Legal Codes and Talking Trees

Katrina Jagodinsky is assistant professor of history at the University of Nebraska and a former fellow of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at SMU. She lives in Lincoln, NE.

Winner of the 2017 Armitage-Jameson Book Prize given by the Coalition for Western Women's History.“Legal Codes and Talking Trees is original and without comparison. I have yet to see a similar study that delves so deeply and widely in recovering the experiences of Native women in the U.S. legal system and broader society." —Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, University of California, Santa Barbara“Using very original research, Jagodinsky’s book offers us a paradox. How could legal systems in the North American West empower and enrich White men, ensnare and enslave Native women, but also enable some women to cut the ties that bound them?” —Anne Hyde, University of Oklahoma “Jagodinsky's engrossing stories of indigenous women who sought justice in colonial forums vividly illustrate how such legal contests served to define racial identities, women's status, Indians' options, and social boundaries in the American West.” —Alexandra Harmon, author of Indians in the Making  “Katrina Jagodinsky has done what I’ve long thought impossible: crafted a comparative history that is as much about people’s lives as it is about social forces and legal structures. Legal Codes and Talking Trees establishes a new method for casting our eyes across borders and nations.”—James F. Brooks, author of Mesa of Sorrows: A History of the Awat'ovi Massacre"This is a beautifully written and remarkable book, ably researched and profoundly important.  Through six carefully chosen case studies, Legal Codes and Talking Trees inspires a new understanding of the meaning and nature of colonization and resistance." Lindsay G. Robertson, author of Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands