Islands in the Plains is required reading for anyone who wishes to learn the fascinating story behind the rugged exterior of the Black Hills.

Scattered throughout the Great Plains are many isolated areas of varying size and ecology, quite distinct from the surrounding grasslands. Such spaces can be uplands like the Black Hills, low hills like the Nebraska Sand Hills, or linear areas such as shallow river valleys and deeply incised canyons. While the notion of "islands" is not a new one among ecologists, its application in Plains archaeology is. The contributors to this volume seek to illustrate the different ways that the spatial, structural, and temporal nature of islands conditioned the behavior and adaptation of past Plains peoples. This as a first step toward a more detailed analysis of habitat variation and its effects on Plains cultural dynamics and evolution. Although the emphasis is on ecology, several chapters also address social and ideological islands in the form of sacred sites and special hunting grounds.

A long time ago, before the Plains region of the United States was divided up into states such as Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming, this land was home to American Indians. Twenty-eight unique Indian nations built homes and gathered food in the Plains. They spoke distinct languages, set up political systems, and made art. They used the natural resources available in their region in order to thrive. • The Wichita lived in houses made of grass. From the outside, they looked like giant haystacks. • Omaha and Ponca people wore caps made from eagleskin. • Lakota men carved flutes to play songs for the girls they hoped to marry. Many American Indians still live in the Plains region. Explore the history of these various nations and find out how their culture is still alive today.

A beautiful picture book about the simple joys of spending summer vacation on an island in the Salish Sea with Gran.

The Roman Empire sends a barbarian warrior to faraway Britain in this historical novel of love and survival in the ancient world. A Sarmatian warrior-prince, Ariantes is uprooted from his home and thrust into the honorless lands of the Romans. The victims of a wartime pact with the emperor Marcus Aurelius, Ariantes and his troop are sent to watch over Hadrian’s Wall. Unsurprisingly, the Sarmatians hate Britain—an Island of Ghosts, filled with pale faces, stone walls, and an uneasy past. Struggling to command his own people to defend a land they despise, Ariantes is accepted by all, but trusted by none. The Romans fear his barbarian background, and his own men fear his gradual Roman assimilation. When Ariantes uncovers a conspiracy sure to damage both his Roman benefactors and his beloved countrymen, as well as put him and the woman he loves in grave danger, he must make a difficult decision—one that will change his own life forever.

What is “identity” when you’re a girl adopted as an infant by a Cuban American family of Jehovah’s Witnesses? The answer isn’t easy. You won’t find it in books. And you certainly won’t find it in the neighborhood. This is just the beginning of Joy Castro’s unmoored life of searching and striving that she’s turned to account with literary alchemy in Island of Bones. In personal essays that plumb the depths of not-belonging, Castro takes the all-too-raw materials of her adolescence and young adulthood and views them through the prism of time. The result is an exquisitely rendered, richly detailed perspective on a uniquely troubled young life that reflects on the larger questions each of us faces in a world where diversity and singularity are forever at odds. In the experiences of her past—hunger and abuse, flight as a fourteen-year-old runaway, single motherhood, the revelations of her “true” ethnic identity, the suicide of her father—Castro finds the “jagged, smashed place of edges and fragments” that she pieces together to create an island all her own. Hers is a complicated but very real depiction of what it is to “jump class,” to not belong but to find one’s voice in the interstices of identity.

Aamjiwnaang is the name the Saulteux Band of Ahnishenahbek (Chippewa) gave their hunting territory that encompassed both sides of the St. Clair River and the adjacent lands in the southern part of Lake Huron. The book focuses on four generations of Chippewa chiefs beginning with Young Gull who led a group of Saulteux people south from Lake Superior in the first decade of the eighteenth century. Young Gull's son Little Thunder, grandson Red Sky, and great-grandson On The Plain subsequently played important roles interacting with the French, the British, the Americans and other First Nations allies. Events cascade from one historical episode to another... from the establishment of Fort Pontchartrain (Detroit) through the French and Indian War, Pontiac's Rebellion, the American Revolution, the Indian War of 1790-95 and the War of 1812. The book describes such famous characters as Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, Generals Montcalm and Wolfe, Pontiac, George Washington, Daniel Boone, Mad Anthony Wayne, Sir Isaac Brock and Tecumseh. Participation in such famous battles as Fort William Henry, Fort Necessity, Blue Licks, Fallen Timbers, Frenchtown, Detroit and Moraviantown are vividly described and the consequences on the Chippewa are well researched. The book culminates with the coming of the missionaries, the signing of land surrender treaties and the ensuing paternalistic "reserve era". "The Plains of Aamjiwnaang is an excellent historical account... informative with clearly organized chapters... the research is superb." Douglas Gordon Learning Coordinator (Retired) Thames Valley District Board of Education London, Ontario, Canada.