A School for Advanced Research Resident Scholar Book

This book tells the story of the Wauja group from the Xingu Indigenous Park in central Brazil and its relation to powerful new interlocutors.

The authors analyze a broad range of phenomena that are fundamentally linked to the adverse social and economic consequences of climate change, including urbanization and urban poverty, access to essential health care and education, changes to gender roles (especially for women), rural economic development and resource extraction, and public health more generally.

In Fixing the Books, professor Erin Debenport (anthropology, University of New Mexico) presents the research she conducted on an indigenous language literacy effort within a New Mexico Pueblo community, and the potential of that literacy to compromise Pueblo secrecy.

In 2004 the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) opened to the general public. This book, in the broadest sense, is about how that museum became what it is today. For many Native individuals, the NMAI, a prominent and permanent symbol of Native presence in America, in the shadow of the Capitol and at the center of federal power, is a triumph.

A Pueblo Social History explores the intersection of archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnology. John Ware argues that all of the key Pueblo social, ceremonial, and political institutions—and their relative importance across the Pueblo world—can only be explained in terms of indigenous social history stretching back nearly two millennia.

Ownership of “the past”—a concept invoking age-old struggles to possess and control ancient objects—is an essential theme in understanding our global cultural heritage. Beyond ownership, however, lies the need for stewardship: the responsibility of owners, possessors, and others interested in ancient objects to serve as custodians for the benefit of present and future generations.

In Becoming Indian, author Circe Sturm examines Cherokee identity politics and the phenomenon of racial shifting. Racial shifters, as described by Sturm, are people who have changed their racial self-identification from non-Indian to Indian on the US Census.

The Work of Sovereignty is a study of organizing campaigns and grassroots, ad hoc collective political actions carried out by employees trying to increase control over their workplaces and their say in the political life of their communities in Indian Country. By studying them, the author takes an on-the-ground approach to tribal labor relations that puts tribal workers at the center of the action. Attending to indigenous peoples as both economic and political members of their community in this way also sheds light on processes of indigenous self-determination that are not always as readily visible as those in courtrooms and tribal council chambers.

Cities are so common today that we cannot imagine a world without them. More than half of the world's population lives in cities, and that proportion is growing. Yet for most of our history, there were no cities. Why, how, and when did urban life begin?

In a remote canyon in northwest New Mexico, thousand-year-old sandstone walls waver in the sunlight, stretching like ancient vertebrae against a turquoise sky. This storied place—Chaco Canyon—carries multiple layers of meaning for Native Americans and archaeologists, writers and tourists, explorers and artists.