Description

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In The Margin's 2024 Social Justice Recommendation List

In The Incarceration of Native American Women, Carma Corcoran examines the rising number of Native American women being incarcerated in Indian Country. With years of experience as a case management officer, law professor, consultant to tribal defenders’ offices, and workshop leader in prisons, she believes this upward trajectory of incarceration continues largely unacknowledged and untended. She explores how a combination of F. David Peat’s gentle action theory and the Native traditional ways of knowing and being could heal Native American women who are or have been incarcerated.

Colonization and the historical trauma of Native American incarceration runs through history, spanning multiple generations and including colonial wartime imprisonment, captivity, Indian removal, and boarding schools. The ongoing ills of childhood abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, and drug and alcohol addiction and the rising number of suicides are indicators that Native people need healing. Based on her research and work with Native women in prisons, Corcoran provides a theory of wellness and recovery that creates a pathway for meaningful change. The Incarceration of Native American Women offers students, academics, social workers, counselors, and those in the criminal justice system a new method of approach and application while providing a deeper understanding of the cultural and historical experiences of Native Americans in relation to criminology.

About the Author

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Carma Corcoran (Chippewa Cree) is the director of the Indian Law Program at Lewis and Clark Law School. She is also an adjunct professor of Indigenous Nations studies at Portland State University and an adjunct professor of Native American studies at Salish Kootenai College. Corcoran serves on several boards of directors for organizations dealing with issues that Native American people are facing.

Praise For…

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"The strength of this work is the author's incorporation of a respected theoretical position, arising from the dominant society, in the successful treatment of Indigenous prisoners."—F. E. Knowles, Choice

“This notion of respectful integration of a ‘mainstream’ approach and an Indigenous approach is cutting edge in its possibilities. This book is exceptionally strong and innovative.”—Frank Pommersheim, author of Tribal Justice: Twenty-Five Years as a Tribal Appellate Justice

“This first book about incarcerated Indigenous women in more than two decades insists on the importance of tribal knowledge and practices—and illuminates their importance in the areas of justice and healing. It also brings gentle action theory into dialogue with these issues in a manner that is instructive.”—C. Richard King, author of Redskins: Insult and Brand