Acknowledgments

I owe an infinite debt that I can never repay to my teachers and mentors, past and present: Trinh T. Minh-ha, Judith Butler, Tom Biolsi, Michael Wintroub, Samera Esmeir, Kehaulani Kauanui, Lisa Lowe, Michelle Raheja, and Mishuana Goeman. I especially want to thank my mentor David Lloyd, whose own work and attention to this book has marked it indelibly. I’d also like to thank the many others who have taken time with me and my work in both big and small ways: Audra Simpson, Sarita See, Tammy Ho, Sherryl Vint, Jennifer Doyle, Dylan Rodríguez, Jason Weems, Kat Whiteley, Cj Jackson, Amrah Salomón, Hannah Appel, Nancy Marie Mithlo, David Shorter, Jessica Cattelino, Clare Counihan, Rana Barakat, Terri Castaneda, Sigrid Benson, Carlos Dimas, Long Bui, Laura Grappo, Matthew Garrett, Patricia R. Hill, Joel Pfister, Mark Slobin, Kris Manjapra, Kamran Rastegar, Khury Petersen-Smith, Anna Cruz, Nidhi Mahajan, Alexandra Chreiteh, Tom Abowd, Kareem Khubchandani, Alex Blanchette, and Matt Hooley, to name a few.

I’d like to thank my former writing crew: Hyaesin Yoon, Keerthi Potluri, and Katherine Brewer Ball. I miss our collaborations.

I am deeply grateful to the CISSA collective, especially Katie Keliiaa, Cutcha Risling Baldy, Vanessa Esquivido, Melissa Leal, Annette Reed, Stephanie Lumsden, Brittani Orona, Kat Whiteley, Bayley Marquez, and Olivia Chilcote. I have developed this book alongside our project to reorient California Indian studies for our communities.

I am delighted to be part of such a supportive, brilliant, and committed group of colleagues in the English Department at UCR and am grateful to our faculty and staff. I am also very appreciative of my other UCR colleagues, especially my collaborations with the Memory and Resistance Lab (Latipa and Crystal Baik) and the support I have received from the California Center for Native Nations (CCNN), the Performing Difference and Reclamation and Native American Communities Faculty Commons groups, the Center for Ideas and Society, and the Costo Chair of American Indian Affairs.

I am indebted to the many students who I have taught and discussed these ideas with over the years. I have learned as much if not more from them as the other way around.

This book has benefited from presentations at or support and interest by the following organizations: the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA); the American Studies Association (ASA); the Native American Cultural Center at Yale University; the Wong Forum on Art and the Immigrant Experience; American Indian Studies at California State University Long Beach; Alberta University of the Arts; the Consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts; Indigenous Choreographers at Riverside; the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC); the Association for Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP); the Association for Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE); the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians; San Diego State American Indian Studies Department; the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP); the UC Retreat on Experiments in Critical Theory; the Pembroke Center at Brown University; and the UCLA American Indian Studies Center.

I want to thank the authors, artists, their relatives, and the institutions that have given me permission to reproduce the work that I discuss in this book, which would be nothing without it: Marie-Elise (Mimi) Wheatwind on behalf of Janice Gould, Gregg Deal (and Dead Pioneers), Karen Murphy on behalf of Rick Bartow, Rebecca J. Dobkins, Sage Lapena on behalf of Frank LaPena, Crocker Art Museum, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, and the Museum of Anthropology at the California State University Sacramento. Thanks to the NAIS Journal for allowing me to reprint my article “Atlas for a Destroyed World: Frank Day’s Painting as Work of Nonvital Revitalization.”

Deborah Miranda, I owe you a special debt as I couldn’t have done this work without your example and without your words.

Janice Gould chaired a panel I organized for the NAISA conference in Los Angeles in 2018 where I delivered a paper that became the first draft of chapter 3. Janice was incredibly generous with her time and wisdom. Through our email communications leading up to and after the conference, she offered suggestions for thinking about how to approach the discourse on genocide from a California Indian and especially artistic perspective. She also expressed support for holding, and interest in attending, a gathering of California Indian scholars, artists, and cultural workers that I was considering organizing, which would later become the initial meeting of CISSA. I only later found out she was battling cancer at the time. Janice passed on June 28, 2019.

Frank LaPena was the dance captain for the Maidu Dancers and Traditionalists who led the Bear Dance that I attended while growing up. We had a number of conversations about Frank Day and his work while I was working on the article that became chapter 5. Frank LaPena’s work and vision have deeply influenced the writing of this book.

I am grateful to the other authors, artists, and cultural bearers (theorists one and all) whose work I discuss in the book: James Luna, Gerald Vizenor, Dugan Aguilar, L. Frank, Tommy Pico, Beth Piatote, Tom Epperson, Leland Scott, and Lucy Young. I also admire the Ghost Dancers for your bravery and infinite commitment.

Thanks so much to the University of Minnesota Press for publishing my work and to everyone who worked on it, especially Jason Weidemann, Robert Warrior, Zenyse Miller, and the anonymous readers for your attention to it. It is an honor to have it be among the amazing collection of books in the Indigenous Americas series.

I am deeply appreciative for the support I received from the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Native American Studies and everyone at the Center for the Americas at Wesleyan University; the Mellon Sawyer Postdoctoral Fellowship and everyone at the Center for the Humanities at Tufts; the Hellman Foundation; the University of California Humanities Research Institute; and UCLA’s Institute for American Cultures.

Susanville Indian Rancheria, thank you for your support.

Camaraderie and comradeship with Hannah Appel and James Crosby, as well as our shared childcare duties during the beginning of the pandemic, have given much to this book. Whiskey Wednesdays with James and our discussions of art, politics, and life are woven into its sociality.

Susan Campbell (Mom) has been an important guiding star, in her work as a cultural bearer and in the random phone calls from me when I was trying to track down some information. There’s no better archivist than an Indian mom.

Rocelyn de Leon-Minch and Mikaela Ysabel de Leon-Minch, what I owe you is too great to comprehend; our endless and boundless love and care have made so much more than just this book possible. Through you I see the stirrings of another world.

To the Ancestors. This book is for you.