Upon Her Shoulders: Southeastern Native Women Share Their Stories of Justice, Spirit, and Community

Upon Her Shoulders is a collection of stories, poems, and prose by Southeastern Native American women whose narratives attest to the hard work and activism required to keep their communities well and safe. This collection highlights Native female voices in the Southeast, a region and its peoples rarely covered in other publications.

The editors have deep roots in the scholarship and culture of Native women. Featured prominently is the Lumbee community, where two of the editors (members of the Lumbee tribe themselves) teach at the nearby University of North Carolina at Pembroke, a center for scholarship about the Lumbee people. 

This volume honors the Native American tradition of passing on knowledge through stories and oral histories. With contributions by both professional and everyday writers, the collection spotlights these societies that have raised girls from an early age to be independent and competent leaders, to access traditional Native spirituality despite religious oppression, and to fight for justice for themselves and other Native people across the nation in the face of legal and societal oppression.

MARY ANN JACOBS is an Associate Professor and chairs American Indian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. She holds a PhD in Social Welfare with an emphasis in Child Welfare policy from the University of Chicago.

ULRIKE WIETHAUS holds a joint appointment as full professor in the Department for the Study of Religions and in American Ethnic Studies at Wake Forest University. She was elected as the 2013 Community Solutions Fellow with the Institute for Public Engagement at Wake Forest University, received the Donald O. Schoonmaker Faculty Award for Community Service, and served as a Shively Faculty Fellow.

MADISON LEATHERWOOD graduated from Western Carolina University in May of 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in Integrated Health Science and a concentration in healthcare management. She hopes to return to school to obtain her Masters's degree in Business Administration and bring her knowledge back to her community. As an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, she hopes to be a positive influence and role model for upcoming youth and college students. In her free time, she can be found spending time with her husband and four dogs on their family farm in Sevierville, Tennessee.