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Unsettling Thoreau
Native Americans, Settler Colonialism, and the Power of Place
Published by: University of Massachusetts Press
256 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.79 in, 10 illus. 1 table
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Henry David Thoreau’s life-long fascination with Native Americans is widely known and a recurring topic of interest, and it is also a source of modern debate. This is a figure who both had a deep interest in Native American history and culture and was seen by many of his contemporaries, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, as “more like an Indian” than his white neighbors. At the same time, Thoreau did little to protest the systematic dispossession of Indigenous people across the country in his lifetime. John J. Kucich charges into this contradiction, considering how Thoreau could demonstrate deep respect for Native American beliefs on one hand and remain largely silent about their genocide, actively happening throughout his life, on the other. Thoreau’s long study of Native peoples, as reflected in so much of his writing, allowed him to glimpse an Indigenous worldview, but it never fully freed him from the blind spots of settler colonialism.
Drawing on Indigenous studies and critiques of settler colonialism, as well as new materialist approaches that illustrate Thoreau’s radical reimagining of the relationship between humans and the natural world, Unsettling Thoreau explores the stakes of Thoreau’s effort to live mindfully and ethically in place when living alongside, or replacing marginalized peoples. By examining the whole scope of his writings, including the unpublished Indian Notebooks, and placing them alongside Native writers and communities in and beyond New England, this book gauges Thoreau’s effort to use Indigenous knowledge to reimagine a settler colonial world, without removing him from its trappings.
John J. Kucich is professor of English at Bridgewater State University. He is editor of Rediscovering the Maine Woods: Thoreau’s Legacy in an Unsettled Land and author of Ghostly Communion: Cross-Cultural Spiritualism in Nineteenth Century American Literature. He has also contributed essays to a number of collections, including Thoreau Beyond Borders: New International Essays on America’s Most Famous Nature Writer and Thoreau in Context, and has been published in the Thoreau Society Bulletin and The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies.
"The first comprehensive study of Thoreau and Native America for almost half a century, Unsettling Thoreau is well worth waiting for and could not be more timely. Encompassing the entirety of Thoreau’s life and writing, meticulously researched and written with incisiveness, nuance, and verve, this book is certain to become the court of first resort for decades to come for its in-depth examination of the ways in which Native Americans and Native American culture influenced Thoreau’s thought and art and for its even-handed treatment of the vexed question of the extent to which he did—and did—not manage to rise above the prejudices of his day."—Lawrence Buell, Harvard University, author of Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently
“Kucich carefully builds an argument attentive to both the evolution of Thoreau’s understanding of Native American topics and the limits of his willingness to engage with living, breathing Indigenous North Americans and advocate for their cultural and political sovereignty. Many have written on what Kucich refers to as Thoreau’s “Indian Problem” but none (in my opinion) have done so with such breadth and with clear decolonizing aims.”—Laura Mielke, author of Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States
“I learned a great deal from this book, which will become a touchstone for future considerations of Thoreau’s relationship to Indigenous people.”—Joshua David Bellin, author of Medicine Bundle: Indian Sacred Performance and American Literature, 1824-1932
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