"Long overdue, this powerful collection allows Native American women to speak in their own voices---in a wide range of writing styles and covering a broad array of themes."---Kathy A. Perkins, University of Illinois"Footpaths and Bridges" celebrates the vitality and diversity of Native American women, collecting plays by leading contemporary playwrights in forms ranging from realism to dramatic poetry, from a children's story to a musical, and from full-length plays to one-acts. The collection represents the best of a burgeoning theatrical movement, with work ranging from "ETHNOSTRESS"---a humorous take on art and identity politics---to the biographical musical "Te Ata" to a retelling of the Thanksgiving story from the Wampanoag perspective. The work of these award-winning playwrights is accompanied by critical commentary that illuminates Native American women's theater practices and perspectives, highlighting the issues of heritage, identity, and changing lifestyles that the plays imaginatively tackle.Featuring work from a wide array of tribes and geographic regions, the collection affords the artist, scholar, and general reader access to previously unheard voices that communicate the complexity and the diversity of the Native American experience. The far-ranging genres and content of the plays suggest the many possibilities for communicating the past and the present, the personal and the political, and the stunning kaleidoscope of Native American life and art.Shirley A. Huston-Findley is Associate Professor of Theatre at the College of Wooster.Rebecca Howard is Instructor of Women's Studies at Miami University.Photo: Set from production of JudyLee Oliva's "Te Ata" at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, 2006. Set design by Robert Cothran; photo by Michael Bendure.Plays in the collection includeULLI"ETHNOSTRESS: Women's Voices in Native American Theatre" by Monique Mojica LI"Asivak's Creation Story" by Jules Arita Koostachin with Jennifer Fell Hayes LI"Bring the Children Home" by Marcie Rendon LI"The Girl Who Swam Forever" by Marie Clements LI"Harvest Ceremony: Beyond the Thanksgiving Myth" by Martha Kreipe de Montano with Jennifer Fell Hayes LI"Letters" by Denise Mosley LI"Ola Na Iwi (The Bones Live)" by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl LI"Strength of Indian Women" by Vera Manuel LI"Te Ata" by JudyLee Oliva LI"Winnetou's Snake Oil Show from Wigwam City" by Spiderwoman Theater/LI/UL