The arrival of European settlers in the Americas disrupted indigenous lifeways, and the effects of colonialism shattered Native communities. Forced migration and human trafficking created a diaspora of cultures, languages, and people. Gregory D. Smithers and Brooke N. Newman have gathered the work of leading scholars, including Bill Anthes, Duane Champagne, Daniel Cobb, Donald Fixico, and Joy Porter, among others, in examining an expansive range of Native peoples and the extent of their influences through reaggregation. These diverse and wide-ranging essays uncover indigenous understandings of self-identification, community, and culture through the speeches, cultural products, intimate relations, and political and legal practices of Native peoples.
Native Diasporas explores how indigenous peoples forged a sense of identity and community amid the changes wrought by European colonialism in the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, and the mainland Americas from the seventeenth through the twentieth century. Broad in scope and groundbreaking in the topics it explores, this volume presents fresh insights from scholars devoted to understanding Native American identity in meaningful and methodologically innovative ways.


Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations • Preface - Gregory D.Smithers and Brooke N. Newman • Introduction - "What is an Indian?": The Enduring Question of American Indian Identity - Gregory D. Smithers • Part 1. Adapting Indigenous Identities for the Colonial Diaspora • 1. Indigenous Identities in Mesoamerica after the Spanish Conquest - Rebecca Horn • 2. Rethinking the Middle Ground: French Colonialism and Indigenous Identities in the Pays d’en Haut - Michael A. McDonnell • 3. Identity Articulated: British Settlers, Black Caribs, and the Politics of Indigeneity on St. Vincent, 1763-1797 - Brooke N. Newman • 4. Religion, Race, and the Formation of Pan-Indian Identities in the Brothertown Movement, 1700–1800 - Linford D. Fisher • 5. “Decoying Them Within”: Creek Gender Identities and the Subversion of Civilization - Felicity Donohoe • Part 2. Asserting Native Identities through Politics, Work, and Migration • 6. Mastering Language: Liberty, Slavery, and Native Resistance in the Early Nineteenth-Century South - James Taylor Carson • 7. Resistance and Removal: Yaqui and Navajo Identities in the Southwest Borderlands - Claudia B. Haake • 8. Progressivism and Native American Self- Expression in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century - Joy Porter • 9. Mixed-Descent Indian Identity and Assimilation Policy - Katherine Ellinghaus • 10. “All Go to the Hop Fields”: The Role of Migratory and Wage Labor in the Preservation of Indigeneous Pacific Northwest Culture - Vera Parham • Part 3. Twentieth - Century Reflections on Indigenous and Pan-Indian Identities • 11. Tribal Institution Building in the Twentieth Century - Duane Champagne • 12. Disease and the “Other”: The Role of Medical Imperialism in Oceania - Kerri A. Inglis • 13. “Why Injun Artist Me”: Acee Blue Eagle's Diasporic Performative - Bill Anthes • 14. Asserting a Global Indigenous Identity: Native Activism Before and After the Cold War - Daniel M. Cobb • 15. From Tribal to Indian: American Indian Identity in the Twentieth Century - Donald L. Fixico • Contributors • Index