Indigenous studies

Drawing from her experiences as an Indigenous scientist, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer demonstrated how all living things--from strawberries and witch hazel to water lilies and lichen--provide us with gifts and lessons every day in her best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass. Adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith, this new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth's oldest teachers: the plants around us. With informative sidebars, reflection questions, and art from illustrator Nicole Neidhardt, Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults brings Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation.

A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation's earliest days, and a small-town murder in the 1990s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later

Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. Nearly 200 million acres are reserved for National Forests--in the emergence of this great nation, our government set aside more land for trees than for Indigenous peoples.

In the 1830s Muscogee people were rounded up by the US military at gunpoint and forced into exile halfway across the continent. At the time, they were promised this new land would be theirs for as long as the grass grew and the waters ran. But that promise was not kept. When Oklahoma was created on top of Muscogee land, the new state claimed their reservation no longer existed. Over a century later, a Muscogee citizen was sentenced to death for murdering another Muscogee citizen on tribal land. His defense attorneys argued the murder occurred on the reservation of his tribe, and therefore Oklahoma didn't have the jurisdiction to execute him. Oklahoma asserted that the reservation no longer existed. In the summer of 2020, the Supreme Court settled the dispute. Its ruling that would ultimately underpin multiple reservations covering almost half the land in Oklahoma, including Nagle's own Cherokee Nation.

Here Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country.

A bold statement for those living within the industrial prison complex, realized in block prints of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Inside prisons across the U.S., incarcerated
people struggle everyday for their basic rights, claiming again and
again their status as human beings. Here, within the largest democracy
in the world (conditional though it may be), incarcerated people suffer
indignities from terrible living conditions to physical and sexual
violence, all under the aegis of justice.

As a tool to discuss the limits and ideals of
human rights within a carceral state, artists at Stateville Prison, who
struggle daily for their own human rights, created block prints of each
article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The process of
drawing, carving, and inking each print created the time and space for
artists to critique and reflect on the ways the declaration is
simultaneously aspirational, strategic, and fraught with the legacy of
the violence of its founding states. For universal human rights to be
relevant, it is essential that the most impacted people be heard and
their vision of human rights centered.

This book features the 30 brilliantly crafted
prints presented alongside the corresponding articles from the
declaration. The artists and authors ask essential questions of what it
means to build a culture of human rights from below rather than
institute rights from above. What happens when people denied their
rights, begin to reimagine and carve them out once again?

This project was inspired by Meredith Stern's
Universal Declaration of Human Rights print project and developed in a
class taught by Aaron Hughes through the Prison + Neighborhood
Arts/Education Project.

More than seventy delectable recipes that bring California's Indigenous cuisines into kitchens today.

Finalist for the 2023 Glenn Goldman Award for Cooking, Chosen by the California Booksellers Alliance

In this sumptuous cookbook, Sara Calvosa Olson (Karuk) reimagines some of the oldest foods in California for home cooks today. Meaning "Let's eat!" in the Karuk language, Chími Nu'am shares the author's delicious and inventive takes on Native food styles from across California. Over seventy seasonal recipes centered on a rich array of Indigenous ingredients follow the year from Fall (elk chili beans, acorn crepes) to Winter (wild boar pozole, huckleberry hand pies) to Spring (wildflower spring rolls, peppernut mole chicken) to Summer (blackberry braised smoked salmon, acorn milk freezer pops). Special sections offer guidance on acorn preparation, traditional uses of proteins, and mindful ingredient sourcing.

Calvosa Olson has spent many years connecting her family's foodways with a growing community, and these recipes, techniques, and insights invite everyone to Calvosa Olson's table. Designed as an accessible entry for people beginning their journey toward a decolonized diet, Chími Nu'am welcomes readers in with Calvosa Olson's politically attuned and irresistibly funny writing. With more than 100 photographs, this cookbook is a culinary gift that will add warmth and mouthwatering aromas to any kitchen.