Indigenous Voices

Deeply rooted in Indigenous knowledge, Risling Baldy brings us the voices of people transformed by cultural revitalization, including the accounts of young women who have participated in the Flower Dance. Using a framework of Native feminisms, she locates this revival within a broad context of decolonizing praxis and considers how this renaissance of women's coming-of-age ceremonies confounds ethnographic depictions of Native women; challenges anthropological theories about menstruation, gender, and coming-of-age; and addresses gender inequality and gender violence within Native communities.

Indigenous Languages and the Promise of Archives captures the energy and optimism that many feel about the future of community-based scholarship, which involves the collaboration of archives, scholars, and Native American communities. The American Philosophical Society is exploring new applications of materials in its library to partner on collaborative projects that assist the cultural and linguistic revitalization movements within Native communities.

Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation World-Making Stories is a collection of Maidu creation stories that will help readers appreciate California's rich cultural tapestry. At the beginning of the twentieth century, renowned storyteller Hanc'ibyjim (Tom Young) performed Maidu and Atsugewi stories for anthropologist Ronald B. Dixon, who first published these stories in 1912. Here M. Eleanor Nevins and the Weje-ebis (Keep Speaking) Jamani Maidu Language Revitalization Project team illuminate these important tales in a new way by restoring Maidu elements omitted by William Shipley and by bending the translation to more closely correspond in poetic form to the Maidu original.