ASAIL and NALS Awards
All awards are voted on by a committee made up of members of ASAIL and frequent attendees of NALS. Each committee includes at least one ASAIL Board Member.
The Beatrice Medicine Award for Scholarship in American Indian Studies
(Sponsored by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies)
These two awards will be given yearly, one for an outstanding essay and one for an outstanding monograph. The awards are open to anyone who has published in Indigenous studies for the previous calendar year.
Previous winners and members of the NALS and ASAIL board are not eligible for the award.
The Electa Quinney Award for Published Stories
(Sponsored by the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
This award seeks to highlight the work of story creators who continue the tradition of teaching through narratives often crossing the boundaries of genres, formats and disciplines. To celebrate the dissemination of stories into spaces where they can be shared all published stories qualify including small press and fine arts printing.
This award is open to anyone with published work from the previous calendar year
Previous winners and members of the NALS and ASAIL board are not eligible for the award.
The Carter Revard Legacy Award for Best Edited Collection
(Sponsored by ASAIL)
Following in and honoring the spirit of Carter Revard’s work, which called people together for the good of and to support our field, this award seeks to highlight edited collections that bring together various scholarly voices to collectively impact the field of Indigenous Literatures.
This award is open to any edited collection published in the previous calendar year. The award will be coordinated through the editor(s) of the winning collection each year.
Previous winners and members of the NALS and ASAIL board are not eligible for the award.
Nominations for the 2024 Beatrice Medicine, Electa Quinney, and Carter Revard Awards are now open! Please use the form below to submit your nominee. The deadline for nominations is February 28, 2024. Please note, all publications must have a publication date of 2023.
Previous Award Winners
The Beatrice Medicine Awards
2022
Lisa Tatonetti, Written By The Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinities (University of Minnesota Press, 2021).
Laura Furlan, “The Archives of Deborah Miranda’s Bad Indians.” (SAIL 33.1-2, 2021).
2021
Justin Gage, We Do Not Want the Gates Closed Between Us: Native Networks and the Spread of the Ghost Dance (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020).
Laura M. De Vos, “Spiralic Time and Cultural Continuity for Indigenous Sovereignty: Idle No More and The Marrow Thieves.” (Transomotion 6.2, 2020).
2020
Laura Harjo for her book Spiral to the Stars: Mvskoke Tools of Futurity (University of Arizona Press, 2019).
Jeremiah Garsha for his essay “Red Paint: Transnational Movements of Deconstructing, Decolonizing, and Defacing Colonial Structures.” (Transmotion 5.1, 2019).
2019
Jenny Davis for her book Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance (University of Arizona Press, 2018).
Shaawano Chad Uran for his essay “Policing Resource Extraction and Human Rights in The Land of the Dead.” (Transmotion 4.1, 2018).
2018
Elizabeth Hoover for her book The River Is In Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)
Marcia G. Anderson for her essay “A Bag Worth a Pony: The Art of the Ojibwe Bandolier Bag” in the art book of the same name (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2017).
2017
Brandi Nalani McDougall for her book Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature (University of Arizona Press, 2016).
Jan Johnston for her essay” “‘We Were All at Wounded Knee’: The Engaged Resistance of Folk and Rock in the Red Power Era” from the collection Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop edited by Jeff Bergland, Jan Johnson, and Kimberli Lee (University of Arizona Press, 2016).
2016
Stephanie Fitzgerald for her book Native Women and Land: Narratives of Dispossession and Resurgence (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015).
Susan Bernardin for her essay “Acorn Soup Is Good Food: L. Frank, News from Native California, and the Intersections of Literary and Visual Arts” (Studies in American Indian Literatures 27.3, 2015).
2015
Molly McGlennen for her book Creative Alliances: The Transnational Designs of Indigenous Women’s Poetry (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014)
2013
Phillip Carroll Morgan for “The Maze of Colonialism: The Byrds of Virginia and Indian Territory,” Journal of Chikasaw History and Culture, Vol. XIII, Number One (Spring 2012)
2012
Dean Rader for Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to the NMAI
2011
Scott Richard Lyons for X-Marks: Native Signatures of Assent
2010
Jill Doerfler for “An Anishinaabe Tribalography: Investigating and Interweaving Conceptions of Identity during the 1910s on the White Earth Reservation”
2009
Susan A. Miller for “Native America Writes Back: The Origin of the Indigenous Paradigm in Historiography.”
2008
Jodi Byrd for “Living My Native Life Deadly”: Red Lake, Ward Churchill, and the Discourses of Competing Genocides.”
The Electa Quinney Award:
2022
Theodore C. Van Alst, Sacred City (University of New Mexico Press, 2021).
2021
David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Winter Counts (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2020).
2020
Beth Piatote for her book The Beadworkers (Counterpoint Press, 2019).
2019
Terese Marie Mailhot for her book Heart Berries (Counterpoint Press, 2018).
2018
Linda LeGarde Grover for her essay collection Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year (University of Minnesota Press, 2017).
2017
Delphine Red Shirt for her book George Sword’s Warrior Narratives: Compositional Processes in Lakota Oral Tradition (University of Nebraska Press, 2017)
2016
Mini Aodla Freeman for the edited collection of stories Life Among the Qallunaat, edited by Keavy Martin, Julie Rak, and Norma Dunning.
The Carter Revard Legacy Award for Best Edited Collection
2022
Nancy J. Peterson and Connie Jacobs, Louise Erdrich’s Justice Trilogy: Cultural and Critical Contexts (Michigan State University Press, 2021).