Indian Historian Press
In 1964, Rupert and Jeannette Costo, a Cahuilla man and
Cherokee woman, helped found the American
Indian Historical Society with individuals from the Tolowa,
Quechan, Maidu, Hupa, Ohlone, Karuk, Navajo, and Paiute tribes.
Early in the history of this Society, the Costos started
a for-profit book and journal publishing concern, the Indian
Historian Press. It published and reprinted dozens of titles.
Together the Costos wrote Natives of the Golden State:
The California Indians (1995) and co-edited Indian
Voices: The Native American Today (1974) and The
Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide (1987), an important exposé of
the brutality of that regime. Indeed, this last work derailed – or
at least delayed – the canonization of Father Junípero
Serra, the missions' founder. The Costos also wrote Indian
Treaties: Two Centuries of Dishonor (1977) and compiled A
Thousand Years of American Indian Storytelling (1981). In
addition, Rupert Costo co-edited Textbooks and the American
Indian (1970) while Jeannette Costo edited The American
Indian Reader (1972).
In addition to those books authored or edited by the Costos,
the Indian Historian Press reprinted Denton Bedford's Tsali (1972), Joseph Senungetuk's Give
or Take a Century: an Eskimo Chronicle (1971), Adolph L. Dial and David K. Eliades's The
Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee Indians (1975),
Donald M. Bahr's Pima and Papago Ritual Oratory: A Study
of Three Texts (1975), James LaPointe's Legends
of the Lakota (1976), Joe S. Sando's The
Pueblo Indians (1976), Donald
A. Grinde Jr.'s The Iroquois and the Founding of the
American Nation (1977), and Jack Norton's Genocide
in Northwestern California (1979).
This emphasis on education and literacy not only fit the
Costos' immediate social world – one that stood outside
the reservation system as urban in focus and of an educated
peer group – but served the objectives of influencing
public opinion and affecting federal policy.
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