The Apache Diaspora: Four Centuries of Displacement and Survival by Paul Conrad (review)

Reviewed by: The Apache Diaspora: Four Centuries of Displacement and Survival by Paul Conrad Kathryn Magee Labelle Conrad, Paul – The Apache Diaspora: Four Centuries of Displacement and Survival. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. 366 p. Diaspora is a more familiar concept these days than in the past. Histories of displaced peoples—tracing traumatic episodes of upheaval, as well as highlighting significant agency—have adopted "diaspora" as a means to explore communities united by homelands, migrations and kinship. It is within this context that Paul Conrad's Apache Diaspora was published. Published in 2021, it builds on other North American examples, such as the Shawnee, the Cherokee, and the Wyandot, to reveal comparative circumstances among the Apache people. Colonization is another common feature often critical to investigations of this nature. Indeed, Conrad states explicitly that one of his main goals is to use the Apache history to [End Page 177] tell the "fantastic and terrible" story of colonization of Indigenous Peoples in North America" more broadly (p. 10). The book is divided into two parts, with an Epilogue to bring this history into the present. Part 1, "Becoming Apache in Colonial North America," includes three chapters that focus on connecting pre-colonial Apache history to the early experiences of Spanish, Comanche, and French empire-building. A major focus is on the experience of enslavement and how that played out within the Apache diaspora. Part 2, "Apaches, Nations, and Empires," delves deeper into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, exploring the relationship between Apache groups and nation-state imperial agendas. Here, reservations, boarding schools, and control, are a major focus, while still emphasizing the continued and perhaps surprising ways that Apaches continued to create opportunities for mobility and connection. The Epilogue brings the reader into the twentieth century, reinforcing that the Apache people have resisted, and continue to resist, colonialism. Indeed, the book concludes: "The ends and means of colonialism have shifted to some extent over time, but colonization and diaspora have not ended. They are ongoing, yet so too is Native resistance" (p. 290). Often, by focusing on collective community and identities, diaspora studies run the risk of creating a faceless narrative with little attention to the individual. This is not the case here. In Chapter 2, "Mining District" for instance, Conrad masterfully brings to life the household of the slaveholder Nicolás Balderrama (pp. 50–60), with specific emphasis on the experiences of his Apache slave of the same name (Nicolás). Although the sources directly related to Nicolás are sparse, Conrad is able to situate this boy within hypothetical situations based on references to other Apache experiences within the same time frame and context. It is by this approach that the reader comes to learn about continuity and change for young Apache slaves. It is here, for example, that the author compares Apache spiritual practices to Spanish baptisms, signalling that Nicolás would have made connections between the Indigenous practices of his life before he was enslaved and Catholic rituals that he came to know after enslavement. Similarly, the author calls attention to the enslaved woman Juana (pp. 58–59) to describe Apache women's roles and experiences in childbirth and parenting. He includes reference to Indigenous customs using Juana as a hypothetical case study. He describes, for instance, that within Juana's Indigenous community, "she would have given birth around other women, including skilled midwives who had proven success at bringing healthy babies into the world, and together they would have prayed and sung over the newborn" (p. 59). Further analysis includes the stark contrast between female safety within Indigenous communities and in colonial ones. Conrad, for example, highlights the precariousness of motherhood when fathers were often slaveowners who refused to acknowledge their "illegitimate" offspring. Apache leadership is another aspect explored in the book through a biographical approach, focusing on the life of José Antonio Montes (pp. 176–177). Here, Conrad contextualizes and compares customary Apache practices to the colonial realities. For instance, he outlines the differences in leadership structure, pointing out that Apache leadership is less hierarchal and that they had no "captains." Montes [End Page 178] presents an opportunity, therefore, to explore the evolution...

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