The American Indian Quarterly

I am excited (and nervous!) to assume editorship of American Indian Quarterly from my friend and mentor, Amanda Cobb-Greetham. The journal has flourished under Amanda’s leadership, and I am so grateful to her and to the University of Nebraska Press for this opportunity.

Accompanying our transition in editorship are changes on our editorial board and staff. Gerald Vizenor, Robert Warrior, Theda Perdue, Robert A. Williams, and Duane Champagne are leaving the board, and I thank them for their years of generous service. Bill Anthes, Michelle Raheja, David Kamper, N. Bruce Duthu, Cornel Pewewardy, and Amanda Cobb-Greetham have agreed to serve along with Philip Deloria, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Eva Garroutte, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Clara Sue Kidwell, and Jace Weaver. The journal is now staffed entirely at Oklahoma State University, and I am proud of what our new managing editor, Jessica Fokken, and book review editor, Trever Holland, have already accomplished through this first issue.

As I develop my editorial role, I intend to foster the spirit of collaboration that Amanda emphasized in her own vision for American Indian Quarterly. Over the 2013–14 academic year, I had the opportunity to serve as the faculty fellow for community engagement in the College of Arts and Sciences at osu. Through this position, I was challenged further to consider unconventional ways to develop partnerships with institutions and individuals to transform traditional academic work within a context of reciprocity. Scholars of American Indian studies are well aware of the importance of community to our practices, and our journal reflects this importance not only through our process of diverse peer review but also through the scholarship we feature. Still, I want to explore ways that we may deepen our commitment to community while [End Page vii] maintaining the journal’s excellent reputation for scholarly rigor. Of course, those options are not mutually exclusive!

As a first step in further emphasizing community, our covers will provide more exposure to Indigenous artists who explore themes similar to the scholarship that appears inside. Volume 39 features Bobby C. Martin. His piece for this first issue, Homecoming Royalty, demonstrates layers of time and identity that will connect with our authors and our readers. In the “Artist’s Statement” that appears herein, Martin states that the reward of creation is “the building up of something by hand—of seeing the work gradually turn into more than an accumulation of layers of paint or wax.” I imagine we all share the goal of making our work turn into more than late nights, stacks of books, endless citations, and reader reports. I hope that this first issue provides our authors, reviewers, and readers such an opportunity to experience “something more” as a result of their hard work, and I am eager to hear more ideas about ways to continue the transformational work of aiq.

Volume 39, no. 1 begins with Cheryl Wells’s “‘Why[,] These Children Are Not Really Indians’: Race, Time, and Indian Authenticity,” which explores the correlation between authenticity and temporality in perceptions of American Indian modernity. Through the examples of Black Elk, Luther Standing Bear, and Isaac Parker, Wells argues that Indian temporal consciousness evolved to include clock and mechanical time and that “Native American temporality did not collapse” as a result.

David Martínez examines the relationship between the art of George Morrison and the writings of Gerald Vizenor in his “This Is (Not) Indian Painting: George Morrison, Minnesota, and His Return to a Land He Never Really Left.” Through his analysis of Morrison’s career, Martínez reminds us of the constraints of the professional category “Indian” while also emphasizing the value that Morrison placed on his heritage and community, in much the same way as Vizenor has done in his “postindian” writings. Martínez concludes, “The significance of Morrison’s work is that, aside from its beauty and profundity, it teaches that the critique of ‘Indian art’ is not simply a curatorial debate but an existential problem endemic to being Indigenous in modern American society.”

In “‘The Whirlwind Is Coming to Destroy My People!’: Symbolic Representations of Epidemics in Arikara Oral Tradition,” Mark van de Logt provides an ethnohistory of Arikara religious symbols and connects them to historical events. In his description of the Arikira whirlwind, as well as [End Page viii] snake and bear images, van de Logt posits that Arikara creation accounts mirror history, including the smallpox epidemic of 1780–81.

Our issue concludes with Bryan Gallagher and Mark Selman’s “Warrior Entrepreneur,” which argues for the importance of entrepreneurship in Indigenous political and economic development. Based on their experience in executive mba and leadership institutes, as well as their business projects with First Nations communities, Gallagher and Selman provide examples of ways that entrepreneurs demonstrate Indigenous values in the business world as anticolonial actors, rebuilders, and agents of self-determination. Gallagher and Selman point out that such business practices are part of a long history of entrepreneurship in Indigenous communities.

Thank you again to the many readers, reviewers, editors, and producers who together complete the demanding work of American Indian Quarterly. I am honored to be a part of this community. [End Page ix]