Indigenous Inhumanities: California Indian Studies after the Apocalypse

Mark Minch—de Leon explores the anticolonial dimensions of California Indian intellectual and cultural resurgence in the aftermath of apocalypse in this compelling reexamination of Indigenous art, literature, and theory. Centering on a reinterpretation of the Ghost Dance, a ceremony first practiced in the nineteenth century, as a collective demonstration of prophecy and resilience, Indigenous Inhumanities envisions an expanded poetics of resistance through a reconfigured relationship to death and the dead. By dismantling the colonial frameworks of inclusion, recognition, and representation that reinforce settler—state power, Minch—de Leon shows how storytelling can be reclaimed as both research and as a tool for decolonization.

Taking up critical issues that the state has used to discipline California Indian relations to ancestors, such as the politics of human remains repatriation and the discourse around California Indian genocide, Minch—de Leon centers Indigenous knowledge and social systems while challenging legal and political definitions of violence, power, and the human. Rich case studies showcase the evocative art of Frank Day, the poetry of Tommy Pico, and the writings of Deborah Miranda, highlighting how these creators advance Indigenous theory and disrupt settler categories.

By refusing reconciliation and embracing Indigenous frameworks of radical relationality and the “inhuman” (what lies outside of human control), Minch—de Leon presents a bold vision of Indigenous antihumanist survival and resurgence. Indigenous Inhumanities illuminates the path toward decolonial futures by following the radical turn the ancestors made toward the powers of the dead to bring an end to the colonial world.

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