A Pathfinder in the Village: Buffy Sainte-Marie on Building a Career in New York’s Folk Music Revival
By Christine Kelly
Even as the Village proved a less inclusive environment than its outward appearance suggested, Buffy Sainte-Marie effectively harnessed the resources available to her as an up-and-coming artist in the heart of the national folk scene in order to craft a stage persona that resisted gender and race-based stereotypes, garner and maintain creative and commercial success, and use her popularity to raise awareness of dire needs among Indigenous communities across North America in an era of racial reckoning and social change. By making the most of her time in New York – an experience marked by the artist’s fascination with the rock and rhythm and blues shows of 1950s Brooklyn as much as the Village performances of the 1960s folk era – cultivating allies among fellow artists, and supporting Indigenous causes, Buffy Sainte-Marie charted a rare path forward as an influential artist and activist whose story paints a complex portrait of New York’s folk revival and the creative influences, cultural locations, and power brokers that shaped it.
Read MoreBefore Central Park
Reviewed by Kara Murphy Schlichting
Before Central Park is Sara Cedar Miller’s fourth publication about New York City’s famous greensward. Miller is historian emerita and, since 1984, a photographer for the Central Park Conservancy. Before Central Park is distinctive in its combination of Miller’s photography, her expert understanding of the park’s geography and archeology, and her meticulous real estate history of parkland from the 17th through the 19th centuries.
Read MoreDutch-American Stories: Mass Murder on Manhattan
By Mark Meuwese
Settler colonialism is not a story of friendly relations throughout. The confrontation with an unfamiliar other creates wariness and suspicion and often leads to violent outbursts in which noncombatants become innocent victims. Manhattan in the seventeenth century was no exception, as the events of 1643 show.
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New Amsterdam: What’s in A Name?
By Jaap Jacobs
The small colonial town that the Dutch founded in North America was called New Amsterdam. We now know it as New York City. The story of how the name evolved has many twists and turns and is, in fact, a tale of war and peace.
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Contiguous Cloth: Textiles and the Slave Trade in New Netherland
By Carrie Anderson
Sometime in the fall of 1661 the Nieuw Nederlantse Indiaen docked in the harbor of New Amsterdam carrying documents and cargo from Curaçao, the Dutch colony that served as a central hub of the slave trade for both Dutch and Spanish colonies in the Americas. The skipper of the ship, Dirck Jansz van Oldenburg, carried with him a list of documents that were to be delivered to Pieter Stuyvesant (1612-1672), the director-general of New Netherland between 1647 and 1664.
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