Alaska Native Resilience

"A timely addition to the scholarly literature on the Pacific War [that] offers new, ethical, and intersectional ways of working with war memory, remembrance, archival absence, and Indigenous testimony."

"A timely addition to the scholarly literature on the Pacific War [that] offers new, ethical, and intersectional ways of working with war memory, remembrance, archival absence, and Indigenous testimony."

"Our American history needs continual revisiting and reevaluation, and Holly Miowak Guise has made an important contribution. She's shown that Alaska Natives, far from being passive participants in a war brought to them, actively protected their lands and cultures—leading to strengthened tribal connections and greater equality."

"[P]rovides readers with a crucial reframing of Indigenous-US relations and World War II in Alaska. . . . Alaska Native Resilience not only reframes 'the Good War' but challenges historians to recognize oral history methods and Indigenous Studies methodologies as imperative to their craft."

" Alaska Native Resilience is a groundbreaking, well-researched, ethically sound work of intersectional history. . . . The author's extensive collection and use of oral history in collaboration with Indigenous elders models the discipline's best practices for working with communities everywhere."

" Alaska Native Resilience has much to offer educators, especially those not familiar with this history. By crossing boundaries—between fields, between nations, and between Indigenous Nations—it offers new ways to conceptualize the single lesson or two most of us are able to devote to World War II. It broadens our idea of 'the homefront,' where the United States begins and ends, reminds us that the Japanese Empire was not the only empire operating in the Pacific theater of the war, and, perhaps most importantly, introduces the idea of 'resilience' into our curricula."

Holly Miowak Guise (Iñupiaq) is assistant professor of history at the University of New Mexico.