Book Review: Theorizing Native Studies

Theorizing Native Studies is a mind expanding volume that serves to build a conceptual bridge between Indigenous Theory and Western Theory. The editors seek to demonstrate the variety of ways that scholars within Native studies operationalize multiple forms of theory to get analysis done (p19). Within this is the thread of relationality that the scholarly works encapsulate that positions their intellectual endeavours not only for representation within the academy, but also to their political commitment to Native communities outside of the academy. The works included by the ten Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholarly essays, provide an assemblage of insights on the ‘how’ to turn towards theory and its value in Native studies and its importance to multiple other fields within academia. This critical volume appearing at a time, as stated by the editors, that there has been a turn against theory within the field of Native studies.