Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country

by Tiya Miles (Editor), Sharon Patricia Holland (Editor), David A. Chang (Contributor)

Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds explores the critically neglected intersection of Native and African American cultures. This interdisciplinary collection combines historical studies of the complex relations between blacks and Indians in Native communities with considerations and examples of various forms of cultural expression that have emerged from their intertwined histories. The contributors include scholars of African American and Native American studies, English, history, anthropology, law, and performance studies, as well as fiction writers, poets, and a visual artist. Essays range from a close reading of the 1838 memoirs of a black and Native freewoman to an analysis of how Afro-Native intermarriage has impacted the identities and federal government classifications of certain New England Indian tribes. One contributor explores the aftermath of black slavery in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, highlighting issues of culture and citizenship. Another scrutinizes the controversy that followed the 1998 selection of a Miss Navajo Nation who had an African American father. A historian examines the status of Afro-Indians in colonial Mexico, and an ethnographer reflects on oral histories gathered from Afro-Choctaws. Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds includes evocative readings of several of Toni Morrison’s novels, interpretations of plays by African American and First Nations playwrights, an original short story by Roberta J. Hill, and an interview with the Creek poet and musician Joy Harjo. The Native American scholar Robert Warrior develops a theoretical model for comparative work through an analysis of black and Native intellectual production. In his afterword, he reflects on the importance of the critical project advanced by this volume.

Contributors. Jennifer D. Brody, Tamara Buffalo, David A. Y. O. Chang, Robert Keith Collins, Roberta J. Hill, Sharon P. Holland, ku'ualoha ho’omnawanui, Deborah E. Kanter, Virginia Kennedy, Barbara Krauthamer, Tiffany M. McKinney, Melinda Micco, Tiya Miles, Celia E. Naylor, Eugene B. Redmond, Wendy S. Walters, Robert Warrior

Genres: History, Indigenous, Nonfiction, Native American, Essays, American History, African American

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Tiya Miles is from Ohio, "the heart of it all," though now she spends summers in her husband's native Montana. She is the author of All That She Carried (which won a National Book Award for nonfiction and more), and of three prize-winning works of history on the intersections of African American and Native American experience. Her forthcoming book, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, will be out in June 2024, right on the heels of her short but sweet exploration of childhoods in nature: Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation (September 2024). Her debut dual time period (historical-contemporary) novel based on her early career research, The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts, was revised with new scenes and released as a paperback original by Random House in June 2023; check out the new version! She has also published a study of haunted plantations and manor homes in the South that reads like a travel narrative. (And she is as surprised as you are that two of her books focus on ghosts!) Her newest book, just out from W. W. Norton, is Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation. Tiya's favorite activities are reading good books while her three teenaged kids write stories together in the background, spending time in old houses, walking along forest trails, and drinking hot chocolate. She is currently working on a history, a novel, and essays about climate change and historic sites. Check out her Substack: Carrying Capacity, for news and updates! https://tiyamiles.substack.com/

Reviews

[Shomeret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned quite a bit about how various Native peoples have dealt with their mixed blood members who were partly of African descent. This is not politically correct history. Some Indian nations were slaveholders. On the other hand, there is the rather inspiring tale of a mixed blood Miss Navajo.

For my complete review see http://www.maskedpersona.blogspot.com