Sovereignty and Sustainability: Indigenous Literary Stewardship in New England by Siobhan Senier (review)

Sovereignty and Sustainability: Indigenous Literary Stewardship in New England is a "wokeness check" for Native literature scholars. Siobhan Senier suggests that academia needs to "catch up" on the last two centuries of New England Native writing. This first book on the region's contemporary Native authors shows how these writers have used "literature to sustain their longstanding ethics of care and indeed their sovereign political rights over their homelands and their communities" and to counter the tedious myth of the "vanishing Indian" (4).

Senier implies that too much time has been devoted to researching eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Christian missionaries Samson Occom (Mohegan) and William Apess (Pequot). These angsty writers feed the false notions that New England Natives lost their traditional culture and physically disappeared in the nineteenth century à la James Fenimore Cooper. Had scholars focused on the last two centuries of Native New England authors, then we might not have been forced to expend so much time and energy in countering such myths. Senier contrarily spotlights recent writers, many of whom are traditional women, with mocs on the ground, promoting culture and community in the broad, sustainable sense of people working to maintain "networks of human and other-than-humans, natural and human made structures, ancestors and future generations" (179). Much like prolific Abenaki author and publisher Joseph Bruchac, she aggressively advocates for these underrepresented writers, promoting their visibility and access to publication, supporting their Wikipedia pages, organizing local conferences, editing a regional anthology (Dawnland Voices), maintaining a Facebook page, creating online literary magazines, and much more.

Senier's organization of the book's chapters into tribally specific genres that frequently refer to the region's Indigenous philosophy of linking "past, present and future" reflects the meaningful, long-standing nature of her relationships with the writers. Chapter 1, "We're Still Here," highlights the heavy use of historiography and timelines by the Wampanoag (People of the First Light) in exhibits, books, and movies. Dates matter to these Indigenous people of eastern Massachusetts, with 1620 being an egregious one that they have continually been forced to address and redress. Wampanoag and American mainstream timelines collide again in 1976, as seen in journalist Paula Peter's 2016 film The Mashpee Nine, in which she documents a tribal intervention for sovereignty and sustainability that occurred in that bicentennial year. Chapter 2 features the iconic 1930s newsletter, the Narragansett Dawn: We Face East, edited by tribal citizen Red Wing (a.k.a. Ella Glasko Peek), which includes "political editorials, traditional stories, recipes, and language lessons" (67). This holistic Narragansett community narrative takes aim at the myth of the "vanishing Indian" on all fronts and works to build community in the broad sense (as defined in the second paragraph). Chapter 3 explores the probing work of novelists like John Christian Hopkins (Narragansett) in his 2003 swashbuckler, Carlomagno, in which he reimagines the life and homecoming of Metacomet's son who was sold into slavery in the diaspora that followed the seventeenth-century King Philip's War. In an even more incisive turn, the chapter looks at Joseph Bruchac's 2010 novel, Hidden Roots, a story that unveils Vermont's destructive 1930s eugenics program and its sterilization of Natives. Here, Senier demonstrates how Bruchac connects assaults on Indigenous bodies and lands. Similarly, chapter 4 presents the poetry and Crazywoods memoir of Cheryl Savageau (Abenaki), both of which also link colonialism's attacks on Native minds and bodies to those on tribal sovereignty and sustainability. And please don't miss the similarly targeted work of other extraordinary poets referenced in this chapter. In chapter 5 Senier looks to the future of New England Native writing. You can feel her excitement about what's happening online, especially regarding the "Abenaki soundscape" of Joe and Jesse Bruchac's literary works spoken in their Native language—perhaps the most profound act of sovereignty and sustainability of all.

Many New England Native nations refer to their region as Wabanaki (which means "dawn...