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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Nick Estes, "Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline" (Verso, 2019)
Ian Saxine, "Properties of Empire: Indians, Colonists, and Land Speculators on the New England Frontier" (NYU Press, 2019)
Manu Karuka, "Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad" (U California Press, 2019)
Robbie Richardson, "The Savage and Modern Self: North American Indians in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture" (U Toronto Press, 2018)
Lisa Blee and Jean M. O'Brien, "Monumental Mobility: The Memory Work of Massasoit" (UNC Press, 2019)
Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019)
Kris Lane, "Potosí: The Silver City That Changed the World" (U California Press, 2019)
Rosalyn LaPier, "Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet" (U Nebraska Press, 2017)
Karin Rosemblatt, "The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910–1950" (UNC Press, 2018)
Jacob Lee, "Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi" (Harvard UP, 2019)
Kristin L. Hoganson, "The Heartland: An American History" (Penguin, 2019)
E. MacDonald et al., "Time and a Place: An Environmental History of Prince Edward Island" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2016)
Chip Colwell, "Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, "Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia" (NYU Press, 2019)
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing
David A. Nichols, "Peoples of the Inland Sea: Native Americans and Newcomers in the Great Lakes Region, 1600-1870" (Ohio UP, 2018)
Kent Blansett, "A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and Red Power" (Yale UP, 2018)
Daniel Immerwahr, "How to Hide an Empire: The History of the Greater United States" (FSG, 2019)
Janne Lahti, "The American West and the World: Transnational and Comparative Perspectives" (Routledge, 2019)
Farina King, "The Earth Memory Compass: Diné Landscapes and Education in the Twentieth Century" (UP of Kansas, 2018)
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