Shokhí

"As a work of public history, the book shines a light on a monument that most Lawrence residents have probably walked or driven past without really seeing. The text’s multiple registers—from the geological to the ceremonial to the bureaucratic—serve the many facets of its subject well. As an activist case study, the granular timelines of coalition-building offer a useful template for other communities weighing their own reckonings. . . . A diverse record of a long-awaited homecoming and a model for making cultural amends."—Kirkus Reviews

ShokhÍ: A Kanza Relative, a Monument, and Rematriation is a wonderful edited volume of essays tracing the return of an important ancestral relative to the Kaw Nation. The book describes the participation of both Native and non-Native folk in this return of Iⁿ‘zhÚje‘waxÓbe from his imposed repose in Lawrence Kansas as a monument to eurochristian colonialism to a new home back on Kaw Land, aka Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park nearly a hundred miles west. These essays explore the importance of this several-ton red Rock to the Kaw People, the deep feelings of the participants (both eurochristians living in Lawrence and Kaw People themselves), and the creative images the incident generated for artists and poets. For Indian Peoples, the goal of rematriation is to restore relationships. Here the restored relationship is with a Grandfather Rock, just as the call for Land Back is a cry for a restored relationship with Grandmother Earth. I would hope readers of this book would come to a renewed understanding of American Indian cultures and the Indian knowledge about the personhood of all relatives including Iⁿ‘zhÚje‘waxÓbe. Reading this book, we can all celebrate with Kaw People his return to his relatives."—Tink Tinker (wazhazhe/Osage Nation), Baldridge Professor Emeritus of American Indian Studies

"Through multigenre text and art, ShokhÍ: A Kanza Relative, a Monument, and Rematriation documents the return home of the Kanza Nation’s Grandfather Rock. Oral history is interwoven with photographs, photographs interwoven with poetry, poetry interwoven with visual art. Compelling and comprehensive, ShokhÍ is a necessary read for all Kansans. Really, in its beautiful testament to the interdependent nature of human and non-(more-than)-human, it is a necessary read for everyone."—Hannah Soyer, author of Dreams in Which I’m Almost Human: A Memoir

"ShokhÍ: A Kanza Relative, a Monument, and Rematriation is both gorgeous and important. This compelling edited collection weaves together geology, history, interview, personal narrative, poetry and other creative arts to chronicle stories of Kaw Nation resilience, of historical violence, and, crucially, of the realities surrounding Indigenous, Black, and settler experiences in Lawrence, Kansas. Lingering on the intersections of memory and human/other-than-human relationship, ShokhÍ will be of significant interest to scholars, students, and teachers, and, at the same time, is accessible reading for the general public. A must-read, must-teach book"—Lisa Tatonetti, author of Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinity

"Authors c. huffman, Tai S. Edwards and Jay T. Johnson move effortlessly between past and present, between intergenerational moments in Kansas history building upon how social discourse illuminates the ruptures between Western scientific and Kanza cultural rationality. The authors tell an Indigenous story of rematriation while simultaneously creating contemporary sacred spaces within the traditional homelands of the Kaw Nation. The Sacred Red Rock Project examines Indigenous ontology and sense-of-place against the backdrop of scientific controversies to bring home Iⁿ‘zhÚje‘waxÓbe, a 28-ton grandfather red quartzite boulder stone from Lawrence, KS to the tribal homelands of the Kaw Nation located in Council Grove, KS. By braiding Indigenous knowledge with Eurocentric knowledge, the authors demand that we address the esoteric; the immaterial, non-tangible aspects of reality that challenges a Eurocentric claim to universal truth—contrasted with a more pluralistic view of an Indigenous experience attempting to heal their people, restore their inherent dignity, and apply fundamental human rights to their tribal communities which has been transmitted generation to generation."—Dr. Cornel Pewewardy, professor emeritus, Indigenous Nations Studies at Portland State University, and vice-chairman of the Comanche Nation.

"This volume speaks powerfully to the reclaiming of Indigenous ontologies amid a legacy of invisibility and historical revisionism. Through poetry, interviews, history, geology, and personal narrative, Iⁿ‘zhÚje‘waxÓbe’s rematriation journey brings readers into the lives and experiences of the people who count him as family."—Roberto Herrera, Medgar Evers College CUNY, Assistant Professor of Anthropology