Chieftains Into Ancestors: Imperial Expansion and Indigenous Society in Southwest China, edited by David Faure and Ho Ts'ui-P'ing. Vancouver: UBS Press, 2013. xiv + 254 pp. US$95.00 (hardcover), US$34.95 (paperback).This collection of chapters by nine authors offers an alternative interpretation of indigenous societies in southwest China, from perspective of historical anthropology. To articulate the indigenous historical voice (p. 4), authors eschew traditional central-local dichotomy (Sinicization) approach to incorporation of southwest and its peoples into Chinese imperial administrative system. Rejecting records gathered and preserved by centre (p. xii) as too biased, they prefer local documentation conserved in stelae, private manuscripts, legends and rituals. Some historians have viewed legends and rituals with suspicion, deeming them empirically unsound as historical sources, but it is exactly here that authors demonstrate methodological innovation. By understanding legends and rituals as points of contact between indigenous peoples and imperial state, they are able to harness them as sources to unravel indigenous perspectives on history of their conquest by Chinese imperial state. This is basic stance laid out by one of editors, David Faure, in his Introduction.Indigenous peoples in southwest sorely lack histories that tell their version of history. For a long time, attempts by Herold Wiens, Edward Schafer and others were largely treated as studies of exotic visited on an uninterested community of China scholars. It was not until 1990s that historical and anthropological studies began to appear in quantity. This book adds to growing literature. Unraveling history from legend and ritual, as well as tracing creation of genealogies, reveals changes experienced by seemingly static societies. Though not discussed directly here, approach of authors and editors contributes to answering fundamental question of whether a comprehensive history of all indigenous societies is really viable. Given vast differences in political, social and religious organization among indigenous peoples, there are no grounds for assuming that they ever shared a common history, but approach provides a benchmark for attempting to construct a comprehensive history of indigenous societies by taking common experience of imperial conquest, subjugation and imposition of Chinese ritual and genealogy as a starting point for evaluating historical change.The methodology is an adaptation of techniques applied to history of Han society and religion in south China, and it works equally well for nonHan. By and large, authors argue that imperial conquest of southwest turned indigenous rituals and legends into means for realigning relationships with ancestors by promoting patrilinearity, and led to adoption of ancestral worship, genealogy compilation and lineage halls. Use of Han script reinforced changeover, but oral tradition still persisted in transmitting earlier rituals. Several authors (for example, Xie Xiaohui, pp. 125-30) reveal evidence of a latent female tradition, and Ho Ts'ui-P'ing discusses gender in detail.Some indigenous ethnic groups such as Miao are well known for their unity in facing outside enemies. Huang Shu-li (Chapter 1) is only author to examine ideology that supports such solidarity. She argues that qhuab kev funeral ceremony, which describes journey of deceased Hmong back to land of ancestors, does not represent historical route of an ancient Hmong diaspora, as some claim, but serves to maintain Hmong identity and to augment their autonomy as an ethnic group, because it enforces notion of correct compliance with Hmong way as a moral code for individual and collective behavior.Two authors examine role of gendered agency after conquest. …