At the Border of Empires

Andrae M. Marak is a chair of humanities and social sciences and a professor of history and political science at Governors State University. He is the co-editor (with Elaine Carey) of Smugglers, Brothels, and Twine: Historical Perspectives on Contraband and Vice in North America’s Borderlands.Laura Tuennerman is Chair of the Department of History and Political Science, and a professor of history at California University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Helping Others, Helping Ourselves.

This in-depth study of feuding missionaries and conniving Indian agents trying to educate and 'civilize' Native Americans provides a gripping tale of paternalism, racism, and exploitation."" - Bill Broyles, Southwest Books of the Year""The archival research and the chapter on Mexico are especially welcome since few works have examined the Tohono O’odham living on both sides of the border. The book also offers excellent insights into the role that gender played in the United States’ assimilation policy and indigenous responses to it."" - Eric Meeks, author of Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona""A tidy and compact volume that contains keen insights into how the U.S. government’s efforts to assimilate the Tohono O’odham relied on constructions of gender."" - Journal of Arizona History""Scholars of indigenous studies, borderlands history, and transnational history will welcome this text as a small but powerful example of what can be accomplished in a field overflowing with similar research topics to be explored and stories to be told."" - The Catholic Historical Review""Marak and Tuennerman focus on the gendered dimensions of efforts to assimilate the Tohono O’odham, a nation of people that have lived in what we now call the borderlands for over a millennium."" - Jeffrey Shepherd, author of We Are an Indian Nation: A History of the Hualapai People""At the Border of Empires forms an important part of the growing body of scholarship on Native American assimilation during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."" - Journal of American History""Highlighting the themes of imperialism, gender, and Indigenous agency, Marak and Tuennerman deftly illustrate the unintended consequences of gendered assimilation efforts in which U.S. assimilation efforts occurred not in spite of, but rather because of, the peripheral location of the Tohono O’odham."" - Native American and Indigenous Studies