Luana Ross (Salish) has taught at the University of California at Berkeley and is currently Associate Professor
of Native American studies at the University of California, Davis.
Review
"Professor Ross, through painstaking phenomenological analysis, has unmasked some of the ways in which
(race, class, and gender) prejudices, and their internalization by individuals targeted by them, exert enormous
influence on the processes and outcomes of the American criminal justice system. . . . This book will be of tremendous
import to a broad, interdisciplinary audience."
--Franke Wilmer, Associate Professor of Political Science, Montana State University
University of Texas Press Web Site, April, 2000
Summary
Luana Ross writes, "Native Americans disappear into Euro-American institutions of confinement at alarming
rates. People from my reservation appeared to simply vanish and magically return. [As a child] I did not realize
what a 'real' prison was and did not give it any thought. I imagined this as normal; that all families had relatives
who went away and then returned."
In this pathfinding study, Ross draws upon the life histories of imprisoned Native American women to demonstrate
how race/ethnicity, gender, and class contribute to the criminalizing of various behaviors and subsequent incarceration
rates. Drawing on the Native women's own words, she reveals the violence in their lives prior to incarceration,
their respective responses to it, and how those responses affect their eventual criminalization and imprisonment.
Comparisons with the experiences of white women in the same prison underline the significant role of race in determining
women's experiences within the criminal justice system.
