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University of Manitoba Press
The following review appeared in the September 2015 issue of CHOICE. The review is for your internal use only. Please review our Permission and Reprints Guidelines or email permissions@ala-choice.org.
Social & Behavioral Sciences
History, Geography & Area Studies - North America
Long considered a laboratory for outside ethnographic research into Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) culture and history, the Six Nations of the Grand River community possesses a long-overlooked but rich intellectual tradition of its own. Monture (Indigenous studies, McMaster Univ., Canada), a Turtle Clan Mohawk and member of the Grand River community, captures 230 years of Haudenosaunee thought, writing, and activism originating in this unique North American indigenous locale. Carrying the story from the post-Revolutionary War origins of the community as a place of refuge for Iroquois people displaced from traditional homelands in what is now upstate New York as a result of their allegiance to Great Britain down to the current controversies over non-Native housing developments on contested parts of the Territory, Monture traces the relationship between the articulation of Haudenosaunee intellectual traditions at Grand River over time and the efforts of community members to communicate understanding of their sovereign status to changing generations of Haudenosaunee and non-Native peoples alike. Far from a retreat into stagnant cultural conservatism, Monture demonstrates how Grand River community members have adapted and expressed Haudenosaunee traditional culture through literature, historiography, art, film, music, and ceremonial practice to engage evolving sociopolitical contexts.
--J. W. Parmenter, Cornell University