Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands

James F. Brooks, Director of the School of American Research Press, is author of Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (2002), which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Francis Parkman Prize. Using a regional approach, Professor Brooks explores the complex stories of captivity and slavery that followed the spread of capitalism and colonialism in North America. In this lecture, he discusses how his research led him to discover systems of slavery among Native Americans and their Spanish and Mexican neighbors.