Winner of a NWSA/University of Illinois Press First Book Prize

Nishant Upadhyay unravels Indian diasporic complicity in its ongoing colonialist relationship with Indigenous peoples, lands, and nations in Canada. Upadhyay examines the interwoven and simultaneous areas of dominant Indian caste complicity in processes of settler colonialism, antiblackness, capitalism, brahminical supremacy, Hindu nationalism, and heteropatriarchy. Resource extraction in British Columbia in the 1970s–90s and in present-day Alberta offer examples of spaces that illuminate the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and simultaneously reveal racialized, gendered, and casted labor formations. Upadhyay juxtaposes these extraction sites with examples of anticolonial activism and solidarities from Tkaronto. Analyzing silence on settler colonialism and brahminical caste supremacy, Upadhyay upends the idea of dominant caste Indian diasporas as racially victimized and shows that claiming victimhood denies a very real complicity in enforcing other power structures. Exploring stories of quotidian proximity and intimacy between Indigenous and South Asian communities, Upadhyay offers meditations on anticolonial and anti-casteist ways of knowledge production, ethical relationalities, and solidarities.

Groundbreaking and ambitious, Indians on Indian Lands presents the case for holding Indian diasporas accountable for acts of violence within a colonial settler nation.

A direct descendant of a tenth-century Viking marauder traces his lineage from medieval Iceland to the Dakota plains

Gary Goodman first heard that his 24x great-grandfather was a tenth-century Viking pirate and mercenary at a family reunion, when a cousin told him that they were the direct descendants of an Icelandic poet and cold-blooded killer named Egil Skallagrímsson. Also known as “Egil the Bastard,” Goodman’s ancestor was the subject of Egil’s Saga, one of the great Icelandic epics of the early Middle Ages. Spurred by this revelation of his family’s lineage, Goodman set out to discover the route his forefathers had traveled from medieval Iceland to the North Dakota plains in the later 1800s.

Drawing on Egil’s Saga, family records, and travels through Iceland, England, and Ireland, Goodman traces his ancestral line from Iceland—the family’s homeland for over a thousand years until a volcanic eruption forced them to migrate—to the hardscrabble plains of the Dakota Territory. His panoramic view ranges from the Viking invasion of England in the early Middle Ages to the disappearance of a short-lived Icelandic settlement on the Mouse River in North Dakota in the late 1800s. Along the way, Goodman sketches the highlights of Egil’s Saga, making the centuries-old epic accessible to today’s readers.

With candor, dry wit, and some bemusement, Goodman shares his trip through history from the perspective of a descendant of an original Viking marauder. An innovative, time-bending family history, Longships and Sod Houses is a noteworthy saga in its own right.

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