New from Yale University Press:
Legal Codes and Talking Trees: Indigenous Women’s Sovereignty in the Sonoran and Puget Sound Borderlands, 1854-1946, by
Katrina Jagodinsky (University of Nebraska). A description from the Press:
Katrina Jagodinsky’s enlightening history is the first to focus on
indigenous women of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest and the ways
they dealt with the challenges posed by the existing legal regimes of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In most western states, it was
difficult if not impossible for Native women to inherit property, raise
mixed-race children, or take legal action in the event of rape or abuse.
Through the experiences of six indigenous women who fought for personal
autonomy and the rights of their tribes, Jagodinsky explores a long yet
generally unacknowledged tradition of active critique of the U.S. legal
system by female Native Americans.
A sampling of advance reviews:
“Legal Codes and Talking Trees
is original and without comparison. I have yet to see a similar study
that delves so deeply and widely in recovering the experiences of Native
women in the U.S. legal system and broader society." —Miroslava
Chavez-Garcia
“Using very original research, Jagodinsky’s book
offers us a paradox. How could legal systems in the North American West
empower and enrich White men, ensnare and enslave Native women, but also
enable some women to cut the ties that bound them?” —Anne Hyde
“Katrina Jagodinsky has done what I’ve long
thought impossible: crafted a comparative history that is as much about
people’s lives as it is about social forces and legal structures. Legal Codes and Talking Trees establishes a new method for casting our eyes across borders and nations.”—James F. Brooks
More information is available
here.
