The First Peoples initiative is a collaboration of four university presses with grant support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The initiative aims to demonstrate the ways Indigenous traditional and
lived experiences contribute to and reframe discourses on the history,
culture, identity and rights of Indigenous peoples worldwide. Indigenous
studies encompasses scholarship on more than 370 million people from
more than seventy countries. The field reflects and reinforces a dynamic
international movement that is playing a vital role in nations across
Series Contents
Salmon Is Everything
After a devastating fish kill on the Klamath River, tribal members and theatre artist Theresa May developed a play to give voice to the central...
Native Space
Native Space explores how Indigenous communities and individuals sustain and create geographies through place-naming, everyday cultural practices, and artistic activism, within the boundaries of the...
Kanaka Hawai'i Cartography
Kanaka Hawai‘i cartographic practices are a compilation of intimate, interactive, and integrative processes that present place as “experienced space,” situate mapping in the environment, and...
At the Hearth of the Crossed Races
Despite the force of Oregon’s founding mythology, the Willamette Valley was not an empty Eden awaiting settlement by hardy American pioneers. Rather, it was, as...
Ancestral Places
Ancestral Places explores the deep connections that ancestral Kānaka (Native Hawaiians) enjoyed with their environment. It honors the moʻolelo (historical accounts) of the ancestral places...
To Win the Indian Heart
Since 1879, Indian children from all regions of the United States have entered federal boarding schools—institutions designed to assimilate them into mainstream society. Chemawa Indian...
Accomplishing NAGPRA
Accomplishing NAGPRA reveals the day-to-day reality of implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The diverse contributors to this timely volume reflect the...
A Deeper Sense of Place
In A Deeper Sense of Place, editors Jay Johnson and Soren Larsen collect stories, essays, and personal reflections from geographers who have worked collaboratively with...
The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue
The first collection of writings and images focused on an off-reservation Indian boarding school, The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue shares the fascinating story of...
Asserting Native Resilience
Indigenous nations are on the frontline of the current climate crisis. With cultures and economies among the most vulnerable to climate-related catastrophes, Native peoples are...
Songs of Power and Prayer in the Columbia Plateau
Songs of Power and Prayer explores the role of song as a transformative force in the twentieth century. It traces a cultural, spiritual, and musical...