These essays, produced and published over thirty years, are prescient in the prophetic tradition yet current. They reflect consistent engagement in Native issues and deliver a profoundly indigenous analysis of modern existence. Sovereignty, cultural roots and world view, land and treaty rights, globalization, spiritual formulations and fundamental human wisdom coalesce to provide a genuinely indigenous perspective on current events.
Presently a senior scholar at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian,José Barreirois 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 newspaperAkwesasne 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 ofIndian Country Today, Barreiro published dozens of Mohawk’s essays and columns. Barreiro is a member of the Taino Nation of the Antilles.