Tag Archives: Native American

From the Desk of the Director: Books in Common

In May we received exciting news from Western Washington University: the Western Reads committee has chosen a University of Washington Press book, Tulalip, From My Heart: An Autobiographical Account of a Reservation Community, by Harriette Shelton Dover, as their common book for the 2017–18 school year. The committee selected this book by a Tulalip elder in consultation with Indigenous people on and off campus to commemorate the 1969 “Right to be Indian” conference. This gathering drew tribal members from across the region in support of young people working to improve their communities through social and political self-determination. Now, as we approach the conference’s fiftieth anniversary, more than 4,000 incoming Western students, faculty, and staff will engage with Tulalip, From My Heart, Dover’s remarkable story about her tribe’s history, struggles, and powerful ties to land now occupied by others.

Harriette Shelton Dover

Dawn Dietrich, associate professor and director of the Western Reads program, shared her enthusiasm for this selection as a way of fostering collaboration and relationship building around Native American education. The choice of this common book “honors the Coast Salish traditions that defined, and continue to define, this region,” Dietrich told us.

UW Press has played an important role in publishing the stories of Native American and Indigenous communities for almost 100 years. Our list includes memoirs by Coast Salish and Alaska Native writers, tribal dictionaries and grammars, books about Native American art and culture, as well as new work presenting contemporary issues from decolonizing perspectives. Our books are enjoyed by general readers, taught in classes, found in libraries of tribal colleges, and used by scholars and artists in many disciplines.

The Western Reads common book selection is just one example of how communities and readers engage with the work we publish. Another is Promised Land, a new documentary about the Duwamish and Chinook fight for treaty recognition. Several UW Press books “formed the academic framework of the film’s narrative,” as filmmaker Sarah Samudre Salcedo puts it, including Coll Thrush’s Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place, Robert T. Boyd, Kenneth Ames, and Tony Johnson’s Chinookan Peoples of the Lower Columbia, and Jon Daehnke’s forthcoming Chinook Resilience: Heritage and Cultural Revitalization on the Lower Columbia River. The Seattle Theatre Group will present Promised Land on July 6, 2017, at the Neptune Theatre. The screening is free and open to the public and will include a preshow discussion with representatives from the tribes. We hope you can join us.

UW Press is dedicated to publishing books that help communities engage in shared conversations and inform new art and scholarship. We are proud to bring important stories and ideas to life for current and future generations.

We invite you to browse our new and forthcoming Native American and Indigenous publications and other recent catalogs on our website.

Happy reading!

Nicole F. Mitchell, Director
University of Washington Press

Native American Art Studies Association Conference Preview

Later this month we’re heading to Santa Fe, New Mexico for the annual meeting of the Native American Art Studies Association (NAASA) from September 30-October 3. If you are attending the conference, come by our booth in the exhibit hall to browse our new titles and to meet Senior Acquisitions Editor Regan Huff.

Take a look at our new Native American studies and Art and Art History subject brochures. 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 promo code WST1601.

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Native Northwest: Books on Indigenous History, Art, and Culture

November is Native American Heritage Month and a number of recent University of Washington Press books provide testament to the enduring, resilient nature of that heritage. The books below feature Indigenous authors, contributors, and collaborators, reflecting the Press’s longtime commitment to privileging Native American perspectives on their own history, art, and culture.

Being Cowlitz: How One Tribe Renewed and Sustained its Identity
By Christine Dupres
Without a recognized reservation or homeland, what keeps an Indian tribe together?  What began as the author’s search for her own history opened a window into the practices and narratives that sustained her tribe’s identity even as its people were scattered over several states. Christine Dupres interweaves oral history, archival documentation, and personal narrative to tell the story of the Cowlitz Tribe.

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.
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Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Conference Preview

WEB-NAS-subect-catalog-cover (3)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. Continue reading →