Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1162/tneq.r.1021

Publication Title

The New England Quarterly

Volume

98

Issue

4

Pages

646-649

Abstract

[Introduction] Phillip H. Round's new book follows in a line of intellectual enquiries over the last 20 years, including Hilary Wyss’ Writing Indians (2003), Lisa Brooks’ The Common Pot (2008), my own Red Ink (2012), and Round's previous monograph, Removable Type (2010), that delve into the nature of the written word and how it worked within the context of settler colonialism to transform Indigenous lives on the North American continent. As established by these previous works of scholarship, western literacy was not the miraculous portal into civilization that settler colonial agents often purported it to be. Because Native peoples already had their own highly developed traditions of inscription and history-keeping, they were generally flexible and adaptive in responding to western literacy, finding ways to incorporate it into their own practices when compelled to engage with it. Building on this, Round's study seeks to introduce readers to the surprising “variety and scope of script in languages from Indigenous North America” and to survey the many ways “that Native communities adopted, adapted, and invented writing systems” to meet their various political, social, and cultural needs (36).

Rights

© 2025 by The New England Quarterly.

Included in accordance with publisher policy.

Original Publication Citation

Lopenzina, D. (2025). [Review of the book Inscribing sovereignties: Writing community in native North America, by P. H. Round]. The New England Quarterly, 98(4), 646-649. https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq.r.1021

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