Decolonizing Native Histories: Collaboration, Knowledge, and Language in the Americas(Narrating Native Histories)

Decolonizing Native Histories is an interdisciplinary collection that grapples with the racial and ethnic politics of knowledge production and indigenous activism in the Americas. It analyzes the relationship of language to power and empowerment, and advocates for collaborations between community members, scholars, and activists that prioritize the rights of Native peoples to decide how their knowledge is used. The contributors-academics and activists, indigenous and nonindigenous, from disciplines including history, anthropology, linguistics, and political science-explore the challenges of decolonization. These wide-ranging case studies consider how language, the law, and the archive have historically served as instruments of colonialism and how they can be creatively transformed in constructing autonomy. The collection highlights points of commonality and solidarity across geographical, cultural, and linguistic boundaries and also reflects deep distinctions between North and South. Decolonizing Native Histories looks at Native histories and narratives in an internationally comparative context, with the hope that international collaboration and understanding of local histories will foster new possibilities for indigenous mobilization and an increasingly decolonized future.

Table of Contents:
About the Series vii Introduction. Decolonizing Knowledge, Language, and Narrative / Florencia E. Mallon 1 Part One. Land, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination 21 Hawaiian Nationhood, Self-Determination, and International Law / J. Kehaulani Kauanui 27 Issues of Land and Sovereignty: The Uneasy Relationship between Chile and Rapa Nui / Riet Delsing 54 Part Two. Indigenous Writing and Experiences with Collaboration 79 Quechua Knowledge, Orality, and Writings: The Newspaper Conosur Nawpagamn / Fernando GarcÉs V. 85 Collaboration and Historical Writing: Challenges for the Indigenous-Academic Dialogue / Joanne Rappaport and Abelardo Ramos Pacho 122 The Taller Tzotzil of Chiapas, Mexico: A Native Language Publishing Project, 1985–2002 / Jan Rus and Diane L. Rus 144 Part Three. Generations of Indigenous Activism and Internal Debates 175 Dangerous Decolonizing: Indians and Blacks and the Legacy of Jim Crow / Brian Klopotek 179 Nationalist Contradictions: Pan-Mayanism, Representations of the Past, and the Reproduction of Inequalities of Guatemala / Edgar Esquit 196 Conclusion 219 References 221 Contributors 243 Index 247

About the Author :
Florencia E. Mallon is the Julieta Kirkwood Professor of History and Latin American Studies and Chair of the History Department at the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of numerous books, including Courage Tastes of Blood: The Mapuche Indigenous Community of NicolÁs AilÍo and the Chilean State, 1906–2000 and the editor and translator of Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillalef’s When a Flower is Reborn: The Life and Times of a Mapuche Feminist, both published by Duke University Press.

Review :
"Decolonizing Native Histories is a stunning collection of essays from places and authors not often seen in each others' company: they range from Bolivia to Rapa Nui, from Louisiana to Hawai'i. To read of the predicaments and possibilities of a Quechua-language newspaper, racism in a Native American community, and indigenous political resurgence in Rapa Nui in the same volume presents a rare opportunity to compare strategies and gain inspiration, and to transcend seemingly impassable geographic and linguistic differences, to achieve commonality in treasuring our indigenous languages, cultures, and lands. Invaluable for anyone interested in global indigenous histories and politics." Noenoe K. Silva, author of Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism