Around the globe, people who have lived in a place "from time immemorial" have found themselves confronted by and ultimately incorporated within larger state systems. During more than three decades of anthropological study of groups ranging from the Apache to the indigenous peoples of Kenya, Richard J. Perry has sought to understand this incorporation process and, more importantly, to identify the factors that drive it. This broadly synthetic and highly readable book chronicles his findings.

Perry delves into the relations between state systems and indigenous peoples in Canada, the...

"Indian reservations" were the United States' ultimate solution to the "problem" of what to do with native peoples who already occupied the western lands that Anglo settlers wanted. In this broadly inclusive study, Richard J. Perry considers the historical development of the reservation system and its contemporary relationship to the American state, with comparisons to similar phenomena in Canada, Australia, and South Africa.

The San Carlos Apache Reservation of Arizona provides the lens through which Perry views reservation issues. One of the oldest and largest reservations, its...

Mention "Apaches," and many Anglo-Americans picture the "marauding savages" of western movies or impoverished reservations beset by a host of social problems. But, like most stereotypes, these images distort the complex history and rich cultural heritage of the Apachean peoples, who include the Navajo, as well as the Western, Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan, and Kiowa Apaches. In this pioneering study, Richard Perry synthesizes the findings of anthropology, ethnology, linguistics, archaeology, and ethnohistory to reconstruct the Apachean past and offer a fuller understanding of the...

We like to think that science always illuminates. But the disturbing persistence of the concept of biological determinism--the false idea that human behavior is genetically fixed or inherently programmed and therefore is not susceptible to rapid change--shows that scientific research and concepts can be distorted to advance an inhumane and sometimes deadly political agenda. It was biological determinism that formed the basis of the theory of eugenics, which in turn led to the forced sterilization of -misfits- and the creation of Nazi death camps.

In Killer Apes, Naked Apes, and...