Coming Around: Recent Nim, Choctaw, and Mohawk Ethnohistory

Walking Where We Lived: Memoirs of a Mono Indian Family. By Gaylen D. Lee. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. xv + 208 pp., illustrations, foreword, introduction, epilogue, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $33.95 cloth.)

Choctaws at the Crossroads: The Political Economy of Class and Culture in the Oklahoma Timber Region. By Sandra Faiman-Silva. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. xxxiii + 273 pp., illustrations, tables, introduction, epilogue, appendix, index. $45.00 cloth.)

In Defense of Mohawk Land: Ethnopolitical Conflict in Native North America. By Linda Pertusati. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. xiii + 166 pp., preface, introduction, bibliography, index. $14.95 (paper.)

Táa:kai (who writes under the pseudonym Gaylen D. Lee) tells of the philosophy his ancestors held toward the coming of the non-Nim and the radical changes their presence caused the people and the society. Aishupa, his grandmother, told him, “That’s OK. That’s all right. . . . It all comes around” (11–12). That sentiment frames an apt context for each of these books, as in their own way each describes histories of struggle by aboriginal peoples—including the Nim, the Choctaw, and the Mohawk—to overcome the structured inequality and marginalization that have been the legacy of “contact.” To varying degrees, each of the First Nations who speak through these books tells of strength and renewal and the beginnings of their people’s reemergence after North America’s dark age of colonialism. These are stories of how, after that dark time, things may finally be “coming around.” In this light they are stories of struggle, hope, and empowerment, and each makes an important contribution to understanding the renaissance that currently characterizes many First Nations, whether political, cultural, or economic.

The first book, Walking Where We Lived, is a wonderful, enjoyable read, full of knowledge and wisdom. It consists of ten short chapters bordered by an introduction and conclusion, a little more than two hundred pages that must be understood less as text than as time. The reader seems less to turn the page than to slip into step with Táa:kai, the book’s Cha:tiniu Nim author, accompanying him through a year of his life in the land and culture that define the Nim. As the reader walks where Táa:kai’s people lived, stories of the past arise easily and spontaneously, a natural accompaniment to a journey whose milestones are the calendrical cycle of ceremonies and subsistence traditional to the Nim. When the snow gives way to spring, the story ends, and the reader is left with a rich picture of the Nim today, their past culture, and their experiences of contact with the “uninvited guests.”

The journey opens with the author’s introduction to his family and the language and culture that animate them. This sets the tone for the book, which Táa:kai stresses is not intended to challenge extant scholarly work on the Nim but to offer a uniquely Nim view of their world. This view is first directed to a description of Cha:tiniu life in the central Sierra Nevada as lived by Táa:kai’s great-great-great-grandmother before the arrival of the “first strangers.” From here, the reader bears witness to the exploitation of the Nim first by Spaniards and Mexicans, then by “Yankees,” a story that echoes across almost all experiences of aboriginal-newcomer contact in the so-called new world. There is talk of war, disease, religion, and loss. At the same time, this talk does not overwhelm the book, as it is interwoven with a relation of the bittersweet richness of Nim life throughout the trials and tribulations of contact. In the conclusion, the reader is reminded that although the Nim are “pummelled and pushed by actions and rhetoric that sometimes seems to be insurmountable,” they also “know that nothing ends, all of life goes on . . . . all of the old people are still here in...