Several members of the University of Washington Press staff will attend the annual meeting of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) in Austin, Texas later this week. If you’re attending the conference, come by booth 214 in the exhibit hall to browse our new titles and to meet Senior Acquisitions Editor Ranjit Arab, our new Editor in Chief Larin McLaughlin, and Publicity Manager Natasha Varner.

Take a look at this preview of some of the books we’ll be displaying at the conference or view our new Native American studies subject brochure. Even if you can’t attend the meeting, you can take advantage of our 30% conference discount on all Native Studies titles! Just order online or call 1-800-537-5487 and use code WST1410 (offer expires June 30).

Be sure to catch the screening of the fully restored Edward Curtis film, In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914) on Friday morning at 10 a.m. in Salon K on the 6th floor of the Hilton Austin. The film, made in collaboration with the Kwakwaka’wakw people of British Columbia, was the first ever to feature an all Indigenous cast. Read more about the film and the accompanying book project below.

At NAISA, we’re delighted to be promoting two new indigenous studies series:

Indigenous Confluences publishes cutting-edge works on the larger, universal themes common among indigenous communities of North America, with a special emphasis on Pacific Coast communities. Focusing on transnational approaches and decolonizing perspectives, this interdisciplinary series seeks to bring nuance and depth to our understanding of the Indigenous experience by examining a wide range of topics, including self-determination and resurgence efforts, identity, environment and food justice, urban histories, language preservation, and art, music, performance, and other forms of cultural expression.

The series is edited by Charlotte Cote, associate professor of American Indian studies, University of Washington, Seattle; Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, associate professor of American Indian studies and history, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Coll Thrush, associate professor of history, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

The first two books in this series will appear in our Spring 2015 catalog. Manuscript inquiries should be directed to Senior Acquisitions Editor Ranjit Arab (rarab@uw.edu). Printable PDF of the series brochure.

Native Art of the Pacific Northwest: A Bill Holm Center Series publishes important new research on the Native art and culture of the greater Pacific Northwest. This series aims to foster appreciation of the dynamic cultural and artistic expressions of the indigenous peoples of the region. Grounded in art history, the series welcomes a variety of approaches to the history of art and expression on the Northwest Coast. The series encompasses investigations of historical productions and contemporary manifestations of cultural expression as well as the important intersections between time, place, technique, and viewpoint. Contributors to the series consider cultural knowledge and the embodiment of that knowledge in material productions from multiple and sometimes conflicting cultural perspectives, expanding the understanding of the role of art in the complicated history of the region.

Edited by Robin K. Wright, director of the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Coast Art, curator of Native American Art at the Burke Museum, and professor of art history in the University of Washington’s School of Art and Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, assistant director of the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Coast Art at the Burke Museum and visiting lecturer at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Manuscript inquiries should be directed to Series Editor Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse (kbunn@uw.edu). Printable PDF of the series brochure.

We have published two books into the Native Art of the Pacific Northwest series, with a third one due out in Fall 2014:

In the Spirit of the Ancestors: Contemporary Northwest Coast Art at the Burke Museum
Edited by Robin K. Wright and Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse

Showcasing a selection of objects from the Burke Museum’s collection of more than 2,400 late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first century Native American works. Essays focus on contemporary art while exploring the important historical precedents on which so many artists rely for training and inspiration.

Return to the Land of the Head Hunters: Edward S. Curtis, the Kwakwaka’wakw, and the Making of Modern Cinema
Edited by Brad Evans and Aaron Glass
Foreword by Bill Holm

The first silent feature film with an “all Indian” cast and a surviving original orchestral score, Edward Curtis’s 1914 In the Land of the Head Hunters was a landmark of early cinema. Influential but often neglected in historical accounts, this spectacular melodrama was an intercultural product of Curtis’s encounter and collaboration with the Kwakwaka’wakw of British Columbia. In recognition of the film’s centennial, and alongside the release of a restored version, Return to the Land of the Head Hunters brings together leading anthropologists, Native American authorities, artists, musicians, literary scholars, and film historians to reassess the film and its legacy.

Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form
By Bill Holm
The 50th anniversary edition of this classic work on the art of Northwest Coast Indians now offers color illustrations for a new generation of readers along with reflections from contemporary Northwest Coast artists about the impact of this book.

The masterworks of Northwest Coast Native artists are admired today as among the great achievements of the world’s artists. The painted and carved wooden screens, chests and boxes, rattles, crest hats, and other artworks display the complex and sophisticated northern Northwest Coast style of art that is the visual language used to illustrate inherited crests and tell family stories.