Kinship in Narrating Native American History, 1491-Present

This book synthesizes traditional and modern historiography to narrate the practices of Native American family and kinship from 1491 to the present, highlighting how they evolved in response to Euro-American colonialism.

For centuries, matrilineal kinship descent not only structured Indigenous worlds but was embedded throughout Native politics, trade, religious beliefs, social structures, and more. After European and African arrivals, family and kinship systems continued to define Indigenous worlds and communities. However, these practices experienced profound pressures due to the unprecedented threats posed by Euro-American colonialism. Some practices evolved and adapted, at times retaining elements of matrilineal kinship systems and at other times incorporating non-Native cultural practices or giving life to new traditions. The book narrates these different paths of evolution, through the eras of Contact, to the Seven Years’ War and American Revolution, federal Indian removal policy, U.S. expansion and the creation of Indian Territory, and more, to demonstrate how the creation of the United States represented the greatest threat to Indigenous worlds and communities. Consequently, Native family and kinship systems evolve even more rapidly, culminating in the assimilation era of boarding schools and reservation allotment. Nonetheless, the book stresses how Indigenous concepts of family and kinship remained agile, transformative, and connected to emerging assertions of tribal sovereignty and nationhood in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Narrating Native American History with Kinship, 1491-Present will be of interest to students and scholars of Native American history, American women’s history, Sociology and Anthropology.