Posts (page 2)

One of the most contentious issues facing indigenous peoples around the world today is the fight to maintain a connection and identity to – and with – traditional homelands. This fight, largely the historical outcome of imperial and colonial processes over the last four hundred years, is in many cases the only fight that matters for indigenous peoples.

After working closely with indigenous peoples in three different countries, I have learned just how important and closely held the land is. For indigenous peoples, the culture, the language, and the identity of the individual is directly tied to the land. It is the land that informs indigenous peoples and their world views (1). One question that has arisen as a result of this understanding centers on the ways and methods indigenous people can use to maintain their relationship to the land – often traditional homelands that have been occupied for generations – in the face of such overwhelming colonial and imperial forces, both present and past. In the recent book by professor Lisa Brooks, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast,we are given an example from Native North America of one way this identity was maintained.

Looking at indigenous Native American writers, activists, and leaders of colonial Northeast North America, Brooks convincingly argues that Samson Occom, Joseph Brant, Hendrick Aupaumut, and William Apess all used the mechanism of writing to maintain their Native identity and cultural ties to the land. In relying on the tool of writing, these indigenous Native American peoples were able to maintain – and in some instances reclaim – their rights, identity, and culture in the face of incredible colonial and imperial forces. In fact, as Brooks points out this method was indigenous to the Algonquian, Iroquois, Ojibwa, Abenaki, and other Native Americans of the Northeast as demonstrated by their long tradition of making awikhigan.

Read more about the recovery of indigenous Native American Indian space in the Northeast here.

Writing a book and becoming a published author is a common dream. As Harry Beckwith wrote in The Invisible Touch, “If you want to change your life, write a book.” But writing a book is no easy task. There are few people who can just sit down and crank out a few hundred pages. Most of us have to work hard at becoming a writer and published author, often taking months or years before completing our first book. So what differentiates someone who eventually does become a published author from those who only write for a short time before giving up?

Following are the nine biggest reasons most first-time writers fail to become published authors.

Unrealistic Expectations

Don’t expect to get rich off your book or writing, even if your book or writing is considered a success by publishing standards. The vast majority of books fail to earn out their advance, and the vast majority of writers don’t make tons of money. Instead, develop a personal marketing plan to leverage your career off your book or your writing. Rather then trying to make money on the book or writing itself, use your book and writing to open doors, promote your credibility, and build relationships with readers.

Writing Without A Contract

Never write a book, essay, or article without a signed contract. Instead, prepare a polished proposal and two sample chapters or a query letter. Publishers are increasingly selective about the titles they accept. Often, less than 1 in 20 titles proposed are published. Writing a book or article that isn’t accepted is not a good use of your time.

Read the other seven mistakes commonly made by writers and authors in failing to get published here.

Debates and ideas about when, from where, and by what route Native American Indians peopled the Americas are often “resolved” within generalized models based on an assumption of north to south expansion processes. Likewise, these generalized models of the peopling of the Americas assume either single or multi-wave pulses of Native American Indians entering North America and migrating internally down through North America or along the Pacific Coast. Recently, however, models focused on Iberian chipped stone similarities and African or Austronesian skeletal similarities have introduced additional, “extra-Beringial,” migration scenarios to the peopling of the Americas debate. As a result, one way to address these competing models is to reconstruct the pattern and progression of population growth of the earliest viable and archaeologically visible populations in the Americas to see which models are supported.

Reconstructing the pattern and progression of the earliest viable Native American Indian populations into the Americas can be accomplished, or at least begun, by comparing the geographical distributions and progressions of archaeological sites with the earliest known accurate and precise radiometric dates. By comparing the geographical and chronological distributions of the earliest known archaeological sites, the directions from which the earliest viable Native American Indian populations came into the continents and how they expanded can begin to be understood. In Archaeological Roots of Human Diversity in the New World: A Compilation of Accurate and Precise Radiocarbon Ages from Earliest Sites, researcher Michael K. Faught has published the results of such a study.

Read more on the First Peopling of the Americas: New Archaeological Evidence Sheds Light here.

One of the biggest dreams many authors and writers have is to see their book on a library shelf. Getting your published book(s) into libraries, including public, municipal, state, university, research, and private libraries can seem like a challenge. How do you accomplish your goals and reach your dreams of selling your books to libraries? Although there is no guarantee that a library or librarian will buy your book, there are several general rules and guidelines one can follow in maximizing their chances.

Target Your Local and Regional Libraries

Most local and regional libraries actively seek books that are written by local authors and/or published locally. They are often especially interested in those books written about or that take place in the library’s city, region, or state. As a library books are often selected based on whether the content is written for the general reader or for the specialist or practitioner. Public libraries focus on books written for the general reader, while university and research libraries focus more on specialist or practitioner books.

Make Sure Your Book Has All The Necessary Features

Most libraries only accept books that have been commercially published. Some indications of commercial publication are a sturdy binding, preferably with the title on the spine; a title page clearly stating (on either the front or the back) the author, title, publisher and date of publication; an International Standard Business Number (ISBN) listed somewhere on the book or the jacket; and a price listed on either the book or the jacket.

Because books in most libraries get heavy and sometimes careless use from the public, librarians often look for ones which are sturdily bound, preferably sewn or glued. Spiral and comb bindings do not stand up well in libraries. Likewise, books with pages designed to be filled in by the reader, or torn out, do not fit in a library setting. Books that include objects such as toys, or crafts kits are also not appropriate.

Read more tips on marketing and selling your books to libraries here.

The Persian Gulf, also known as the Arabian Gulf, is an area of the globe that has a fascinating history, one that is not only culturally intertwined with the environment, but that is also physically tied to it. Unlike many other parts of the world where the resources are abundant, allowing the culture to develop in a manner free of environmental constraints, in the Persian Gulf the cultures that have developed have been directly shaped by the region’s environment. This environmental influence on the cultures and peoples of the Persian Gulf is perhaps reflected in no better way then through the traditional architecture of the region. In a stunningly comprehensive and photographically rich book, Professor Ronald Hawker has brought this long and complex intertwining of culture and environment to light.

Traditional Architecture Of Arabian Gulf: Building a Desert Tides chronicles the florescence of architecture in the Persian Gulf after the expulsion of the Portuguese in the early 1600s. Documenting the building and crafts of this era, Ronald Hawker expertly analyzes the change in Persian Gulf architecture within a larger framework of political, economic, and social information. Relying on primary sources from the period, including well over 100 photographs, this book provides an intelligent and accessible study of this region.

The Persian Gulf, in the Southwest Asian region, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Historically and commonly known as the Persian Gulf, this body of water is sometimes referred to as the Arabian Gulf by certain Arab countries or simply The Gulf, although neither of the latter two terms are commonly used in the U.S. Ronald Hawker uses the term Arabian Gulf throughout this book, but as he explains, it is not for political reasons but sentimental ones. “Many people refer to the region as the Persian Gulf, but my first introduction to it was through Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. For me, the Gulf, khaleej in either Arabic or Farsi, will always be the Arabian Gulf” (p. xix).

Read more about traditional Persian Gulf architecture and culture here.

The social sciences have experienced a number of rapid and expansive theoretical developments over the course of the last hundred years. From fighting for their existence as an intellectual endeavor within academia and the university during the 19th century, to experiencing a series of popular and wide scale adoptions with such theoretical epistemologies as positivism and behaviorism, the social sciences are currently at an epistemological crossroads. In the aftermath of such powerful critiques as deconstructionism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, and the Frankfurt School’s singular attack on positivism and the Vienna School, the social sciences are struggling to find their epistemological footing. This is particularly true within the field of anthropology, including its daughter discipline of archaeology, for not only has the theoretical foundations of the discipline been called into question, but the field’s subject matter – its source of data and existence – has also been brought to bear. In an effort to reestablish some form of theoretical footing, the social sciences have begun to open their epistemological doors to cultures and ways of knowing historically allowed to only represent data. In this process, indigenous peoples and their epistemology have played a key role.

Over the past two decades a significant amount of academic energy has been invested in professing the urgent need and essentialness for developing what some have called an indigenous archaeology. Books, essays, and academic conferences have discussed, defined, and designed a multiplicity of paths towards this goal. Very little effort has been expanded, however, in seriously examining the intellectual viability or the social and cultural desirability of this project. In a recent paper entitled Aboriginalism and the Problems of Indigenous Archaeology Robert McGhee attempts to examine this theoretical endeavor within the field of archaeology.

Read more about indigenous peoples, archaeology, and the development of social science theory here.

There are two contradicting, but broadly held, views and understandings when it comes to the deep history of indigenous Native American Indian peoples in the Great Basin culture region of North America. The predominate one found in archaeology and across much of the social sciences is that today’s indigenous Native American Indians of the Great Basin (the Paiute, Shoshone, Washoe, Ute, Bannock, Kawaiisu, and Chemehuevi) have only resided in the area for a relatively short time; on the order of perhaps 1000 years. The other understanding of Great Basin human history held by the Native Americans and those scientists who look at a slightly different dataset, includes indigenous Native Americans as deeptime participants of the region.

Often argued under the rubric of Lamb’s 1958 Numic hypothesis, these two conflicting views on history have slowly been coming together. As initially argued by Dr. Jones in Respect for the Ancestors: American Indian Cultural Affiliation in the American West, and then Lithic Projectile Points and the Great Basin Region of North America, new archaeological analyses is lending continued support to an emerging understanding. This emerging understanding centers around the idea of cultural transmission: the mechanism by which technological skills, knowledge, and practices are passed from individual to individual and from group to group.

In an attempt to explain the spatial and temporal patterns observed in the archaeological record, such as why a particular artifact is found in one region but not in another region, or why an artifact type differs in shape or size between two sites, the idea of cultural transmission has slowly gained ground. As cultural transmission has been embraced in the Great Basin, the Numic hypothesis has lost what shaky evidence it had to start. In a recent paper entitled The Cultural Transmission of Great Basin Projectile-Point Technology II: An Agent-Based Computer Simulation authors Alex Mesoudi and Michael J. O’Brien lend support to the emerging understanding of Native American deeptime history in the region.

Read more about Native American Indian archaeological history in the Great Basin here.

It has been a really dry, warm fall along the Front Range of Colorado. The mountains are hurting for snow, and I'm already beginning to worry about our spring snowpack and water conditions for next summer. Until Ull pays us a visit and the snow falls, I've been busy getting my telemark legs in shape and maintaining my trail running legs. Although I run peaks and mountains mostly during the summer, I usually cut way back during the winter - my legs need the rest and I switch to my winter love - telemarking. But I don't drop trail running all together, still managing to get in some decent mileage.

Last night I went out to run my current winter trail running route - a nice training run that has some good vertical and mileage combined. Since we just had a full moon and the sky was cloudless as is typical during an Indian Summer night, I though I could run without my headlamp. Often during the summer I use a Petzl E47 PS Tikka Plus Four-LED Headlamp, Soft(thanks Wolfgang!) for the early morning mountain approaches or late evening descents. However, thinking that I could run the trail with only using the moonlight, I left it at home.

Read more about my crazy experience trail running at night in Colorado here.

James Cox takes the title of his book from Sherman Alexie, for whom "white noise," the static that remains on a television after broadcasting ends, represents "the oppressive noise of white mass-produced cultures, the loud demand to conform to the invader's cultural belief system or be destroyed" (p. 11). Cox takes "white noise" to signify a broad history of colonial domination and erasure, which Alexie and the other novelists he considers write to resist. The introduction to Cox's book, "A Cup of Water," states his purpose to demonstrate how Euro-western and Euro-American literary and popular narratives, which almost always "culminate in the absence of Indians" (p. 13), support ongoing colonial dominance and produce real-world consequences for living Indians; and to explore the strategies used by some contemporary Native fiction writers to intervene in these colonial narratives of conquest, to render them powerless and suggest that "conquest, as imagined by non-Native authors, did not take place" (p. 18). Cox argues that his study "implements Osage scholar Robert Warrior's proposal ... that, in any scholarship on work by Native authors, the 'critical interpretation of those writings can proceed primarily from Indian sources,'" (p. 4); thus he intends to avoid "academic colonialism" by privileging the voices of Native writers in his own interpretations (pp. 4-5). If reality is constructed by stories, and if, as Greg Sarris observes, "In oral discourse ... no one party has access to the whole of the exchange.... [O]ne party's story is no more the whole story than a cup of water is the river" (quoted, p. 16), Cox wishes his own "cup of water" to resist the narrative flow that justifies domination and to "nourish" new plots for Native people (pp. 16-17).

Read more about Muting White Noise: Native American and European Novel Traditions here.

Today I have the honor of hosting Tony Napoli, as he tours with his new book My Father, My Don: A Son's Journey From Organized Crime to Sobriety. Tony's story is amazing, and I encourage everyone to take a moment and read how Tony overcame his life in organized crime and alcoholism.

Back of the Book Blurb

Moving back and forth in time from the 1800s to the present day, My Father, My Don: A Son's Journey From Organized Crime to Sobriety.tells the saga of the Napoli Family and takes its reader on a true-life journey, detailing one family's involvement in American organized crime. As told through the eyes of Anthony "Tony Nap" Napoli, the book follows the story of his father, James "Jimmy Nap" Napoli, who grew up in New York at the turn of the century and who ascended through the ranks of the Mafia to become one of the most powerful and respected mob bosses of all time. Jimmy Nap's career took him from street-level crime to an assassination attempt on Elliot Ness; from a relationship with Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista to becoming a Mob Kingpin who ruled over the largest gambling empire in America for almost 40 years. Jimmy Nap's sphere of influence extended to many businesses and industries, including professional boxing, casinos, and entertainment.

Read more about Crime Mafia Author Tony Napoli and his new book here.