Part of the Borderlands and Transcultural Studies series, Native Diasporas brings together an eclectic set of papers to examine Indigenous identity. In fifteen wide-ranging chapters, such disparate topics as Progressivism and Native American self-expression at the turn of the twentieth century, disease and medical imperialism, and native activism and the Cold War are explored. The topics are organized in a thematic and chronological order and are grouped in three sections: “Adapting Indigenous Identities for the Colonial Diaspora,” “Asserting Native Identities through Politics, Work, and Migration,” and “Twentieth-Century Reflections on Indigenous and Pan-Indian Identities.” “The historical study of the American Indian identity is no small matter,” write the editors, Gregory D. Smithers and Brooke N. Newman, and they thus adopt an expansive approach. Their volume focusses on “the plurality of indigenous identities from the Caribbean, throughout the Americas, and across the vast Pacific world” (3). In line with this holistic starting point, they underline that it is imperative to address the “social, political, economic, and cultural structures that produced both disjunctures and patterns in the way indigenous Americans spoke about themselves in relation to one another and in relation to colonizers” (4).

Native Diasporas seeks to move beyond the exhausted narratives and rigid paradigms that have characterized Indigenous scholarship for so long, thereby contributing to “an interdisciplinary group of scholars” who are devoted to understanding Indigenous identity “in fresh, meaningful, and methodologically innovative ways” (10). It is an important position to take, one justifying further discussion, and the editors duly offer a brief overview of their field. One target is Patrick Wolfe and his “zero-sum game” approach to the relationship between Indigenous populations and colonial settlers. Here, Indigenous history is mainly interpreted as one of victimization and violence. According to Smithers and Newman, however, Wolfe's paradigm is far too restrictive and limits “native” agency, even as it offers a “tidy narrative” that underscores how indigenous groups continuously succumbed “to the onslaught of colonialism” (6). The paradigm lacks nuance and, while part of the new social history of the 1960s–70s, it downplays the wealth of Indian identities. By contrast, Smithers and Newman tout relatively recent research by Amy Turner Bushnell, Eva Marie Garroutte, Daniel Usner, and Richard White, among others, which has engaged with such concepts as hybridity, employed original methodologies, and thus acted as counterbalance to the earlier work. Native Diasporas builds on this historiography and aims to “confront the history and contemporary complexities of indigenous identities” (16) using multiple categories of analysis at the “macro” and “micro” levels.

Native Diasporas, at five hundred pages long, covering four centuries, spanning the Americas, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, is not a tight work of history, rather a sweeping collection steeped in diverse methodologies. In Part I, called “Adapting Indigenous Identities for the Colonial Diaspora,” the contributors explore the fluidity of Indigenous identity amid coalescing colonial societies and nation-states. The section covers topics from the seventeen to the nineteenth centuries, and it underlines the multiple ways Indigenous peoples negotiated with outsiders and their own identities in the wake of “colonial worlds encircling them” (17). Part II, “Asserting Native Identities through Politics, Work, and Migration,” is the major strength of the collection. It charts the complex push and pull of individual and collective indigenous identity formation against the backdrop of the “political rise of the United States” (17). Actively engaging with hybridity and mixed-race identity, these chapters, which draw on unique primary sources, help revivify older historical discussions about Native American relations with an evolving and increasingly powerful American nation-state. Finally, Part III, “Twentieth-Century Reflections on Indigenous and Pan-Indian Identities,” charts the ebb and flow of identity amid changing conceptions of “sovereignty and self-government, education, medicine, cultural self-representation, political activism, and self-reflection” (18). As a group, the chapters help underscore the wealth of Native American identities in the last hundred years and suggest that more stories remain yet untold.