Bones evolves from an earlier volume of Native writing, Genocide of the Mind which documented the attempts at forced assimilation of indigenous peoples into the broader American culture. This new collection explores how those same groups have nonetheless managed to maintain individual identities. [This book] focuses on the key role that writers and visual artists have played in the struggle of native peoples to retain their separate identities. In personal essays, memoir, and historical reflections, these writers explore the ways in which they arrived at their work, and how they have retained their tribal identities in that work. Taken as a whole, [this book] is a testimony to the resilience of indigenous cultures, and the integral contributions artists make to that survival.-Back cover.