Smoke Signals is a historical milestone in Native American filmmaking. Released in 1998 and based on a short-story collection by Sherman Alexie, it was the first wide-release feature film written, directed, coproduced, and acted by Native Americans. The most popular Native American film of all time, Smoke Signals is also an innovative work of cinematic storytelling that demands sustained critical attention in its own right. Embedded in Smoke Signals’s universal story of familial loss and renewal are uniquely Indigenous perspectives about political sovereignty, Hollywood’s long history of misrepresentation, and the rise of Indigenous cinema across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Joanna Hearne’s work foregrounds the voices of the filmmakers and performers—in interviews with Alexie and director Chris Eyre, among others—to explore the film’s audiovisual and narrative strategies for speaking to multiple audiences. In particular, Hearne examines the filmmakers’ appropriation of mainstream American popular culture forms to tell a Native story. Focusing in turn on the production and reception of the film and issues of performance, authenticity, social justice, and environmental history within the film’s text and context, this in-depth introduction and analysis expands our understanding and deepens our enjoyment of a Native cinema landmark.

In this book the author, an investigative journalist, traces the social history of marijuana from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in an ongoing culture war. He describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a multibillion-dollar industry. In 1996, Californians voted to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. Similar laws have followed in several other states, but not without antagonistic responses from federal, state, and local law enforcement. The author draws attention to underreported scientific breakthroughs that are reshaping the therapeutic landscape: medical researchers have developed promising treatments for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes, chronic pain, and many other conditions that are beyond the reach of conventional cures. This book is an examination of the medical, recreational, scientific, and economic dimensions of the world's most controversial plant.

Set in Arizona, Smoke Signals is the story of two Native American boys on a journey. Victor is the stoic, handsome son of an alcoholic father who has abandoned his family. Thomas is a gregarious, goofy young man who lost both his parents in a fire at a very young age. Through storytelling, Thomas makes every effort to connect with the people around him: Victor, in contrast, uses his quiet countenance to gain strength and confidence. When Victor's estranged father dies, the two men embark on an adventure to Phoenix to collect the ashes. Along the way, Smoke Signals illustrates the ties that bind these two very different young men and embraces the lessons they learn from one another.

This is a chronicle of life, seasons, heartbreak, and healing. Poems to make you feel less alone, loved, understood. The light fades and sometimes seems so far away, but spring will always come. The sun is always just behind the clouds. We hold on together and these words create the rope that can lift us out of the hole that so easily catches us. Grab on. Let it lift you.

From illegally entering a closed area in rural China with a pack full of pot to paddling across a crocodile-infested lake in a leaky Zodiac in the Dominican Republic to crash landing in a hot-air balloon in the most-redneck part of Appalachia, Fayhee juxtaposes highly improbable misadventures with tender tales about losing his beloved dog, about the scars that define people in the High Country and about the friendships forged in the most remote parts of the American West.

The history and current state of tobacco from its Native origins in South America's Andes through its checkered history in North America as a "miracle" drug, powerful narcotic, friend of government revenue departments, and law-enforcement target as contraband and tax diversion are traced.

Animal sacrifice has been critical to the study of ancient Mediterranean religions since the 18th century. Two leading views on sacrifice have dominated the subject: the psychological approach of Walter Burkert and the sociological one by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Marcel Detienne. These two perspectives have argued that the main feature of sacrifice is allaying feelings of guilt at the slaughter of sacrificial animals. Naiden redresses the omission of these salient features to show that animal sacrifice is an attempt to make contact with a divine being, and that it is so important for the worshippers that it becomes subject to regulations of unequaled extent and complexity.