Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2008
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Volume 28, Number 1, Winter 2008, pp. 75-76.
Abstract
This edited volume grew out of presentations made at the '''Eating Out of the Same Pot': Relating Black and Native (Hi)stories" conference held at Dartmouth in 1998, which examined the intersecting histories of American Indians and African Americans.
The collection includes fifteen essays, with an afterword by Robert Warrior, who reflects both on the essays and the '''Eating Out of the Same Pot'" conference. The introduction, co-edited by Miles and Holland, nicely summarizes some of the issues that gave rise to the Dartmouth conference and the essay collection. Cultural artifacts such as "doing things in an Indian way" may be important to a family identifying itself as having American Indian ancestry, but are not acknowledged or accepted by anthropologists, historians, or those who would enforce a "one drop" rule to African American identity. Miles and Holland reflect on African American imaginings of American Indians that often reiterate broader American images of American Indians. As the authors point out, these imaginings often ignore real relationships that included the owning of slaves by American Indians, and African American participation in crushing American Indian resistance to reservations.
The chapters run from an interview with Joy Harjo to an overlong chapter about Hawaiian Reggae, Rap, and Hip Hop. In an effort to be interdisciplinary the editors have included some essays that do not effectively fit into the framework of the collection or offer any insights into the subject area. However, there are some articles that do.
Comments
Copyright 2008 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.