Clark Jerome J., Boxer Elise (eds.) From the Skin: Defending Indigenous Nations Using Theory and Praxis

University of Arizona Press, 2023. — 292 p. — ISBN 978-0816542505.In this volume, contributors demonstrate the real-world application of Indigenous theory to the work they do in their own communities and how this work is driven by urgency, responsibility, and justice - work that is from the skin.In From the Skin, contributors reflect on and describe how they apply the theories and concepts of Indigenous studies to their communities, programs, and organizations, and the ways the discipline has informed and influenced the same. They show the ways these efforts advance disciplinary theories, methodologies, and praxes. Chapters cover topics including librarianship, health programs, community organizing, knowledge recovery, youth programming, and gendered violence. Through their examples, the contributors show how they negotiate their peoples’ knowledge systems with knowledge produced in Indigenous studies programs, demonstrating how they understand the relationship between their people, their nations, and academia.Editors J. Jeffery Clark and Elise Boxer propose and develop the term practitioner-theorist to describe how the contributors theorize and practice knowledge within and between their nations and academia. Because they live and exist in their community, these practitioner-theorists always consider how their thinking and actions benefit their people and nations. The practitioner-theorists of this volume envision and labor toward decolonial futures where Indigenous peoples and nations exist on their own terms.Contributors: Randi Lynn Boucher-Giago, Elise Boxer, Shawn Brigman, J. Jeffery Clark, Nick Estes, Eric Hardy, Shalene Joseph, Jennifer Marley, Brittani R. Orona, Alexander Soto.J. Jeffery Clark (Diné), assistant professor of English and Indigenous studies at Arizona State University, studies Diné life-seeking moments as a means for imagining and creating alternatives to settler-colonial domination. He held the Henry Roe Cloud Dissertation Fellowship at Yale University. His research areas include Indigenous stories, decolonization, settler colonialism, and Indigenous futurity and imagination. He is Kinłichíi’nii, born for Tséníjikiní, Mą’ii Deeshgiizhinii are his maternal grandfathers, and Tábąąhá are his paternal grandfathers.Elise Boxer (Dakota), associate professor of history and Native American studies at the University of South Dakota and director of the Institute of American Indian Studies, focuses her research on Mormon settler colonialism and indigeneity. In her professional and personal work, she is interested in reclaiming Dakota cultural practices and teaches cultural arts to USD students. Her most important work happens as a mother to three young boys.