The essays in this groundbreaking anthology, Keeping the Campfires Going, highlight the accomplishments of and challenges confronting Native women activists in American and Canadian cities. Since World War II, Indigenous women from many communities have stepped forward through organizations, in their families, or by themselves to take action on behalf of the growing number of Native people living in urban areas. This collection recounts and assesses the struggles, successes, and legacies of several of these women in cities across North America, from San Francisco to Toronto, Vancouver to Chicago, and Seattle to Milwaukee. These wide-ranging and insightful essays illuminate Native communities in cities as well as the women activists working to build them.

Susan Applegate Krouse (1955–2010) was an associate professor of anthropology and the director of the American Indian studies program at Michigan State University. She is the author of North American Indians in the Great War (Nebraska 2007).

 

Heather A. Howard holds a research faculty appointment with the Centre for Aboriginal Initiatives at the University of Toronto and is an adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at Michigan State University. She is the coeditor of The Meeting Place: Aboriginal Life in Toronto and Feminist Fields: Ethnographic Insights.

 

Contributors: Grant Arndt, Dara Culhane, Heather A. Howard, Nancy Janovicek, Susan Applegate Krouse, Molly Lee, Susan Lobo, Joan Weibel-Orlando, Anne Terry Straus, Debra Valentino, and Mary C. Wright.

"In addition to being a highly valuable stepping-stone for further developments in scholarship on native women’s urban activism, Keeping the Campfires Going also constitutes an important addition to the literature on indigenous issues in general." — Aurélie A. Roy, Ethnohistory