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How We Go Home shares contemporary Indigenous stories in the long and ongoing fight to protect Native land and life.
List of contents
CONTENTS
EDITOR’S NOTE
INTRODUCTION, by Sara Sinclair
EXECUTIVE EDITOR’S NOTE, by Mimi Lok
MAP
Gladys Radek, Terrace, Gitxsan / Wet’suwet’en First Nations
“When Tamara went missing, it took the breath out of me.”
Jasilyn Charger, Cheyenne River Sioux
“My son’s buried by the river. . . . I vowed to him that he’s going to be safe, that no oil was going to touch him.”
Wizipan Little Elk, Rosebud Lakota
“On the reservation, you have the beauty of the culture and our traditional knowledge contrasted with the reality of poverty.”
Geraldine Manson, Snuneymuxw First Nation
“The nurse was trying to get me to sign a paper to put our baby, Derrick, up for adoption.”
Robert Ornelas, New York City, Lipan Apache / Ysleta del Sur Pueblo
“A part of the soul sickness for me was being ashamed. . . . What we were being taught about Indians was so minimal and so negative.”
Ashley Hemmers, Fort Mojave Indian Tribe
“I didn’t work my ass off to get to Yale to be called a squaw.”
Ervin Chartrand, Selkirk, Métis/Salteaux
“They said I fit the description because I looked like six other kids with leather vests and long hair who looked Indian.”
James Favel, Winnipeg, Peguis First Nation
“You’re a stakeholder because you’ve got to walk these streets every day.”
Marian Naranjo, Santa Clara Pueblo
“Indigenous peoples’ reason for being is to be the caretakers of the air, the water, the land, and each other.”
Blaine Wilson, Tsartlip First Nation
“When I was twenty-five, thirty, there was more salmon and I was fishing every other day. Now I’m lucky to go once a week.”
Althea Guiboche, Winnipeg, Métis/Ojibwe/Salteaux
“I had three babies under three years old and I was homeless.”
Vera Styres, Six Nations of the Grand River, Mohawk/Tuscarora
“I was a ‘scabby, dirty little Indian.’”
GLOSSARY
HISTORICAL TIMELINE OF INDIGENOUS NORTH AMERICA
ESSAYS
- The Trail of Broken Promises: US and Canadian Treaties with First Nations
- “Indigenous Perspectives on Historical Trauma”: An Interview with Johnna James
- Indigenous Resurgence
TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO
FURTHER READING
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
About the author
Sara Sinclair is an oral historian of Cree-Ojibwa and German-Jewish descent. Sara was the lead interviewer for Columbia Center for Oral History Research’s Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project, and coedited a book from these narratives, published by Columbia University Press in August 2019.
Summary
How We Go Home shares contemporary Indigenous stories in the long and ongoing fight to protect Native land and life.
Additional text
“This edited collection offers deep, experiential dives into law, policy, and life for contemporary Indigenous peoples in what is now the United States and Canada. These conversations and life histories, taken together, tell us a critical story of the effort it takes to live and transform structures that Indigenous peoples inherit and push against in bids for dignity, sovereignty, care, and justice in the twenty-first century.” —Audra Simpson (Kahnawà:ke Mohawk), professor of anthropology, Columbia University
“This extraordinary book powerfully conveys both the cruel, ongoing dispossession of the Indigenous peoples of North America and their astounding spiritual wealth and resilience. How We Go Home introduces this complex history organically, through riveting and varied first-person stories skillfully woven into a larger tale. All those who seek to create a more just and sustainable way of living should be grateful for the essential wisdom shared in these oral histories.”—Amy Starecheski, director of the Columbia University Oral History MA Program
“Sara Sinclair’s editorial vision in How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America is both radically inclusive and extraordinarily caring. There are so many deep histories here that we need to talk about, that we haven’t been talking enough about. How We Go Home requires us to genuinely hear and listen to the stories and the histories that have shaped Indigenous lives across North America. All of these stories resonated with me in an intimate and personal way—it’s at times both comforting and alarming to read about so many diverging life experiences that so often strike parallels with my own. How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America is an astounding achievement and a deeply necessary book that creates space for a multiplicity of Indigenous lived experiences.”—Jordan Abel, author of Nishga
“How We Go Home is a testament to modern-day Indigenous revitalization, often in the face of the direst of circumstances. Told as firsthand accounts on the frontlines of resistance and resurgence, these life stories inspire and remind that Indigenous life is all about building a community through the gifts we offer and the stories we tell.” — Niigaan Sinclair, associate professor, Department of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba and columnist, Winnipeg Free Press
“The voices of How We Go Home are singing a chorus of love and belonging alongside the heat of resistance, and the sound of Indigenous life joyfully dances off these pages.”—Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of As We Have Always Done
“This book will inspire you, it’ll piss you off; it’ll take you on a journey of ugly things and beautiful things and back again. It’s a hell of a read. Keep this one on your shelf and never let it go. Damn right.”—Simon Moya-Smith (Oglala Lakota and Chicano), writer, NBC News THINK
"How We Go Home confirms that we all have stories. These stories teach us history, morality, identity, connection, empathy, understanding, and self-awareness. We hear the stories of our ancestors and they tell us who we are. We hear the stories of our heroes and they tell us what we can be."—Honourable Senator Murray Sinclair
“In this continent, oral history began with the creation and retelling of the rich, multilayered, and historical origin stories of Indigenous people whose lives were intricately bound to the land. The destruction and stealing of that land, and the systematic and highly personalized violence targeted against so many Indigenous communities, threatened the very act of storytelling itself. This book took my breath away, and then restored it. It refuses silence. It restores the word—and the field of oral history in unleashing the story of our origins.”—Mary Marshall Clark, Director, Columbia Center for Oral History
