Previous publication prize winners
2022 PUBLICATIONS PRIZES
Best First Book
JAMAICA HEOLIMELEIKALANI OSORIO. Remembering Our Intimacies: Mo’olelo, Aloha ‘Āina, and Ea (University of Minnesota Press)
Remembering Our Intimacies centers on the personal and embodied articulations of aloha ʻāina to detangle it from the effects of colonialism and occupation. Working at the intersections of Hawaiian knowledge, Indigenous queer theory, and Indigenous feminisms, it seeks to recuperate Native Hawaiian concepts and ethics around relationality, desire, and belonging grounded in the land, memory, and the body of Native Hawai’i.
Best Subsequent Book
JOANNE BARKER. Red Scare: The State’s Indigenous Terrorist (University of California Press)
New Indigenous movements are gaining traction in North America: the Missing and Murdered Women and Idle No More movements in Canada, and the Native Lives Matter and NoDAPL movements in the United States. These do not represent new demands for social justice and treaty rights, which Indigenous groups have sought for centuries. But owing to the extraordinary visibility of contemporary activism, Indigenous people have been newly cast as terrorists—a designation that justifies severe measures of policing, exploitation, and violence. Red Scare investigates the intersectional scope of these four movements and the broader context of the treatment of Indigenous social justice movements as threats to neoliberal and imperialist social orders.
In Red Scare, Joanne Barker shows how US and Canadian leaders leverage the fear-driven discourses of terrorism to allow for extreme responses to Indigenous activists, framing them as threats to social stability and national security. The alignment of Indigenous movements with broader struggles against sexual, police, and environmental violence puts them at the forefront of new intersectional solidarities in prominent ways. The activist-as-terrorist framing is cropping up everywhere, but the historical and political complexities of Indigenous movements and state responses are unique. Indigenous criticisms of state policy, resource extraction and contamination, intense surveillance, and neoliberal values are met with outsized and shocking measures of militarized policing, environmental harm, and sexual violence. Red Scare provides students and readers with a concise and thorough survey of these movements and their links to broader organizing; the common threads of historical violence against Indigenous people; and the relevant alternatives we can find in Indigenous forms of governance and relationality.
Most Thought-Provoking Article
MEREDITH DRENT AND JEAN DENNISON. “Moving to a New Country Again: The Osage Nation’s Search for Order and Unity Through Change,” Native American and Indigenous Studies, Vol. 8 (2), Fall 2021 pp. 62-91
Abstract:
As Native nations reclaim dominion over our histories, stories, and territories, we continue to grapple with how to transform our governance systems to navigate ongoing settler colonialism. Building on existing discussions about the importance of reintroducing Indigenous values into contemporary governance in the face of the politics of recognition, we offer the Osage principle of “moving to a new country.” This principle marks the reproduction of Indigenous values through a process of continuous deliberation and adaptation to foster a unified and healthy government system, even in the midst of massive upheaval. Historical vignettes exemplify the process of moving to a new country as Osages sought order and unity amid attempts at assimilation and massive colonial devastation. In the twenty-first century, the Osage Nation Supreme Court’s decisions offer a guide for the newly reconstituted government’s debates over authority. Citing historical and contemporary characteristics of Osage life, the court is again linking living values of change, order, and unity to the nation’s current government structure. Ultimately, the idea of moving offers a model for how Native nations could embrace ongoing change to support living values and meet contemporary needs.
Honorable Mention
SKAYU LOUIS. “Sensory Access at Sx̌ʷəx̌ʷnitkʷ: Blockages, Fluidities and Futures,” Journal of Environmental Media, Vol. 2 (Supplement), 2021 pp 9.1-9.16
Abstract:
In the summer of 2020, tensions rose at sx̌ʷəx̌ʷnitkʷ, an ancestral fishing village site, for the Syilx Okanagan Peoples due to a landowner seeking to exclude access to a portion of q̓awsitkʷ (Okanagan) river. Access to sx̌ʷəx̌ʷnitkʷ is integral for Syilx Nation building and realizing embodied relationships with the Salmon peoples, which have been hindered by a multiplicity of factors that almost removed salmon completely from the Territory. Sensory access throughout the village site is not only important to rebuild relations with the salmon, but also those with the place itself. sx̌ʷəx̌ʷnitkʷ remains a portal of relationality with waterscapes from the high mountains into the Pacific Ocean. Waterscapes connect peoples, polities and humans/more-than-humans throughout their spaces of motion. In an era of altered river pathways, intensified relationships grounded in particular waterscapes can help to build relations beyond the structural blockages that fragment the flow of the river and its ecologies. These relationships are important for collaborative healing throughout the watershed. Renewing relations with ecologies of flow and motion bring to question the fragmented jurisdictions that seek to carve up Indigenous territories.
2021 PUBLICATIONS PRIZES
Best First Book
DYLAN ROBINSON. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies (University of Minnesota Press)
Finalists
MICHELLE ERAI. Girl of New Zealand: Colonial Optics in Aotearoa (University of Arizona Press)
NATASHA VARNER. La Raza Cosmética: Beatuy, Identity, and Settler Colonialism in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (University of Arizona Press.)
Best Subsequent Book
GINA STARBLANKET and DALLAS HUNT. Storying Violence: Unraveling Colonial Narratives in Stanley Trial (ARP Books)
Finalists
NANCY MARIE MITHLO. Knowing Native Arts (University of Nebraska Press)
KEVIN FELLESZ. Listen but Don’t Ask Question: Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Across the Transpacific (Duke University Press)
Most Thought-Provoking Article
MEREDITH ALBERTA PALMER. “Rendering Settler Sovereign Landscapes: Race and Property in the Empire State.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 38:5 (Oct 2020): 793-810.
SAʻILIEMANU LILOMAIAVA-DOKTOR. “Oral Traditions, Cultural Significance of Storytelling, and Samoan Understandings of Place or Fanua.” Native American and Indigenous Studies 7:1 (Spring 2020): 121-151.
2020 PUBLICATIONS PRIZES
Best First Book
NOELANI ARISTA. The Kingdom and the Republic: Sovereign Hawai’i and the Early United States (University of Pennsylvania Press)
Finalists
CHRISTOPHER J. PEXA. Translated Nation: Rewriting the Dakhóta Oyáte (University of Minnesota Press)
LEILANI SABZALIAN. Indigenous Children’s Survivance in Public Schools (Taylor and Francis)
Best Subsequent Book
SHANNON SPEED. Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State (University of North Carolina Press)
JOHN BORROWS. Law’s Indigenous Ethics (University of Toronto Press)
Finalists
DAVID BRUCE MACDONALD. The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation (University of Toronto Press)
LISA BLEE AND JEAN M. O’BRIEN. Monumental Mobility: The Memory Work of Massasoit (University of North Carolina Press)
Most Thought-Provoking Article
KRISTINA JACOBSEN AND SHIRLEY ANN BOWMAN. “ ‘Don’t Even Talk To Me If You’re Kinya’áanii’ [Towering House]: Adopted Clans, Kinship, and ‘Blood’ in Navajo Country” in Native American and Indigenous Studies 6, 1 (2019): 43-76.
HI’ILEI HOBART. “At Home on the Mountain: Ecological Violence and Fantasies of Terra Nullius on Maunakea’s Summit,” in Native American and Indigenous Studies 6, 2 (2019) 30-50.
2017 PUBLICATIONS PRIZES
Best First Book
THERESA MCARTHY. In Divided Unity: Haudenosaunee Reclamation at Grand River (University of Arizona Press)
Best Subsequent Book
DAVID CHANG. The World and All the Things Upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration (University of Minnesota Press)
Most Thought-Provoking Article
VICENTE DIAZ. “In the Wake of Mata ‘pang’s Canoe: The Cultural and Political Possibilities of Indigenous Discursive Flourish” in Critical Indigenous Studies: Engagements from First World Locations (University of Arizona Press, 2016)
Best Student Paper Presented at the 2017 NAISA Conference
KAHIKINA DE SILVA. “Loea Mele: A Brief Study of 20th Century Kanaka Maoli Discussions of Mele”
2015 PUBLICATIONS PRIZES
Best first book
SARAH DEER, The Beginning and End of Rape (University of Minnesota Press, 2015)
Best subsequent book
AILEEN MORETON ROBINSON, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (University of Minnesota Press, 2015)
Most thought-provoking article
DAVID CHANG, “’We Will Be Comparable to the Indian Peoples’: Recognizing Likeness between Native Hawaiians and American Indians, 1834–1923″ American Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 3, (September 2015), pp. 859-886.
Best student papers presented at the 2015 meeting
DAVID UAHIKEA MAILE, “He Moena Pāwehe Makana: Weaving Anti-Capitalist Resistance into Kanaka Maoli Critiques of Settler Colonialism.”
WAASEYAA’SIN CHRISTINE SY, “Relationship with Land as Method and Theory in Indigenous Women’s Research”
MARY “TUTI” BAKER, “Cultivating Aloha ʻĀina: A Case Study in Indigenous/Anarchist Practice”
2014 PUBLICATIONS PRIZES
Best first book
AUDRA SIMPSON, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across The Borders Of Settler States (Duke University Press)
Best subsequent book
CHRIS ANDERSEN, Métis: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood (University of British Columbia Press)
Most thought provoking article
LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON, “Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation” (Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2014).
Best student papers presented at the 2014 meeting
JENNA HUNNEF, “A Doubtful Outlaw in the Old I.T.: The Indigenous Repoliticization of Ned Christie in Rober J. Conley’s Ned Chritie’s War.” AND JESSICA KOLOPENUK, “Becoming Native American: Facializing Indigeneity in Canada through Genetic Signification and Subjection”
2013 PUBLICATIONS PRIZES
Best First Book
KIM TALLBEAR, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2013)
Best Subsequent Book
THOMAS KING, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2013)
Most Thought Provoking Article
K. TSIANINA LOMAWAIMA, “The Mutuality of Citizenship and Soverenty: The Society of American Indians and the Battle to Inherent America,” published in a joint special issue of Studies in American Indian Literatures 25.2: 333-351 (Summer 2013)
2012 PUBLICATIONS PRIZES
Best First Book
ALICE TE PUNGA SOMERVILLE, Once Were Pacific: Maori Connections to Oceania (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012)
Best Subsequent Book
CHADWICK ALLEN, Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012)
Most Thought Provoking Article
PATRICK WOLFE, “Against the Intentional Fallacy: Legocentrism and Continuity in the Rhetoric of Indian Dispossesion” published in American Indian Culture & Research Journal 36.1: 3-45 (2012)
Best student papers presented at the 2012 meeting
ANDREW EPSTEIN, “Decolonizing the Empire State: The Everett Report & Haudenosaunee Sovereignty in Early 20th Century New York”
2011 PUBLICATIONS PRIZES
Best First Book
JODI BYRD, The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011)
Best Subsequent Book
MARK RIFKIN, When Did Indians Become Straight? Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty (London: Oxford University Press, 2011)
Most Thought Provoking Article
LISA BROOKS, “The Constitution of the White Earth Nation: A New Innovation in a Longstanding Indigenous Literary Tradition” published in Studies in American Indian Literatures 23.4: 48-76 (Winter 2011)
2010 PUBLICATIONS PRIZES
Best First Book
MALINDA MAYNOR LOWERY, Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010)
Best Subsequent Book
JEAN M. O’BRIEN, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011)
Most Thought Provoking Article
DANIKA MEDAK-SALTZMAN, “Transnational Indigenous Exchange: Rethinking Global Interactions of Indigenous Peoples at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition,” American Quarterly 62.3: 591-615 (2010)