Category: 3-BookTalkSometimeCommentary

No matter what people call them today the northwestern Great Plains have been and continue to be Blackfoot country, argues Colgate University assistant professor Ryan Hall in Beneath the Backbone of the World: Blackfoot People and the North American Borderlands, 1720-1877 (University of North Carolina Press, 2020). By maintaining their boundaries and enforcing power between both European empires and Indigenous neighbors, the Blackfoot were able to carve out a lasting niche in the contested borderlands of the early North American West of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although disease, resource depletion, and colonization would eventually be visited upon the Blackfoot, along with American settler colonialism, this outcome was never preordained. Nor was that the entire story, as Blackfoot history carries on well after such well known events as the Montana gold rush and the Marias Massacre. Beneath the Backbone of the World is an example of Native history's power to force a rethinking of North American history's arc.

Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

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Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology (Harvard UP, 2021) is a searching account of nineteenth-century salvage anthropology, an effort to preserve the culture of “vanishing” Indigenous peoples through dispossession of the very communities it was meant to protect.

In the late nineteenth century, anthropologists, linguists, archaeologists, and other chroniclers began amassing Indigenous cultural objects—crafts, clothing, images, song recordings—by the millions. Convinced that Indigenous peoples were doomed to disappear, collectors donated these objects to museums and universities that would preserve and exhibit them. Samuel Redman dives into the archive to understand what the collectors deemed the tradition of the “vanishing Indian” and what we can learn from the complex legacy of salvage anthropology.

The salvage catalog betrays a vision of Native cultures clouded by racist assumptions—a vision that had lasting consequences. The collecting practice became an engine of the American museum and significantly shaped public education and preservation, as well as popular ideas about Indigenous cultures. Prophets and Ghosts teases out the moral challenges inherent in the salvage project. Preservationists successfully maintained an important human inheritance, sometimes through collaboration with Indigenous people, but collectors’ methods also included outright theft. The resulting portrait of Indigenous culture reinforced the public’s confidence in the hierarchies of superiority and inferiority invented by “scientific” racism.

Today the same salvaged objects are sources of invaluable knowledge for researchers and museum visitors. But the question of what should be done with such collections is nonetheless urgent. Redman interviews Indigenous artists and curators, who offer fresh perspectives on the history and impact of cultural salvage, pointing to new ideas on how we might contend with a challenging inheritance.

Alex Golub is associate professor of anthropology, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

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In The Apache Diaspora: Four Centuries of Displacement and Survival (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021), Paul Conrad brings to life the stories of displaced Apaches and the kin from whom they were separated. Conrad uses the lens of “diaspora” to analyze four centuries of Ndé/Apache history, from their initial interactions with Europeans in the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century, when several dozen Apaches returned to the Southwest –if not to their ancestral lands, after decades of forced exile. The case for an Apache diaspora is persuasively demonstrated throughout with illustrative examples drawn from a wide array of secondary and primary sources, including original documents from repositories in the U.S., Mexico, and Spain. Conrad charts Apaches' efforts to survive or return home from places as far-flung as Cuba and Pennsylvania, Mexico City and Montreal. While deeply analytical, Conrad enlivens his narrative with meaningful stories, such as the arrival of the first shipment of Apaches to Havana in 1784, and evocative vignettes, for instance, of life on the reservations in the 1870s.

Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez es profesor de Historia en Texas State University. Sus intereses académicos incluyen la etnohistoria, los pueblos indígenas de las Grandes Llanuras y el Suroeste de EE.UU., la frontera México-EE.UU. y la América hispánica.

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When Samantha and her husband moved from a condo to a fairly large house, they knew they’d have a lot of updating and upkeep to do. But they had no idea how much time their new chores would gobble up. Or even what chores to do. (If only there was a guide to adulting!) Even when they weren’t holding themselves to picture-perfect standards, it still felt like they were barely keeping their heads above water. On this episode of How To!, we bring on Kendra Adachi, she’s a best-selling author, podcaster, and professional permission giver. She has tangible, easy steps that you can do right now to help you prioritize and organize your mess—and ultimately, your life. 

If you liked this episode, check out “How To Stop “Having It All” (Before You End Up With Nothing)” 

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On this episode: Jamilah, Elizabeth, and Zak talk about the wave of anti-trans legislation, the role of misinformation in this movement, and how to protect trans kids. They are joined by Jules Gill-Peterson. She is a trans historian and author of Histories of the Transgender Child, and co-host of Slate’s very own Outward podcast. 

Recommendations

Jamilah recommends: NYT Spelling Bee 

Elizabeth recommends: PILOT FriXion Clicker Erasable, Refillable & Retractable Gel Ink Pens

Zak recommends: This tweet

Resources

Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson

Slate’s Outward podcast

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Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson and Jasmine Ellis. 

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This month, in the next in our season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth, Harriett Gilbert and readers around the world talk to award-winning American writer Bryan Washington about his moving novel Memorial.

Benson, a Black day-care teacher and Mike, a Japanese-American chef, live together in Houston, but are beginning to wonder why they're a couple. When Mike flies off to visit his seriously ill, estranged father in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother arrives for a visit, Benson is stuck looking after his boyfriend’s mother, in a very unconventional domestic set-up. As both men cope with their difficult circumstances they undergo life-changing transformations, learning more about love, anger, and grief than they had bargained for along the way.

Poignant and profound, Memorial is about family in all its strange forms, becoming who you're supposed to be, and the outer limits of love.

(Picture: Bryan Washington. Photo credit: Louis Do.)

With one million dead from COVID, many Americans are suffering through profound grief. And for Black Americans, the pandemic combined with the racial reckoning has made the mourning feel endless. On this week’s episode of A Word, Jason Johnson talks with writer Marisa Renee Lee about her new book Grief Is Love: Living With Loss, and about making space for joy in the midst of grief. 

Guest: Marisa Renee Lee, a writer, speaker, and entrepreneur. Her new book is Grief Is Love: Living With Loss.

Podcast production by Jasmine Ellis

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This week, host June Thomas talks to Hannah Kirshner, author of Water, Wood, and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town. In the interview, Hannah explains how her original plan to write a cookbook turned into an immersive reporting experience, where she practiced and documented multiple artisanal disciplines, like sake brewing and wood turning. She also discusses what it was like to be an outsider navigating the norms of rural Japan. 

After the interview, June and co-host Karen Han talk about the difference between appreciation and appropriation when reporting on a culture different from one’s own. 

In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Hannah talks in greater detail about working at a sake brewery. Then she explains the care and discipline that goes into growing rice. 

Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675.

Podcast production by Cameron Drews.

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You’ve probably heard about the importance of journaling, putting thoughts on paper to help process the daily vicissitudes of life. But it’s easy to stall once you see a blank page or get self conscious about what exactly you’re writing. On this episode of How To!, we bring together Anna Quindlen, bestselling novelist and author of the new book Write For Your Life, and John Dickerson, co-host of Slate’s Political Gabfest, CBS News reporter, author and veteran journaler. They share their wit and wisdom on how to start writing about your personal life — and how to keep it going amid all the distractions. (And stay tuned after the credits for an exclusive sneak peek of Anna Quindlen’s next novel).

If you liked this episode, check out “How To Write a Bestseller” and “How To Get Your Book Published.”

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When we think of method acting, we tend to think of actors going a little over the top for a role – like Jared Leto, who allegedly sent his colleagues dead rats when he was preparing to be The Joker, or Robert De Niro refusing to break character on the set of the movie Raging Bull.

But that’s not how method acting began. On this episode of Decoder Ring: we look at how “The Method” came to be so well-known and yet so widely misunderstood. It’s a saga that spans three centuries and involves scores of famous actors, directors and teachers. And it altered how we think about realism, authenticity, and a good performance.

Our guest today is Isaac Butler, who wrote The Method: How The 20th Century Learned to Act.

Decoder Ring is written and produced by Willa Paskin. This episode was produced by Elizabeth Nakano. Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts. 

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