Pacaritambo

AMERICAN INDIAN WOMEN: Telling Their Lives
by Gretchen M. Bataille and Kathleen Mullen Sands. Beautiful cover art painting by Barbara Goodluck, Navaho. Condition: UNREAD 1987 Univ. of Nebraska Press Trade Paperback, 4th printing. Tiny edgewear. Content: Indian women's autobiographies have been slighted because of the assumption that women had a secondary and insignificant role in Indian society. Gretchen M. Bataille and Kathleen Mullen Sands cogently demonstrate in this book the creative vitality of autobiographies that, despite differences in style and purpose, clarify the centrality of women in American Indian cultures. Included is a comprehensive, annotated bibliography or works by and about American Indian women. [1 copy available]
$ 4.39 + $ 3.19 media shipping.

AMERICAN INDIANS, TIME, AND THE LAW (Native Societies in Modern Constitutional Democracy)
by Charles F. Wilkinson. Cover art The Creation of Order by Ben Harjo, Jr. Condition: UNREAD 1987 Yale University Press Trade Paperback, 9th printing. Content: In 1959, the Supreme Court ushered in a new era of Indian law, which recognizes Indian tribes as permanent governments within the federal constitutional system and, on the whole, honors old promises to the Indians. Drawing together historical sources such as the records of treaty negotiations with the Indians, classic political theory on the nature of sovereignty, and anthropological studies of societal change, this powerful and edifying book evaluates the Court's work in Indian law over the past twenty-five years and considers the effects of time on law. [1 copy available]
$ 9.25 + $ 3.09 media shipping.

THE DEATH OF JIM LONEY
by James Welch. Condition: NEW 1981 Perennial Library paperback, first thus, first printing. Small rubbings front hinge & tiny edgewear. Content: "This is a compeling novel with unique descriptions of a modern Native American who is caught between his past and present. Jim , a half- breed with a blurry past, is struggling with self-identification.While trying to reinvent his lost identity, Jim is offered help from people who love him. However, neither social relations nor cheap wines help him get over his identity crisis.As he gets more involved with his subconcious thoughts and dreams, he starts to become a non-person in his Montana small town. As he refuses to get help from people who try to bring order to his life, he realizes the liveliness of the land and as a result identifies with it for a regeneration of his soul." Depressing but worth the read. [1 copy available]
$ 1.95 + $ 2.89 media shipping.

THE FACE OF THE FOX
by Frederick O. Gearing. B&W photo section. Condition: NEW 1988 Sheffield Trade Paperback, reissue, second printing. Very pale "near-crease" top front cover. Content: "A book about American Indians, white men, the cultural traditions that separate them, and what can be done about their estrangement." This is a study of the modern Fox Indians of Tama, Iowa, and their interaction and lack of interaction with the surrounding white communities. [1 copy available]
$ 8.75 + $ 3.09 media shipping.

INDIAN COUNTRY
by Peter Matthiessen (In the Spirit of Crazy Horse). Condition: UNREAD, but not perfect, 1992 Penguin Trade Paperback, first printing. Light edgewear with moderate tanning to page edges. Just not crisp. Content: "The threats to Native American societies detailed in this book are less bloody and horrific, but just as real as those perpetrated by the U.S. military. Yes, manifest destiny lives on in the halls of the U.S. government in the early 21st century, but with agencies like the BIA and the Department of Interior doing the nasty work. Along with all the hard-hitting research that Matthiessen brings to his writing, he's also at home with the natural history of Indian lands. He is subtle in the way he takes you with him on a walk through a working village or a ride to Black Mesa to get a truckload of household coal. Matthiessen spends time among the people living on the reservations, observing the slow encroachment of capitalism into their traditional ways of farming and trade, and ultimately seeing tribes divided into progressive and traditional factions. Tribes & reservations covered: Miccosukee; Hopi; Cherokee; Mohawk; Yurok and Karuk; Lakota; Chumash; Paiute & Shoshone; and the Navajo of "Big Mountain." [1 copy available]
$ 2.49 + $ 3.19 media shipping.

INDIANS AND THE AMERICAN WEST IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
by Donald L. Parman. B&W photos & charts. Condition: NEW 1995 Indiana University Press second printing. Perfect book. Content: As the 20th century began, Native Americans were reeling from a century of war, forced resettlement, and loss of indigenous control. Parman's chronological account follows the Indians' struggle to hold on to their land, resources, and identity as well as the relationships between economic interests and the government in dealing with the Indian. [1 copy available]
$ 13.49 + $ 3.19 media shipping.

THE LASTING OF THE MOCHICANS: History of an American Myth
by Martin Barker and Roger Sabin. B&W photos. Condition: NEW 1999 University Press of Mississippi Trade PB, first printing. Content: "This was an ambitious endeavor by the authors to view everything related to Last of the Mohicans...all the films, comic books, television shows and specials...and to analyze why it has lasted, why the myth is important to American culture, why the book keeps being produced. The wealth of detail was fascinating." [3 copies available]
$ 5.50 + $ 3.09 media shipping.

LAKOTA WOMAN
by Mary Crow Dog with Richard Erdoes. B&W photos illustrate. Condition: NEW 1991 HarperPerennial Trade PB first thus, 36th printing. Tiny edgewear. Movie edition. Content: This is one of the best books available to people interested in contemporary Native Americans. Mary Brave Bird's life story sheds light on traditions of her Lakota (Sioux) people from the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. She shows, in a very clear way, their tortured history with the missionaries, state bureaucracy, the courts, the FBI and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). We see to what extent the government has succeeded in destroying the old life and how small groups of the Sioux managed to preserve traditional ways and ceremonies. Reissued at the time of the TNT movie which, if you have not seen it, run to your local video store! [1 copy available]
$ 5.49 + $ 2.94 media shipping.

LOOKING FOR LOST BIRD: A Jewish Woman Discovers Her Navajo Roots
by Yvette Melanson with Claire Safran. Condition: NEW 2000 Avon Bard Trade Paperback, second printing. Content: While growing up as an adopted child in a Jewish family, the author of this compelling memoir never quite fit in with expectations of who she was supposed to be. She didn't look Jewish. She wasn't the boy that her father wanted - though she tried to be. Even her adoring mother found something to nudge her about: "Be a lady. Sit still. Don't act like a wild Indian." On the Internet, with help she attributes to both kind strangers and the Great Spirit, Melanson discovers the reason she didn't fit in, uncovering the bizarre truth that she is, in fact, Navajo. "Funny," everyone says to her, "you don't look Indian." This memoir of an extraordinarily eventful life is crafted like the rugs that Melanson has learned to make in the tradition of her birth family. First, she strings the warp of her story: her adoptive mother's adoration and death; her adoptive father's abandonment and his new wife's rejection of her; the tragic loves, deaths and separations that scarred her life; the happiness she finds with her far-from-perfect husband, Dickie; and the love she receives from her newfound birth family on a Navajo reservation. As she weaves, the patterns emerge, and, each time she reintroduces a thread, she explains that aspect of her life in more detail. The present tense from which she looks back is always moving forward in time as Melanson writes about her efforts to try to integrate the person she had been with the person she is becoming. [1 copy available]
$ 6.49 + $ 3.09 media shipping.

MY SEARCHING HEART: A Biographical Novel
by Crying Wind. B&W illustrations by the Author. Condition: c. 1980 Harvest House Paperback, no printing given. Pale spine crease & slight "turn-up" front cover edge, interior clean & tight Content: This is the sequel to Crying Wind. reviewer: "This book answers the question of "Whatever happened to Uncle Flint?" It also offers a window into Kickapoo culture and thought processes, doing so with love and respect. The story of how she found her husband, and how she loved her children is a delight to read. The story of how she chose to carry a pregnancy through, when doctors advised she terminate or risk her own life, inspired me to choose life when I was faced with a tough decision. I especially liked reading about her friendship with Herb Woman of Turtle Clan. They were close friends each trying to win the other over to her own religion, and yet not loving each other any less.: [1 copy available]
$ 2.49 + $ 2.94 media shipping.

NOW THAT THE BUFFALO'S GONE: A Study of Today's American Indians
by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. B&W photo section. Condition: UNREAD, but not perfect, 1984 University of Oklahoma Press Trade Paperback, first printing. The front cover has problems: pale shelf wear hinge crease with edgewear and diagonal creases top and bottom corners. Interior clean & tight. Content: In this book one of America's leading writers of Indian History examines the aspirations and feelings of today's Indians. Alvin Josephy analyzes seven principal Issues in the continuing face-off between Indians and Whites: Indian's will to endure as Indians; racial stereotypes that influence Whites' treatment of Indians; Indians' efforts to retain the deep spiritual basis of their lives; fight to retain tribal land bases; reassertion of Indian water rights; claims to fishing and hunting rights; the modern-day quest for self-determination, sovereignty, and control of tribal affairs and resources. [1 copy available]
$ 8.49 + $ 3.29 media shipping.

OHITIKA WOMAN
by Mary Brave Bird (formerly Crow Dog) with Richard Erdoes. B&W photos section. Condition: UNREAD 1993 Grove Press hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first edition, first printing. Content: This is a disturbing sequel to Lakota Woman which turned heads with its angry plea for Native American rights, its outspoken feminism -- and its blatant anti-white racism. Brave Bird has mellowed a bit, although she still makes caustic remarks about white women, especially New Agers whom she accuses of cashing in on traditional Indian religion. Sadly, her personal life seems as chaotic as ever, as she relates a horrifying story of chronic drunkenness, drug-taking, brawls, poverty, homeless shelters, and batterings by lovers. Readers willing to put up with the sordidness -- which culminates in a drunk-driving crash and subsequent open-heart surgery for Brave Bird -- will no doubt get the message: that Indians, Lakota in particular (Pine Ridge reservation is the poorest county in the nation), have been shoved to the bottom of the American barrel. Easier to digest are Brave Bird's accounts of Native American rituals, including sweat lodges, spirit communication, and sun dances (during one, Brave Bird is suspended from a tree by thongs skewered through her back). Once again, the author presents a fierce feminist brief, offering biographical tributes to a number of Native American women and celebrating her own ``womb power,'' which brought her five kids -- the last by her new husband, Rudi, a tattoo artist. Without the intrinsic excitement of the first installment, with its firsthand history of AIM and the siege at Wounded Knee; still, a forceful presentation of Native American life today. [1 copy available]
$ 9.49 + $ 3.19 media shipping.

SONGS FROM THIS EARTH ON TURTLE'S BACK
edited by Joseph Bruchac. Condition: Very Good 1983 Greenfield Review Press Trade Paperback, second ediiton. Problems: short "repaired" tear top edge front cover, notes on one page (156), and a check-out envelope inside front cover. Content: An anthology of prose, but mostly poetry, from today's top Native American writers: Duane BigEagle; Peter Blue Cloud; Robert J. Conley; Nia Francisco; Mah-do-ge Tohee; Gerald Vizenor, et al. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
$ 6.89 + $ 3.29 media shipping.

THE STATE OF NATIVE AMERICA: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance
(Race & Resistance Series)
edited by M. Annette Jaimes. Condition: NEW 1992 South End Press Trade PB, no edition given. Perfect but for slight "turn-up" front cover (weak cover stock). Content: Issues confronting today's Native Peoples. Anthology includes work by Ward Churchill (newly infamous), Vine Deloria, Jr., Marianna Guerrero, et al. [1 copy available]
$ 13.89 + $ 3.19 media shipping.

TWO ZUNI ARTISTS: A Tale of Art and Mystery
by Keith Cunningham. B&W era photos and color plates illustrate. Condition: NEW 1979 University Press of Mississippi hardcover (pictorial boards - no DJ issued), first edition, first printing. Content: Reviewer: "This book starts out as a conventional anthropology treatise, examining the life-work of a Zuni fetish-carver and his mother, a potter. Cunningham does a nice job of interviewing the artists, putting their work in context, and sketching the history of Zuni from prehistory to the present day. The book includes personal interviews with Zuni artisans and insightful information about their ceremonies and culture. What sets this book apart from dozens like it: when the aging parents of 'Helen', the mother, die, the ensuing family crisis causes Helen to fly off the rails into confused mysticism, which ultimately leads to her exile from Zuni. It's a sad and dramatic tale, familiar (to a degree) to anyone who's lived in a small, isolated community. The difference is, Zuni culture isn't American culture: Helen's store is closed by tribal police, and charges and counter-charges of witchcraft poison the atmosphere. It's a sad and familiar story of family conflicts, mental illness and how a society treats its misfits (not well). This is not at all what one expects from a university-press art book." [3 copies available]
$ 4.49 + $ 3.29 media shipping.

WARM SPRINGS MILLENNIUM: Voices From the Reservation
by Michael Baughman & Charlotte Hadella. B&W photos. Condition: Gently pre-read, if at all, 2000 University of Texs Press hardcover (no DJ), first edition. Content: Established in 1855 on an area one-fifteenth the size of the lands relinquished in return for it, the Warm Springs Reservation in north central Oregon is home to some 3,600 Warm Springs, Wasco, and Paiute Indians, half of whom are under twenty. This book seeks to understand the reservation's inhabitants as a "viable people" who are both visible and vocal as they reflect on their daily lives, their struggles and successes, and their hopes for the future. Michael Baughman and Charlotte Hadella present extended interviews with seven Indian and two non-Indian members of the community. They discuss issues such as the difficulty of maintaining traditional lifeways centered around hunting, fishing, and gathering; the disruptions caused by alcoholism and diseases such as diabetes; and the need for culturally appropriate education for the young. The authors frame the interviews with explanatory material that covers the reservation's history and relations with white society and its efforts to transmit native languages and cultural traditions to its children. Questions welcome [1 copy available]
$ 7.49 + $ 3.09 media shipping.