Volume 5 of To the Last Smoke introduces a region that once lay at the geographic heart of American fire and today promises to reclaim something of that heritage. After all these years, the Great Plains continue to bear witness to how fires can shape contemporary life, and vice versa. In this collection of essays, Stephen J. Pyne explores how this once most regularly and widely burned province of North America, composed of various sub-regions and peoples, has been shaped by the flames contained within it and what fire, both tame and feral, might mean for the future of its landscapes.

Since contact, attempts by institutions such as the British Crown and the Catholic Church to assimilate indigenous peoples have served to mark those people as “Other” than the settler majority. In Unsettling Mobility, Michelle A. Lelièvre examines how mobility has complicated, disrupted, and—at times—served this contradiction at the core of the settler colonial project. Drawing on archaeological, ethnographic, and archival fieldwork conducted with the Pictou Landing First Nation—one of thirteen Mi’kmaw communities in Nova Scotia—Lelièvre argues that, for the British Crown and the Catholic Church, mobility has been required not only for the settlement of the colony but also for the management and conversion of the Mi’kmaq.

The Value of Things examines the social and ritual value of commodities in Mesoamerica, providing a new and dynamic temporal view of the roles of trade of commodities and elite goods from the prehistoric Maya to the present. Well-known scholars examine the value of specific commodities in a broad time frame—from prehistoric, colonial, and historic times to the present.

Not a static entity, the transborder region is peopled by ever-changing groups who face the challenges of social inequality: political enforcement of privilege, economic subordination of indigenous communities, and organized resistance to domination. Editors Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez and Josiah Heyman envision this region as involving diverse and unequal social groups in dynamic motion over thousands of years. Thus the historical interaction of the U.S.-Mexico border, however massively unequal and powerful, is only the most recent manifestation of this longer history and common ecology.

Not a static entity, the transborder region is peopled by ever-changing groups who face the challenges of social inequality: political enforcement of privilege, economic subordination of indigenous communities, and organized resistance to domination. Editors Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez and Josiah Heyman envision this region as involving diverse and unequal social groups in dynamic motion over thousands of years. Thus the historical interaction of the U.S.-Mexico border, however massively unequal and powerful, is only the most recent manifestation of this longer history and common ecology.

A companion to Diné Perspectives: Revitalizing and Reclaiming Navajo Thought, each chapter of Navajo Sovereignty offers the contributors’ individual perspectives. This book discusses Western law’s view of Diné sovereignty, research, activism, creativity, and community, and Navajo sovereignty in traditional education. Above all, Lloyd L. Lee and the contributing scholars and community members call for the rethinking of Navajo sovereignty in a way more rooted in Navajo beliefs, culture, and values.

U.S. Central Americans explores the shared yet distinctive experiences, histories, and cultures of 1.5-and second-generation Central Americans in the United States. While much has been written about U.S. and Central American military, economic, and political relations, this is the first book to articulate the rich and dynamic cultures, stories, and historical memories of Central American communities in the United States. Contributors to this anthology—often writing from their own experiences as members of this community—articulate U.S. Central Americans’ unique identities as they also explore the contradictions found within this multivocal group.

Between 1900 and the late 1950s, Mexican border towns came of age both as centers of commerce and as tourist destinations. Postcards from the Sonora Border reveals how images—in this case the iconic postcard—shape the way we experience and think about place. Making use of his personal collection of historic images, Daniel D. Arreola captures the evolution of Sonoran border towns, creating a sense of visual “time travel” for the reader. Supported by maps and visual imagery, the author shares the geographical and historical story of five unique border towns—Agua Prieta, Naco, Nogales, Sonoyta, and San Luis Río Colorado.

Plant Life of a Desert Archipelago is the first in-depth coverage of the plants on islands in the Gulf of California found in between the coasts of Baja California and Sonora. This collective effort weaves together careful and accurate botanical science with the rich cultural and stunning physical setting of this island realm.