Labriola Center book award shines 'bright light' on Indigenous scholars
The Labriola Center inside Hayden Library on the Tempe campus features hundreds of volumes of literature. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU News
Kaitlin Reed couldn’t believe it when she learned she had been named the 2024 recipient of the Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award.
The award, handed out by the Labriola National American Indian Data Center inside Arizona State University’s Hayden Library, is a national competition that recognizes scholarship in American Indian and Indigenous studies.
Reed’s book, “Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California,” examines the environmental impact of illicit cannabis cultivation in California.
“When I was a grad student, I heard somebody say that you don’t write books for awards,” said Reed, an assistant professor of Native American studies at Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, California. “But it doesn’t hurt, right?
“I was very honored and grateful. I can’t even stay on top of all the amazing texts that are consistently coming out of academic presses. So for mine to be recognized is incredibly flattering.”
Reed’s reaction speaks to the influence and impact of the Labriola award, which was inaugurated in 2008 as a partnership between the Labriola Center and Donald Fixico, a Regents Professor in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies.
Fixico, an enrolled member of the Sac and Fox Nation, and a descendant of the Shawnee, Muscogee and Seminole people, and Joyce Martin, former head librarian of the Labriola Center, recognized that academic work by Indigenous authors wasn’t being recognized.
“This was a gap and something that needed to have a bright light shown onto it,” said Martin, now associate librarian and head of the social sciences division for the ASU Library. “It was a way to highlight and promote scholarship that was happening by Indigenous authors around Indigenous communities.”
Vina Begay, assistant librarian and archivist with the Labriola Center, said the award also is important because it supports ASU’s American Indian Studies program.
“The Labriola Book Award is a unique award in recognizing Indigenous authors' masterful academic or community work in addressing the challenges and issues many Indigenous communities endure,” Begay said. “All books are evaluated by a group of revered Indigenous faculty and allies in examining the author's transformative Indigenous approaches within their respective field of study. It can also go beyond scholarly work by evaluating the Indigenous author’s community work for cultural sustainability and revitalization of the communities’ lifeways.”
Another goal of the award, Begay said, is to encourage Indigenous academics to write about their work and share that knowledge with their community.
“It’s about learning from each other,” she said.
What makes the Labriola award unique, Reed said, is that it flips a narrative.
“For most of academic history in the U.S., Indigenous peoples are the objects of research, rather than subjects capable of carrying out their own research,” said Reed, who is enrolled in the Yurok Tribe of northern California and also identifies as Hoopa and Oneida. “Indigenous people are studied by outsiders of the community. So I think it is particularly powerful, within the grand scheme of things, to have Indigenous peoples writing about their own communities.”
Jerome Clark, who chaired the three-person book award committee that included Michelle Hale, teaching professor in ASU's American Indian Studies program, and Alex Young, associate teaching professor and honors faculty fellow at Barrett, The Honors College, said Reed’s work stood out because it examines several different important fields of study.
“One being settler colonialism, the other environmental history and also just California history,” Clark said. “I believe she does a really fantastic job of bringing those different areas of study to ask an important question about Indigenous people’s lives in California.
“Specifically, how the industry of cannabis sits on this long arc of possession and removal for California Indians. She does a really good job of telling that story, why it matters and how it fits within other large movements in history.”
Event details
Labriola Center National Book Award Lecture with Kaitlin Reed
noon–1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 29
Labriola Center, Hayden Library, Tempe campus
Reed will be at ASU on Oct. 28 and 29. She will meet the Labriola staff, engage with students in the American Indian Studies program and then, at noon on Oct. 29, will have a conversation about her book in the Labriola Center.
“We want students to be able to have those moments where they get to interact with our Indigenous intellectuals so maybe they have a moment of recognizing their own intellectual potential,” Clark said. “Also, maybe realize they themselves are writers and can write about their people’s experiences and histories from their perspective.”
Clark said that in future years, the Labriola Center would like to expand the interaction between the ASU community and the book award winner.
Ideally, he said, students would have the opportunity to meet the author; the Labriola Center would purchase copies of the book and hand them out to interested students; and other units at ASU could invite the winner to give a lecture to their faculty and staff.
“We have an opportunity with this committee and through Labriola to highlight works that matter to us here,” he said. “We think we are speaking to the material, day-to-day lives of Indigenous peoples, whether they live in urban areas or reservation settings.
“It’s important to highlight these Indigenous scholars because I think it brings attention to the important work they’re doing, but more importantly, it speaks to a wider audience and how we as Native people see ourselves in the broader social and political spaces.”
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