Native American and Indigenous Studies

Háŋ mitákuyepi, yá'át'ééh, greetings, and welcome to this Native American and Indigenous Studies—or NAIS—textbook. Collectively written by twenty-four Indigenous and allied scholars of the field, the book coheres around four "Rs" that are critical to ethical research and teaching within NAIS: respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility. A fifth R at play here is relationality, which is a practice within most NAIS classrooms. By gathering these contributions—from law to art, education, origin stories, history, and more—this introductory textbook offers an entry-point into the history of NAIS, its professional growth, and its contemporary features.

Native American and Indigenous Studies introduces readers to topics, histories, and politics covering the wide range of time and space encompassing the cultural and intellectual community of Native American and Indigenous studies: history, museum studies, literature, popular culture, art, music, Indigenous environmental knowledge, self-determination, food sovereignty, gender and sexuality studies, and sports. The stories contained in this volume offer Indigenous ways of knowing and being in the world that are often place- and land-based. Some chapters also focus on sites of culture, the body, and representation to respond to colonization through examples of activism and resistance past and present. Each chapter tells a story of survival, resilience, innovation, and artistry.

Together, these narratives encapsulate the growth and importance of Native American and Indigenous studies as an academic field. The chapters include an overview, are arranged around keywords, and offer study questions. By braiding them together, the textbook allows readers to see the complex fabric of Turtle Island (the US), Oceania, and Abya Yala (South America) more fully—and to come away with a nuanced understanding of their place in the lands they inhabit.