Lela Rhoades has a voice so sharp, so funny, warm, and honest, that the stories of her life and the traditions of her parents will barely sit still on the page. As told to Molly Curtis in the 1970's, this memoir takes us back into a world where men chased mother grizzlies out of their dens for their meat, where manzanita berries were ground up into sugar and houses built with the door right in the middle of the roof. It was an intricate, complex life that was unknown to the strangers that would take over the land. For all of her recollections, old recipes, and legends, this is also a story of transition for Lela Rhoades, her Achumawi people, and for Native California in general. Here, Rhoades walks the line between tradition and change, watching the land and hunting rights of her people vanish, telling creation stories that blend both Coyote and Jesus, and recounting her marriage to a white rancher. Come, sit down at the feet of Lela Rhoades, and listen to the strength and beauty of her world. "There was an aristocratic presence, an aristocratic aura about the heavy, elder lady, Lela Grant Rhoades, slowly rocking in her chair as she quietly embroidered a delicate pattern, silver needles flashing in the fading evening light, black-rimmed glasses resting on her nose a mysterious aristocratic something, like she knew many secrets or something more necessary than life. I thought of Grandmother Spider creating her web with great confidence." From the Foreword by Darryl Babe Wilson

Voices of Indigenuity collects the voices of the Indigenous Speaker Series and multigenerational Indigenous peoples to introduce best practices for traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). In this edited collection, presenters from the series, both within and outside of the academy, examine the ways they have utilized TEK for inclusive teaching practices and in environmental justice efforts. Advocating for and providing an expansion of place-based Indigenized education that infuses Indigenous epistemologies for student success in both K–12 and higher education curricula, these essays explore topics such as land fragmentation, remote sensing, and outreach through the lens of TEK, demonstrating methods of fusing learning with Indigenous knowledge (IK). Contributors emphasize the need to increase the perspectives of IK within institutionalized knowledge beyond being co-opted into non-Indigenous frameworks that may be fundamentally different from Indigenous ways of thinking. Decolonizing current harmful pedagogical curricula and research training about the natural world through an Indigenous- guided approach is an essential first step to rebuilding a healthy relationship with our environment while acknowledging that all relationships come with an ethical responsibility. Voices of Indigenuity captures the complexities of exploring the contextu- alized meanings for why TEK should be integrated into Western environmental science processes and frameworks while rooted in Indigenous studies programs.

Born in the northern region of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Marie Mason Potts (1895–1978), a Mountain Maidu woman, became one of the most influential California Indian activists of her generation. In this illuminating book, Terri A. Castaneda explores Potts’s rich life story, from her formative years in off-reservation boarding schools, through marriage and motherhood, and into national spheres of Native American politics and cultural revitalization. During the early twentieth century, federal Indian policy imposed narrow restrictions on the dreams and aspirations of young Native girls. Castaneda demonstrates how Marie initially accepted these limitations and how, with determined resolve, she broke free of them. As a young student at Greenville Indian Industrial school, Marie navigated conditions that were perilous, even deadly, for many of her peers. Yet she excelled academically, and her adventurous spirit and intellectual ambition led her to transfer to Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School. After graduating in 1915, Marie Potts returned home, married a former schoolmate, and worked as a domestic laborer. Racism and socioeconomic inequality were inescapable, and Castaneda chronicles Potts’s growing political consciousness within the urban milieu of Sacramento. Against this backdrop, the author analyzes Potts’s significant work for the Federated Indians of California (FIC) and her thirty-year tenure as editor and publisher of the Smoke Signal newspaper. Potts’s voluminous correspondence documents her steadfast conviction that California Indians deserved just compensation for their stolen ancestral lands, a decent standard of living, the right to practice their traditions, and political agency in their own affairs. Drawing extensively from this trove of writings, Castaneda privileges Potts’s own voice in the telling of her story and offers a valuable history of California Indians in the twentieth century.

"This unique and original book sets the standard for such volumes. I can't see anyone coming along for quite some time who would be able to supersede it or top it for quality and inclusiveness."—Brian Swann, editor of Coming to Light "It is a masterful treatment of oral literature…a wonderful combination of great verbal art and sound scholarship, carefully crafted so that the collection begins and ends with a powerful creation tale."—Leanne Hinton, author of Flutes of Fire "Since each of the contributing specialists has first-hand familiarity with the material, the translations are of unusual authenticity and the annotations are of unusual insightfulness. Luthin's own introductory sections are especially vivid and well-informed."—William Bright, author of A Coyote Reader

The compelling autobiography of a California Indian man who grew up with one foot in the Indian world of myth and custom, and the other foot in a modern, Western world