On the night of November 20, 1969, ninety-two Native Americans sailed silently across the San Francisco Bay toward the island of Alcatraz. They intended to reclaim the land for Indian people and to establish a community on Alcatraz. By the time the sun rose, they had settled onto the island and made their intentions clear: a large sign read, You Are Now on Indian Land. When the U.S. government discovered the occupation of Alcatraz, the U.S. Coast...

A casual note left on the windshield of a car. The death of an old dog. And author Kent Nerburn unexpectedly finds himself back on the Dakota reservation where more than a decade before he traveled with the elder, Dan, whose thoughts he chronicled in the classic of Native American studies, Neither Wolf nor Dog. Now almost ninety, Dan wants Nerburn to assist in the unlikely task of burying Fatback, the old Labrador who had been Dan's closest companion...

"Between the early seventeenth century and the early twentieth, nearly all the land in the United States was transferred from American Indians to whites. This dramatic transformation has been understood in two very different ways - as a series of consensual transactions, but also as a process of violent conquest. Both views cannot be correct. How did Indians actually lose their land?" "Stuart Banner provides the first comprehensive answer. He argues...

"Centering us in Rome, but transporting us seamlessly into worlds as varied and exotic as they are emotionally real, these stories paint landscapes that are populated-vividly, hauntingly-by animals: from squawking, violent seagulls to magical snakes to a tiny dog on the side of a deserted road to starlings circling the evening sky in exhilarating formation. In the foreground, in unforgettable, cinematic frames, events unfold, especially in the lives...

Throughout the nineteenth century, the land known as "Indian Territory" was populated by diverse cultures, troubled by shifting political boundaries, and transformed by historical events that were colorful, dramatic, and often tragic. Beyond its borders, most Americans visualized the area through the pictures produced by non-Native travelers, artists, and reporters--all with differing degrees of accuracy, vision, and skill. The images in Picturing...