieved their goal of compiling a collection that serves as an important contribution to theoretical studies in general, and Native Studies in particular."

-- Monica L. Butler Journal of Anthropological Research

“Although each individual essay offers an important intervention on its own terms, as a collection, the volume is a vibrant snapshot of the field while also gesturing toward new horizons of theoretical possibility.”

-- Hokulani K. Aikau Western Historical Quarterly

“The collected essays provide a helpful overview of the work of a new generation of activist Native academics and artists, many of them participants both in local community or transnational organizing and the Critical Ethnic Studies Association founded in 2011. … [A] groundbreaking contribution to the burgeoning writing in theorized politics and Native Studies activist scholarship that will have broad ramifications across many fields and movements for many years to come.”

-- Joe Parker Women's Studies

"This book should be required reading for all students contemplating advanced scholarship in the field of Indigenous studies. It is a much needed corrective to decades of misplaced hostility directed towards theory in general, and Indigenous theory in particular. I recommend it highly."

-- Heather Devine Canadian Journal of Native Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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