Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts

Earthworks Rising is a book that challenges colonial discourses and examines the multiple ways Indigenous mounds continue to hold ancient knowledge and make new meaning. It is organized to align with key functional categories for mounds and key concepts within mound-building cultures, and features the insights of poets, novelists, and artists. It engages Indigenous mounds as forms of "land-writing" and as conduits for connections across worlds and generations, and provokes greater understanding of the accomplishments of North America's diverse mound-building cultures.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 424 pages
Publication date: 05 April 2022
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

A vital reevaluation of Indigenous mounds is presented in Earthworks Rising, highlighting their enduring vitality and bright future by centering Native voices. These structures, often portrayed as unsolved mysteries or remnants of a tragic past, have been marginalized and misunderstood. In Earthworks Rising, Chadwick Allen offers a compelling corrective, revealing a countertradition rooted in Indigenous worldviews. Alongside twentieth- and twenty-first-century Native writers, artists, and intellectuals, Allen challenges colonial discourses and explores the multifaceted ways these remarkable structures continue to hold ancient knowledge and generate new meaning—both in the present and for future generations.

Earthworks Rising is structured 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 on a deep exploration of 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 fruitful conversations 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 fosters a deeper understanding of the remarkable achievements of North America's diverse mound-building cultures over thousands of years and draws attention to new earthworks emerging in the twenty-first century.

Dimension: 203 x 152 x 51 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781517912338