Reviewed by: This Contested Land: The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America's National Monuments by McKenzie Long Annabel G. LaBrecque (bio) This Contested Land: The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America's National Monuments by McKenzie Long University of Minnesota Press, 2022 Like built monuments, natural monuments in the United States are mired in controversy. Made by presidential proclamation (rather than congressional designation, as are national parks), national monuments often enclose a plurality of pasts, places, and resources valued by a variety of interest groups, making monuments primary objects of environmental, economic, political, and even personal dispute. In This Contested Land: The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America's National Monuments, journalist McKenzie Long introduces readers to thirteen particularly controversial national monuments, all of which were reviewed for reduction by the Trump administration. From Katahdin Woods and Waters in northeastern Maine to Papahānaumokuākea in far western Hawai'i, Long travels far in search of "common ground among dissenting groups" (p. xxvii) and remains attentive to "the desperate need some people feel to be in a place or to protect it" (pp. xxiv–xxv) to explain how and why monuments matter to so many in often conflicting ways. With descriptive journalistic prose, Long paints a vivid portrait of the contemporary political landscape of American monuments and illustrates the importance of public land management strategies grounded in equal access, cooperation, and reciprocity. Rather than a comprehensive history of the national monument system, This Contested Land offers more personalized snapshots—trailside interviews, conversations over diner coffee, and the author's solitary quests into Pacific waters, atop Californian mountains, through canyons, and beyond—revealing many modes of relation to the land, resources, and stories bounded in by monument designations. Long's "storied past" of the thirteen featured monuments is sourced primarily from her conversations with government officials, volunteers, scientists, and guides, as well as the her recreational experience in each place. Long's ability to visit thirteen monuments strewn across the continent is an impressive feat, one that allows her to introduce readers to a wide range of places and people attached to them. In doing so, Long trades depth for scope; with so much (literal) ground to cover, the book affords readers only glimpses of each monument's unique history, lending more detail to these places' political particularities while only briefly synthesizing the thousands of years of complex human, more-than-human, and ecological transformation that give modern [End Page 138] monuments historic value. The chapter on Bears Ears, for instance, might leave some readers wondering about the urgency of Utah Diné Bikéyah's efforts to defend sacred and historic sites deemed disposable by the Trump administration. Elsewhere, however, Long's interview-based research reveals genuinely interesting and otherwise less accessible personal histories of forcibly shared places. Her chapter on Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, for example, recovers a revealing mosaic of Spanish, American, and Indigenous pasts, presents, and presence in northern New Mexico. Though focused primarily on settler politics and perspectives, This Contested Land makes several admirable nods to the persistence of Native peoples, pasts, and political power in places where federally managed monuments have taken shape. Long demonstrates how, despite dispossession, removal, and erasure, Native nations in Utah, California, Oregon, Hawai'i, New Mexico, and Nevada continue to play important roles in the establishment, management, and reassessment of national monuments created from stolen lands. "Public land in America is the sacred land of Indigenous people," Long reminds readers, and "it is vital that they participate in or lead management and decision making for land that is integral to their past, present, and future" (p. 275). Ultimately, however, Long's assessment of the importance of Indigenous sovereignty relative to matters of public land management and use falls just short of providing substantive support for contemporary calls to return land to Native peoples. In her conclusion, Long, while acknowledging advances made by Secretary Deb Haaland's Department of the Interior, might have more critically questioned the federal government's ability to effectively manage stolen lands and cultural resources that might be better stewarded by their sovereign nations, as several of the Native interviewees featured in...
Abstract: When lecture notes serve their practical purpose, they are discarded or find their way into a pile to await their eventual disposal. On rare occasions, they become valuable assets in the academic and professional careers of the undergraduates who scribble them down. In reflecting on the life of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, one set of notes has served as a reminder of the principles of the discipline she aided in molding and both a challenge and inspiration for those who have followed her footsteps into the academy. The sentiments shared in that lecture resurfaced in her memoir over a decade later. While most of the notes taken during that lecture have met their fate, one is threading her legacy into building a new Native American and Indigenous studies program.
Editor's Commentary Lloyd L. Lee (bio) Yá'át'ééh! I hope everyone is doing well. Volume 36, number 2 is an important edition with four articles, four book reviews, and eleven tribute reflection essays honoring the life and impact of one of the journal's founders, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. This edition focuses on a variety of topics and shares insightful book reviews. On July 5, 2023, one of the journal's founding editors, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, passed to the spirit world. We want to honor her life and the impact she made on so many educators, scholars, and Indigenous peoples. We sent out a call for reflection essays in September 2023 and asked scholars, researchers, activists, writers, and community members to reflect upon the profound influence of Cook-Lynn's research, writing, teaching, activism, career, and personal lives. This issue contains a total of eleven tribute reflection essays, but it is only a glimpse into Cook-Lynn's life and influence. The reflection essays show the personal connections each of the individuals had with Elizabeth Cook-Lynn and the enormous influence and impact she will continue to have with regard to the discipline, Indigenous communities, and Native Nations. This journal would not exist without Cook-Lynn's vision, hard work, and strength to build and mature the field of American Indian/Native American studies. We know the journal will continue to honor her legacy and advance American Indian/Native American studies. The first article, Kerri J. Malloy's "California Genocide: A Historiography of Settler Innocence," examines settler-colonial impetus for anti-Indigenous violence at the state, regional, and tribal [End Page v] levels. This article promotes a settler-colonial analytic to interrogate settler colonialism in California and the genocide of Indigenous peoples. Malloy advocates for further scholarly inquiry and case studies to provide context and illuminate the settler-colonial framework. The second article, "Mapping Tahlequah History: A Collaboration to Learn and Teach about Cherokee Places in Northeastern Oklahoma," by Dave Corcoran, Farina King, Justin T. McBride, and John McIntosh, began as a roundtable at the twenty-fourth annual meeting of the American Indian Studies Association in February 2023 at Arizona State University. The article describes a mapping project where students worked with communities to create narratives to help the public better understand the layers of history surrounding the diverse populations of Tahlequah and the region of Green Country in northeastern Oklahoma. The region is home to the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees. This piece focuses on a region of Oklahoma where Indigenizing mapping and collaborating among Native and non-Native communities and peoples occurs. The third article, "SING 2019 Talking Circle: Indigenous Perspectives on Chronic Wasting Disease Research and Management in North America," by Arlana M. Redsky, Latiya Northwest, Ashlyn Jensen-Fisk, Tanelle Smith, Katie Neimeyer, Avery Newman-Simmons, Chyloe Healy, Morgan Hyrcak, Jenna Burke, Khalyd Clay, Warren Cardinal-McTeague, Naomí Carriere, John Turn, K'alii Stewart, and Elder Grace Cook, is about the Summer internship for Indigenous peoples in Genomics (SING) Canada training program held at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 2019. Indigenous students, nation members, Elders, and early career Indigenous scientists came together to participate in an intensive training program on chronic wasting disease (CWD) of cervids (deer, moose, elk, and caribou). The participants came together to demonstrate the greater needs for Indigenous engagement and consultation on CWD and the inclusion of comprehensive Indigenous perspectives emphasizing interconnection between living and non-living beings. The fourth article, "Raven Evades the Anthropocene: Whiteness, Indigeneity, and Environmental Disaster," by Aandax̱joon Sabena Allen, explores Lingít (Tlingit) Raven stories and their ability to undermine Anthropocene logics. The narratives illustrate long-standing Lingít means of dealing with catastrophe still valuable in the present. The article makes the case that Indigenous narratives exceed Anthropocene thinking and represent a more generative framework in considering climate change. Along with the four articles, four book reviews are a part of this issue. The books reviewed are This Contested Land: The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America's National Monuments (2022), by [End Page vi] McKenzie Long, reviewed by Annabel G. LaBrecque; Seven Aunts (2022), by Staci Lola...
Abstract: In this essay, Sarah Hernandez reflects on her friendship with Dakota writer and scholar Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. Cook-Lynn, the author of fourteen Native American studies books and numerous articles, has mentored countless Native students over her long career. This personal reflection provides insight into Cook-Lynn's teaching methods and impact.
Abstract: Elizabeth Cook-Lynn's Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeya's Earth asks Native Americans in university positions to critically reflect on how their work shows responsibility toward Native Americans in the university. Libraries and archives are foundational places where Native American students access information across disciplines that include Native American collections. The job of the curator of Native American Collections for the University of New Mexico, University Libraries, is to document how the library and archive will respectfully shape collections and make active efforts to contact tribes regarding cultural content in archival collections. Influenced by the scholarship and activism of Cook-Lynn, this essay reflects on the words of Cook-Lynn in the area of transforming library and archival practices to build more trustworthy relationships with Native American people and nations.
Reviewed by: Dance of the Returned by Devon A. Mihesuah Enrique Lima (bio) Dance of the Returned by Devon A. Mihesuah University of Arizona Press, 2022 In Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story, by LeAnne Howe (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), Ezol Day travels across time to sit in the living room of Lena, a journalist, to tell her stories about the Choctaw past. A hundred years or so separate the events recounted from the [End Page 142] moment when they are told, and the story contained in Ezol's testimony intertwines revelations about baseball, Choctaw history at the beginning of the twentieth century, and family grief. Lena wonders how it is possible for Ezol to time-travel, and Ezol conjectures that her movements through time are related to the Choctaw language: "I theorized Choctaws didn't have the same experiences with time as those of Europeans because we speak differently." According to Ezol, Choctaws' experience of time is contained in their language and the Choctaw language does not "distinguish between past and present," thus allowing her to exist in both times at once. Devon A. Mihesuah's (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) Dance of the Returned takes up similar questions of time. Choctaws in this novel also travel through time, but they do so in more complicated trajectories. Dance of the Returned begins with a mystery: What happened to James East? James East has gone missing, although no one who knows him well, including his wife, seems particularly concerned about that fact. His coworkers call the police. Monique Blue Hawk, a Choctaw detective, is tasked to investigate. James's trail leads to Monique's uncle, Leroy Bear Red Ears. No one, including her uncle, gives Monique a straight answer about James' whereabouts. Leroy does, however, invite Monique to come to a Renewal Dance, a ceremony with which she is not familiar. She takes up his invitation and meets at his house with seven other dancers. None of the dancers know what the Renewal Dance is, but they follow the instructions and perform the ceremony. The dance transports them to the historical past, though at first most of the dancers refuse to recognize their new reality. Eventually they come to grips with what has happened, and under the leadership of Fuji, the youngest dancer, they journey to complete a task that will allow them to return to the present. The strength of the novel is found in its depiction of the historical past. On the one hand, the novel disabuses its characters of the romantic notions of what they thought they might find. At one point the characters find themselves in a Choctaw village eating tanfula, a type of cornmeal porridge. The "mush," says the novel, "had no spice, salt, or sweetness" (p. 222) That is, in its blandness the tanfula simply is. It is food that people ate. It isn't special because it is "authentic." Much of the material culture the characters encounter, which some had previously romanticized, is depicted similarly. But even as they discover the prosaic nature of the old ways, the characters also begin to better understand their relationship to Choctaw history. This is captured when Monique meets one of her famous ancestors. She looks into his face and sees her own "heavily hooded eyelids" (p. 224), the same eyelids she inherited from her father and her grandmother. History is often hard to understand because it is both too close and too far away. Twenty or two hundred years seem like yesterday or millennia, depending on how you look at it. But in traveling through time, the characters come to understand their [End Page 143] connection to the past, to understand how the miseries that Choctaws experienced during removal and its aftermath are the story of all their families. The characters realize that Choctaw history and culture is a part of them and has been handed down throughout the generations in the same way that people's distinctive family features have. No more can be said about the plot here without ruining it. Suffice it to say that James East has not in fact gone missing, and that there is a plan and a purpose to the...
Abstract: This study examines the development and implications of the international Buffalo Treaty, the first inter-Indigenous treaty of its kind in over 200 years. The research brings together scholars from different plains Indigenous peoples to learn from and share with renowned Blackfoot scholar and Buffalo Treaty Emissary Dr. Leroy Little Bear. The research details the movement to bring Indigenous nations on either side of the 49th parallel together in common cause to return buffalo to Indigenous landscapes and territories, a task necessitated by the buffalo genocide in the 19th century. In addition, we argue that the Buffalo Treaty is part of a much larger effort to reinvigorate Indigenous modes of relating between people, non-human animals, and lands and waters. We draw from Dr. Little Bear to enunciate meaning of buffalo consciousness , and show how the Buffalo Treaty movement was transformed from an originally Blackfoot-driven initiative into an Indigenous international treaty between multiple peoples and the buffalo. By learning from the buffalo in their role as a keystone species, we are able develop new orientations to improving relationships among Indigenous peoples and non-human relations. The work concludes with new interventions on using treaty making to decolonize Indigenous peoples' modes of governance in service of facilitating the resurgence of relational forms of politics.
Abstract: In this short essay I utilize the work of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn's In Defense of Loose Translations: An Indian Life in an Academic World and her understanding of anger as a framework for the responsibility of individuals within academic institutions. I reflect upon the remembrance of Cook-Lynn and, in the framework of responsibility, the possibilities it presents.
Abstract: I share my story on the significance of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, both as a scholar and a friend and mentor. I share a few personal stories exemplifying her dedication to Native students and discuss Cook-Lynn as one of the most important political writers of our time. Finally, I end discussing our responsibility as Native scholars, and that is to keep the plot moving.
Abstract: This reflective essay recounts two of my personal experiences with Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. My first encounter with her was in 2009 when I attended a class she taught on American Indian studies. I found her forthright in her teaching and in our personal exchange after the class. She said something to me that ended my lifelong inner struggle with my identity. What may have seemed inconsequential was actually a profound moment that helped me move forward to focus my writing on American Indian issues. My second encounter with her was a tense moment in the racist history of Rapid City, South Dakota. I attended a rally to call attention to the inordinate number of Lakota people killed by Rapid City's law enforcement. Twenty-four hours later, a Native male residing at Lakota Homes in Rapid City was shot and killed by a Rapid City police officer. Elizabeth and I attended a small gathering of concerned citizens to address the situation. Already familiar with her as a scholar, author, poet, and educator, I saw her that day as an activist.
Abstract: Dakota writer Elizabeth Cook-Lynn's memoir In Defense of Loose Translations: An Indian Life in an Academic World is an excellent source for those who are fairly new to Native/Indigenous studies and are enthusiastic to understand the basic concerns of Indigenous scholarship. American historiography demonstrates "a process of collective memory erasure" that denies the presence of the Native Nations. In her memoir, Cook-Lynn vehemently criticizes the colonial supremacy of American literary traditions that misrepresent Indigenous history, politics, and cultures as forms of ethnic cleansing, denials, and refusals of Indigenous claims to lands and territories.
