Rescues, Rants, and Researches: A Review of Jay Miller's Writings on Northwest Indien Cultures (Journal of Northwest Anthropology)

Jay Miller is an anthropologist in the old-school Americanist tradition, rescuing, researching, sharing, and writing about cultural contexts, archaeology, history, beliefs, kinship, lifeways, and languages of indigenous peoples across North America. For over four decades, Jay has been especially prolific in the Pacific Northwest, where his record of publication includes several books, over 40 articles in professional journals, and numerous other contributions in smaller publications. Many of these publications represent original research, while others present lost research of forefathers and foremothers found in the depths of university archives, attics, basements, and professional files. Augmenting these works is commentary on method, theory, practice, and politics. Collectively his body of work provides a major contribution to Northwest Anthropology.

To make available the vast amount of information and knowledge found in the writings of Jay Miller, a re-view of twenty-five articles has been assembled—a dozen from the pages of the Journal of Northwest Anthropology (and its predecessor Northwest Anthropological Research Notes) along with thirteen new titles. The memoir is divided into seven major parts: Native Worlds, Kinship and Society, Biographies, Food Factors, and Knowledge Quest, Summing Up, and Appendixes, along with references cited and an index.