Thinking in Indian

A definitive collection from a leading architect of the Native traditional movement.

Edited by Jos Barreiro, Thinking in Indian: A John Mohawk Reader offers an expansive analysis of indigenous existence in the 20th and 21st centuries. John Mohawk's intellectual rigor and gift for oratory helped shape a substantial current of Native activism, providing a genuinely indigenous lens on global events.

Covering five key areas—Earth Spirit, Indigenous Economics, Nation and Governance, Native Rights, and Political Philosophy—these essays dissect themes of sovereignty, globalization, and treaty rights. Mohawk's work serves as a critical critique of the "consumptive dominant culture," offering instead a path toward self-sufficiency and contemporary traditionalism. This reader is an indispensable resource for students of American Indian Studies, political science, and philosophy.

Presently a senior scholar at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Jos Barreiro is a novelist, essayist, and an activist of nearly four decades on American Indigenous hemispheric themes. In 1974, Barreiro was enlisted by John Mohawk to help produce the national Native newspaper Akwesasne Notes, published by the traditional Mohawk Nation. For ten years, they served as joint coordinators on numerous Indigenous human rights and community building campaigns. As editor of Cornell University's Akwe:kon Press from 1984 to 2002, and later as senior editor of Indian Country Today, Barreiro published dozens of Mohawk's essays and columns. Barreiro is a member of the Taino Nation of the Antilles.