Red Nation Rising From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation

 Red Nation Rising is the first book ever to investigate and explain the violent dynamics of bordertowns. Bordertowns are white-dominated towns and cities that operate according to the same political and spatial logics as all other American towns and cities. The difference is that these settlements get their name from their location at the borders of current-day reservation boundaries, which separates the territory of sovereign Native nations from lands claimed by the United States. Bordertowns came into existence when the first US military forts and trading posts were strategically placed along expanding imperial frontiers to extinguish indigenous resistance and incorporate captured indigenous territories into the burgeoning nation-state. To this day, the US settler state continues to wage violence on Native life and land in these spaces out of desperation to eliminate the threat of Native presence and complete its vision of national consolidation “from sea to shining sea.” This explains why some of the most important Native-led rebellions in US history originated in bordertowns and why they are zones of ongoing confrontation between Native nations and their colonial occupier, the

Brandon Benallie is a long-time activist and member of The Red Nation. Radmilla Cody is a Grammy Nominee and multiple Native American Music Awards winner. David Correia is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Diné) is a professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Nick Estes (Kul Wicasa) is assistant professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Melanie K. Yazzie (Diné) is an assistant professor of Native American Studies and American Studies at the University of New Mexico.