| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Clearing a Path: Theorizing the Past in Native American Studies. Ed. by Nancy Shoemaker. (New York: Routledge, 2002. ix, 215 pp. Cloth, $80.00, ISBN 0-415-92674-2. Paper, $21.95, ISBN 0-415-92675-0.)

In her introduction to Clearing a Path, Nancy Shoemaker, the editor, raises the question of theory and theorizing in Native American history and asks us to engage this little book—a collection of eight essays paired under four headings—in order to invigorate the discussion about theory, think about the value of using theoretical models in interpreting Native American history, and learn new ways to proceed. This collection is distinctive, she writes, because it evaluates "the role of theory in American Indian historical studies while keeping one eye on the fruitful possibilities and the other eye on the limitations" (p. xi).

The first category, "Stories," features essays by Julie Cruikshank and LeAnne Howe. Cruikshank, an anthropologist, and Howe, a creative writer, share the view that stories are much more than evidence of the past. Cruikshank says that they should also be understood as "guidelines for understanding change" (p. 13). She learned that while she struggled to understand why the Native women she was interviewing took over the sessions, shifted the direction of the conversations, and instead of simply answering questions introduced their own narrative explanations of events. Howe argues that stories reflect a Native "propensity for bringing things together, for making consensus, and for symbiotically connecting one thing to another." This results in "tribalography," which Howe believes is not just the only way fully to understand the tribal past; "tribalography is the story that links Indians and non-Indians" (p. 46).

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