ANGELA PARKER
NATIVE-AMERICAN STUDIES FAVORITE BOOK TO TEACH The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River, by Richard White MUST-READ BOOKS IN YOUR FIELD Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, by Tiya Miles Making Indian Law:The Hualapai Land Case and the Birth of Ethnohistory, by Christian McMillen Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1879-1934, by John Troutman Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, by Keith Basso FAVORITE PLEASURE READ East of Eden, by John Steinbeck MOST RECENTLY READ Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism, by Bradley Shreve Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life, by David Treuer "The Organic Machine is one of the best, most accessible examples of the New West history—it marries Western, environmental and Native-American history in a complicated, beautiful story about one of the most important U.S. watersheds. White makes his histories both true to the complexity of the past as well as accessible to the non-academic. He does so with such elegance that sometimes students don't realize the craft of his writing the first time they rush through the book as an assignment." "Miles' book tells the intimate, familial and deeply gendered foundations of the assertion of tribal sovereignty, race and identity in the 19th century. McMillen shows us how tribally based land-claims activism has generated much of federal Indian case law and proves how local concerns and claims are just as influential as top-down stories of federal decision-making. Basso's book gives a beautiful explanation of why tribes' connections to their land bases are so central. These books answer the question of how cultural concerns around land and resources continue to drive Native legal, political and economic life." "I love East of Eden because I love history as a discipline. This novel deals in the complexity, unfairness and attempts at redemption that lie at the heart of every human story."
