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Susan A. Miller and James Riding In, eds. Native Historians Write Back: Decolonizing American Indian History. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2011. 384 pp. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $45.00. Douglas Worley, University of California Davis
Much of history and political thought related to Native Americans has been written by non-Natives from a Western perspective steeped in colonial agendas of expansion and extraction of Indigenous resources. In Native Historians Write Back: Decolonizing American Indian History James Riding In and Susan Miller have compiled sixteen essays previously written by thirteen American Indian academics, mostly historians, rooted in Indigenous thought. Recognizing that "Indigenous methodology privileges traditional tribal historical narratives and upholds Indigenous life ways over those of nation-states" (3), the editors argue that there is a new paradigm of Indigenous historiography that is rooted in sovereign polities of Indigenous self-determination, not minority citizenship. Using Indigenous historiography to present Indigenous systems of knowledge and interpretation, the authors challenge the hegemonic hold of the nation-state's master narrative of the discov- ery doctrine, manifest destiny, and other myths of European superiority and Indigenous inferiority.
Regardless of particular cultural identification and affiliation, Native Americans have historically been subjugated to Western ideologies of history and historical presentation that are rooted in colonial racism. This book demonstrates that through oral tradition and tribal ways of recording Indigenous narratives, multiple accounts of Indigenous experience reveal the continuance of Indigenous ways by presenting Indigenous explanations of the colonizer's crimes against humanity. The authors of these articles are not trying to be objective; rather, similar to the authors in the anthologies Natives...