Wicazo sa review
Encyclopedia
Native American Studies
Native American Studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that examines the history, culture, politics, issues and contemporary experience of Native peoples in North America, or, taking a hemispheric approach, the Americas...
. Dedicated to the mission of assisting Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
across the Americas, the Wíčazo Ša Review compiles inquiries into the Indigenous past and its integral relationship to the present. It is devoted to the development of Native American Studies as an academic discipline, and the emergence of the Indigenous American voice.
History
Founded in 1985 by editors Elizabeth Cook-LynnElizabeth Cook-Lynn
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn is a Crow Creek Lakota Sioux editor, essayist, poet, novelist, and academic, whose trenchant views on Native American politics, particularly tribal sovereignty, have caused controversy....
, Roger Buffalohead, and William Willard, the Wíčazo Ša Review was created to cultivate the emergence of Native American Studies as an academic discipline .
American Indian and Native American Studies programs have become centers for Indigenous peoples seeking to define the religious, cultural, legal and historical parameters of scholarship and creativity essential to the ongoing process of decolonization and to survival in the modern world. The Wíčazo Ša Review supports this scholarship, thus serving as an instrument to help Indigenous peoples of the Americas regain possession of their own intellectual and creative pursuits.
Wíčazo Ša Review is published by the University of Minnesota Press, which acquired it in 1999. When founded it was published at Eastern Washington University
Eastern Washington University
Eastern Washington University is an American public, coeducational university located in Cheney, Washington.Founded in 1882, the university is academically divided into four colleges: Arts and Letters; Business and Public Administration; Science, Health and Engineering; and Social & Behavioral...
in Cheney, Washington
Cheney, Washington
Cheney is a city in Spokane County, Washington, United States. The full time resident population was 10,590 as of 2010 census. Eastern Washington University is located in Cheney, and its population grows to approximately 17,600 people on a temporary basis when classes at Eastern Washington...
, under the guidance of the university's Native American Studies center. Issues include essays, articles, interviews, reviews, poems, short stories, course outlines, curriculum designs, scholarly research and literary criticism reflective of Native American Studies and related fields.
Founders
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn is a member of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe. Born in 1930, she retired from her academic career as a professor of Native American Studies in 1993 at Eastern Washington University. A poet, essayist, novelist and editor, Cook-Lynn's strong views on Native American politics and tribal sovereignty have been controversial.
William Willard, a continuing guest editor of the Review, is a professor emeritus in the departments of Comparative American cultures and Anthropology at Washington State University
Washington State University
Washington State University is a public research university based in Pullman, Washington, in the Palouse region of the Pacific Northwest. Founded in 1890, WSU is the state's original and largest land-grant university...
. His main focuses include American Indian literature, the renaissance of American Indian religion, the evolution of tribal government and the development of inter-American indigenous alliances.
Noted contributors
Vine Deloria, Jr.Vine Deloria, Jr.
Vine Deloria, Jr. was an American Indian author, theologian, historian, and activist. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto , which helped generate national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement...
is a Native American author, historian and activist of the Yankton band of the Nakota
Nakota
The term Nakota is the endonym used by the native peoples of North America who usually go by the name of Assiniboine , in the United States, and of Stoney, in Canada....
Nation.
Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo is a Native American poet, musician, and author of ancestry. Known primarily as a poet, Harjo has also taught at the college level, played alto saxophone with a band called Poetic Justice, edited literary journals, and written screenplays. She is a member of the Muscogee Nation and...
is a poet, musician and author of the Muscogee
Muscogee (Creek) Nation
The Muscogee Nation is a federally recognized tribe of Muscogee people, also known as the Creek, based in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. They are regarded as one of the historical Five Civilized Tribes and call themselves Este Mvskokvlke...
Nation of Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
.
Thomas King is a Canadian novelist and broadcaster of Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
, Greek and German descent. He most often writes about Canada's First Nations.
Simon Ortiz, a Native American poet from the Acoma Pueblo
Acoma Pueblo
Acoma Pueblo is a Native American pueblo approximately 60 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico in the United States. Three reservations make up Acoma Pueblo: Sky City , Acomita, and McCartys. The Acoma Pueblo tribe is a federally recognized tribal entity...
tribe has been a key figure in the second wave of the Native American resistance.
Gerald Vizenor
Gerald Vizenor
Gerald Robert Vizenor is a Native American writer, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. One of the most prolific Native American writers, with over 30 books to his name, Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where...
is a prominent Native American writer of Anishinaabe
Anishinaabe
Anishinaabe or Anishinabe—or more properly Anishinaabeg or Anishinabek, which is the plural form of the word—is the autonym often used by the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Algonquin peoples. They all speak closely related Anishinaabemowin/Anishinaabe languages, of the Algonquian language family.The meaning...
heritage and a member of the Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation.
Ray Young Bear
Ray Young Bear
Ray Young Bear is a Native American poet and novelist of the Meskwaki tribe.Growing up on the Meskwaki Tribal Settlement in Iowa, he was encouraged to learn English by his maternal grandmother, and he began to translate his poems into that language...
is a Native American poet of Meskwaki
Meskwaki
The Meskwaki are a Native American people often known to outsiders as the Fox tribe. They have often been closely linked to the Sauk people. In their own language, the Meskwaki call themselves Meshkwahkihaki, which means "the Red-Earths." Historically their homelands were in the Great Lakes region...
ancestry, from the Black Eagle Child Settlement in Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
. He writes primarily about the dislocation of Native Americans who are being pulled by two different cultures, often switching between English and the Meskwaki language to fully express himself.
Current editors
James Riding In, the current editor, is a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. He is also a professor of Justice Studies and American Indian Studies at Arizona State UniversityArizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
, where he played a large role in the department's development.
Susan A. Miller, the Associate Editor, is from the Tiger Clan and Tom Palmer Band of the Seminole
Seminole
The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in...
Nation. Trained as a historian at the University of Oklahoma
University of Oklahoma
The University of Oklahoma is a coeducational public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two became the state of Oklahoma. the university had 29,931 students enrolled, most located at its...
and University of Nebraska, she focuses on the decolonization of indigenous nations. She is also a member of the faculty of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University.