PUBLICATIONS AND RESEARCH

BOOKS

The Earth Memory Compass: Diné Landscapes and Education in the Twentieth Century, University Press of Kansas (October 2018). Nominated for Best First Book Published in 2018 by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association.

Download the order form here: Earth Memory Compass

Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School, co-authored with Mike Taylor and James Swensen, University of Arizona Press (November 2021). Finalist for Best Book in Utah History 2021, Utah Division of State History. Recipient of the 2022 Donald L. Fixico Prize from the Western History Association.

Returning Home book info form

King, Taylor, and Swensen discussed their collaborative work for Returning Home during the book talk series of Diné Studies on November 30, 2021. The recording of the book talk is available on the Facebook page of Diné Studies.

“Thoroughly researched and beautifully written, Returning Home situates Native voices at the center of the narrative by relying heavily on oral interviews and archival materials, including several drawings, photographs, poems, and short stories. Working alongside Intermountain alumni and Navajo Nation tribal officials, the authors highlight the ways Diné students used their culture to survive in a school that the U.S. government had originally created to destroy.”

-2022 Fixico Award Committee

The Fixico Award recognizes innovative works in the field of American Indian and Canadian First Nations History that center on Indigenous epistemologies and perspectives. In 2022, Farina King received this prize from the Western History Association with co-authors Michael P. Taylor and James R. Swensen for their book, Returning Home.

ARTICLES & CHAPTERS

“Walk in Beauty Every Step,” in Every Needful Thing: Essays on the Life of the Mind and the Heart, edited by Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye and Kate Holbrook, Provo: Brigham Young University, 2022.

“Diné Doctor: A Latter-day Saint Story of Healing,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 54, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 81-85.

“Roundtable: Latter-day Saint Indigenous Perspectives on Columbus,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 54, no. 2 (Summer 2021):101-121. Recipient of the Mae Timbimboo Parry Award for Best Indigenous Studies from the Mormon History Association.

award

“Voices of Indigenous Dallas-Fort Worth from Relocation to the Dakota Access Pipeline Controversy,” Family & Community History Vol. 24, Issue 2 (Summer 2021): 147-174.

“A ‘Loyal Countrywoman’: Rachel Caroline Eaton, Alumna of the Cherokee National Female Seminary,” in This Land Is Her Land: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma, 1870s-2010s (University of Oklahoma Press, July 2021). Finalist in Nonfiction for the 2022 Oklahoma Book Awards.

her-land

This is Herland book info form

“Ina Mae Ance and a Crownpoint Indian Boarding School Family,” Journal of the West 59, no. 3 (Summer 2020): 3-10.

Ina Mae Ance honored for teaching 50 years at the Crownpoint Boarding School, Photo courtesy of Dorothy Webb (Ance’s daughter)

Ina Mae Ance teaching at Crownpoint Indian Board School, photo courtesy of Dorothy Webb (Ance’s daughter)

“An Indian Boarding School Family,” Phi Kappa Phi Forum 99, no. 4 (Winter 2019): 8-11.

“Aloha in Diné Bikéyah: Mormon Hawaiians and Navajos, 1949 to 1990,” in Essays on American Indian and Mormon History edited by P. Jane Hafen and Brenden W. Rensink (University of Utah Press, 2019). Order now. Best Anthology Award 2019 from the John Whitmer Historical Association.

The essays in this book collectively illustrate how indigenous voices have been excluded from the writing of Mormon history, and how incorporating indigenous perspectives and worldviews into that narrative can offer an important corrective to historical narratives that have privileged white Mormon voices, as well as enriching interpretation of Mormon scriptures for the devout.

-Review of Essays on American Indian and Mormon History by D. Dmitri Hurlbut in Nova Religio (2020) 24 (1): 99

“Indigenizing Mormonisms,” Mormon Studies Review 6 (2019): 1-16.

“Intergenerational Ties: Diné Memories of the Crownpoint Boarding School during the 1960s,” New Mexico Historical Review 93, no. 4 (Fall 2018): 399-420.

Intergenerational Ties

“Miss Indian BYU: Contestations over the Crown and Indian Identity,” Journal of the West 52, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 10-21.

Guest editor, “Miss Indian Pageants in the West,” Journal of the West 52, no. 3 (Summer 2013).

This article, “Miss Indian BYU: Contestation Over the Crown and Indian Identity,” examines the history and experiences of the Miss Indian BYU Pageant, which was cancelled in 2007 (but recently re-started). After being crowned as Miss Indian BYU and interviewing numerous former Miss Indian BYUs, Farina King offers key insights of the meaning and experience of Miss Indian pageants in the twentieth century.

King situates the Miss Indian BYU Pageant in the Pan-Indian trend of Miss Indian pageants and titles, while also emphasizing the distinct role that Miss Indian BYU played as a representative of Latter-day Saint American Indians. She primarily uses her experience and oral histories of former Miss Indian BYU Pageant contestants and participants to illustrate how Miss Indian pageants set certain definitions and qualifications of Indianness.

The article traces the origins of the pageant in the 1960s, its first indefinite cancellation in the 1990s, and then its cancellation in 2007 when leaders of the Tribe of Many Feathers, the Native American student organization at Brigham Young University, claimed that the pageant did not have enough “qualified” candidates. The history of the pageant and experiences of its participants parallel official directions of the LDS Church towards American Indians but also certain national movements of American Indian youth and claims to Indianness since the mid-twentieth century.

Farina King writes about her experiences in the Miss Indian BYU Pageant of 2006 as portrayed partly in this video.

Poetry:

“Homeland,” in Blossom as the Cliffrose: Mormon Legacies and the Beckoning Wild, edited by Karin Anderson and Danielle Beazer Dubrasky, Salt Lake City: Torrey House Press, 2021.

Children’s Literature:

“A Navajo Code Talker,” Honest History: A Native Story, Issue 15, February 2022.

Books in Progress:

“Gáamalii dóó Diné: Navajo Latter-day Saint Experiences in the Twentieth Century,” book manuscript under contract (forthcoming October 2023 through the Lyda Conley Series of Trailblazing Indigenous Futures of the University Press of Kansas). Pre-order at https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700635528/dine-doo-gaamalii/.