Earthworks Rising

Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts

2022

•

Author:

Chadwick Allen

WATCH: CHADWICK ALLEN TALKS 'EARTHWORKS RISING' IN A LECTURE HOSTED BY THE SIMPSON CENTER

Winner of the Thomas J. Lyon Award for Western American Literary and Cultural Studies from the Western Literature Association

A necessary reexamination of Indigenous mounds, demonstrating their sustained vitality and vibrant futurity by centering Native voices

Alongside twentieth- and twenty-first-century Native writers, artists, and intellectuals, Chadwick Allen examines the multiple ways Indigenous mounds continue to hold ancient knowledge and make new meaning—in the present and for the future. Clear and compelling, Earthworks Rising provokes greater understanding of the remarkable accomplishments of North America’s diverse mound-building cultures over thousands of years and brings attention to new earthworks rising in the twenty-first century.

"This eye-opening book calls attention to earthworks as monumental achievements in science and aesthetics, bringing together geometrical and mathematical knowledge, precise observations of natural phenomena, and feats of engineering. Bearing witness to thousands of years of Indigenous habitation, they continue to flourish in contemporary performances across multiple genres and media. A must-read for all students of American culture."—Wai Chee Dimock, author of Weak Planet: Literature and Assisted Survival

Tags

Cultural Criticism, Art and Performance, Literature, Literary Criticism, Native American and Indigenous Studies

Typically represented as unsolved mysteries or ruins of a tragic past, Indigenous mounds have long been marginalized and misunderstood. In Earthworks Rising, Chadwick Allen issues a compelling corrective, revealing a countertradition based in Indigenous worldviews. Alongside twentieth- and twenty-first-century Native writers, artists, and intellectuals, Allen rebuts colonial discourses and examines the multiple ways these remarkable structures continue to hold ancient knowledge and make new meaning—in the present and for the future.

Earthworks Rising is organized to align with key functional categories for mounds (effigies, platforms, and burials) and with key concepts within mound-building cultures. From the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio to the mound metropolis Cahokia in Illinois to the generative Mother Mound in Mississippi, Allen takes readers deep into some of the most renowned earthworks. He draws on the insights of poets Allison Hedge Coke and Margaret Noodin, novelists LeAnne Howe and Phillip Carroll Morgan, and artists Monique Mojica and Alyssa Hinton, weaving in a personal history of earthwork encounters and productive conversation with fellow researchers.

Spanning literature, art, performance, and built environments, Earthworks Rising engages Indigenous mounds as forms of “land-writing” and as conduits for connections across worlds and generations. Clear and compelling, it provokes greater understanding of the remarkable accomplishments of North America’s diverse mound-building cultures over thousands of years and brings attention to new earthworks rising in the twenty-first century.

Awards

Western Literature Association: Thomas J. Lyon Award for Western American Literary and Cultural Studies — Winner

Chadwick Allen is professor of English and adjunct professor of American Indian studies at the University of Washington. He is author of Blood Narrative: Indigenous Identity in American Indian and Maori Literary and Activist Texts and Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies (Minnesota, 2012).

This eye-opening book calls attention to earthworks as monumental achievements in science and aesthetics, bringing together geometrical and mathematical knowledge, precise observations of natural phenomena, and feats of engineering. Bearing witness to thousands of years of Indigenous habitation, they continue to flourish in contemporary performances across multiple genres and media. A must-read for all students of American culture.

—

Wai Chee Dimock, author of Weak Planet: Literature and Assisted Survival

While addressing the long line of academic and popular texts that ‘capture Indigenous earthworks within the white imaginary,’ Chadwick Allen moves far beyond them to center Indigenous writers, artists, and a process of collaborative experiential and embodied engagement to show how earthworks are dynamic participants in creating Indigenous futures.

—

Lisa Brooks, author of Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War

With engaging prose and calculated analysis, Allen’s Earthworks Rising entices readers away from the static diorama and the black-and-white textbook page and toward earthworks themselves.

—

H-Net Reviews

The book is incredibly in-depth and traverses disciplines such as literary studies and archaeology with a critical eye that counters the white supremacist notion of Native earth art forms as bygone or archaic.

—

Hyperallergic

As we have come to expect from Allen's books, the close readings are exquisite, with an attention to detail whose labor always scales. His readings give sight of disciplinary perspectives that complicate facile conceptions of poetry, literature, indigeneity, colonialism, historiography, and research itself.

—

Genre

Allen’s book challenges us to think anew about the ways ancient ruins and landscapes can continue to embody multiple worlds—material, social, and spiritual.

—

Tribal College Journal

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Indigenous Earthworks within (and without) the White Imaginary

Part I. Effigies // Crossing Worlds // Above and Below

1. Serpent Sublime, Serpent Subliminal

2. River Revere

Coda 1: Earth Bodies in Motion

Part II. Platforms // Networking Systems // Cardinal Directions

3. Walking the Mounds

Coda 2: Walking the Mounds at Aztalan