The Legends & Lands of Native North Americans

This book is a unique collaboration between a Pima Indian writer and scholar (myself) and an Israeli photographer (Elan Penn). Each of us brings a "tribal" perspective to this work that is far beyond the romantic drivle that typically characterizes picture books about Native Americans. As a longtime professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota, I try to introduce the general reader to the beliefs and values that permeate a diverse range of indigenous nations regarding their respective relationships with their homelands. This relation, far from being sentimental, is based on a very primal and very human instinct for needing a home, in which a home means someplace that was given to one's ancestors and was retained by them for their descendants. A homeland, in this context, is that domain where a people's sacred history takes place; it is where they build their homes and raise their families; it is also where they practice their customs and beliefs. Contained within these pages are the stories that recount the history of the land itself, as Turtle Island, the Glittering World, the Fourth World, and so on. In the end, the intrinsic bond between indigenous peoples and the places they call home, not only antedates the United States and Canada, but also these stories testify to Indian peoples' rightful claim to being the true stewards of this continent, a claim which has perdured through the centuries.