Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation - Paperback

by Nick Estes (Author), Melanie Yazzie (Author), Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Author)

Red Nation Rising is the first book ever to investigate and explain the violent dynamics of bordertowns. Bordertowns are white-dominated towns and cities that operate according to the same political and spatial logics as all other American towns and cities. The difference is that these settlements get their name from their location at the borders of current-day reservation boundaries, which separates the territory of sovereign Native nations from lands claimed by the United States.

Bordertowns came into existence when the first US military forts and trading posts were strategically placed along expanding imperial frontiers to extinguish indigenous resistance and incorporate captured indigenous territories into the burgeoning nation-state. To this day, the US settler state continues to wage violence on Native life and land in these spaces out of desperation to eliminate the threat of Native presence and complete its vision of national consolidation "from sea to shining sea." This explains why some of the most important Native-led rebellions in US history originated in bordertowns and why they are zones of ongoing confrontation between Native nations and their colonial occupier, the United States.

Despite this rich and important history of political and material struggle, little has been written about bordertowns. Red Nation Rising marks the first effort to tell these entangled histories and inspire a new generation of Native freedom fighters to return to bordertowns as key front lines in the long struggle for Native liberation from US colonial control. This book is a manual for navigating the extreme violence that Native people experience in reservation bordertowns and a manifesto for indigenous liberation that builds on long traditions of Native resistance to bordertown violence.

Author Biography

Brandon Benallie is a long-time activist and member of The Red Nation. Radmilla Cody is a Grammy Nominee and multiple Native American Music Awards winner. David Correia is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Diné) is a professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Nick Estes (Kul Wicasa) is assistant professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Melanie K. Yazzie (Diné) is an assistant professor of Native American Studies and American Studies at the University of New Mexico.