New Books in Native American Studies
Society & Culture
How do bureaucratic documents create and reproduce a state’s capacity to see? What kinds of worlds do documents help create? Further, how might such documentary practices and settler colonial ways of seeing be refused?
Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing: Documentation, Administration, and the Interventions of Indigenous Art (Fordham University Press, 2023) by Dr. Danielle Taschereau Mamers investigates how the Canadian state has used documents, lists, and databases to generate, make visible—and invisible—Indigenous identity. With an archive of legislative documents, registration forms, identity cards, and reports, Dr. Taschereau Mamers traces the political and media history of Indian status in Canada, demonstrating how paperwork has been used by the state to materialise identity categories in the service of colonial governance. Her analysis of bureaucratic artefacts is led by the interventions of Indigenous artists, including Robert Houle, Nadia Myre, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, and Rebecca Belmore. Bringing together media theories of documentation and the strategies of these artists, Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing develops a method for identifying how bureaucratic documents mediate power relations as well as how those relations may be disobeyed and re-imagined.
By integrating art-led inquiry with media theory and settler colonial studies approaches, Dr. Taschereau Mamers offers a political and media history of the documents that have reproduced Indian status. More importantly, she provides us with an innovative guide for using art as a method of theorising decolonial political relations. This is a crucial book for any reader interested in the intersection of state archives, settler colonial studies, and visual culture in the context of Canada’s complex and violent relationship with Indigenous peoples.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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Nancy Mattina, "Uncommon Anthropologist: Gladys Reichard and Western Native American Culture" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019)
Shay Welch, "The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019)
Claudio Saunt, "Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory" (Norton, 2020)
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
Joseph E. Taylor III, "Persistent Callings: Seasons of Work and Identity on the Oregon Coast" (Oregon State UP, 2019)
Alex Hidalgo, "Trail of Footprints: A History of Indigenous Maps from Viceregal Mexico" (U Texas Press, 2019)
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
Pilar M. Herr, "Contested Nation: The Mapuche, Bandits, and State Formation in 19th-Century Chile" (U New Mexico Press, 2019)
Megan Kate Nelson, "The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West" (Scribner, 2019)
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
Lauren Working, "The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Benjamin Dangl, "The Five Hundred Year Rebellion: Indigenous Movements and the Decolonization of History in Bolivia" (AK Press, 2019)
Gonzalo Lamana, "How 'Indians' Think: Colonial Indigenous Intellectuals and the Question of Critical Race Theory" (U Arizona Press, 2019)
Darnella Davis, "Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage: A Personal History of the Allotment Era" (U New Mexico Press, 2018)
Céline Carayon, "Eloquence Embodied: Nonverbal Communication among French and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas" (UNC Press, 2019)
Luis Martínez-Fernández, "Key to the New World: A History of Early Colonial Cuba" (U Florida Press, 2018)
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
Kerry Driscoll, "Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples" (U California Press, 2018)
Sarah Marie Wiebe, "Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley" (UBC Press, 2016)
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