Professor Shari Huhndorf Publishes New Book!
October 2, 2024
Professor Shari Huhndorf has recently published her latest book! Native Lands: Culture and Gender in Indigenous Territorial Claims is just out now from the University of California Press.
Native Lands analyzes the role of visual and literary culture in contemporary Indigenous campaigns for territorial rights. In the post-1960s era, Indigenous artists and writers have created works that align with the goals and strategies of new Native land-based movements. These works represent Native histories and epistemologies in ways that complement activist endeavors, while also probing the limits of these political projects, especially with regard to gender. The social marginalization of Native women was integral to dispossession. And yet its enduring consequences have remained largely neglected, even in Native organizing, as a pressing concern associated with the status of Indigenous people in settler nation-states. The cultural works discussed in this book provide an urgent Indigenous feminist rethinking of Native politics that exposes the innate gendered dimensions of ongoing settler colonialism. They insist that Indigenous campaigns for territorial rights must entail gender justice for Native women.
Amanda Cobb-Greetham, author of Listening to Our Grandmothers’ Stories, writes of Native Lands: “This is the book I have been waiting for. The ubiquitous use of #LandBack and #MMIW in popular culture has all but stripped them of their context, complexity, and possibility to effect meaningful change. Huhndorf’s complex analysis of a ‘new archive’ of Indigenous art and literature demonstrates that Indigenous land-based movements are not and cannot be separated from women’s bodies and gender justice. She skillfully restores meaning, offers keen new insights, and powerfully raises the stakes of our discussion and our actions.”
