ABSTRACT
Recent deconstructionist, postmodernist, and post colonialist turns in historical studies, with their emphasis on highly relativistic and culturally constructed readings of American Indian history, appear to have cast aside some of the more generalizing and comparative interpretations of history grounded in material conditions and forces. By positioning my perspective and historical materialism more generally in the face of its opposition, author hope to be able to critically assess the limits and weaknesses of both. Theoretical approaches that trace their intellectual roots to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels generally fall under the rubric of historical materialism whose dialectical methodology differentiates it from the more a historic and empiricist materialisms that have long dominated thinking in the American social sciences. Scholars who study labor in American Indian history have much to gain from understanding the cultural constructs that express and give agency to a people's economic activity, but there are dangers.
