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.
