Jodi A. Byrd's The Transit of Empire comes at just the right moment for scholars who are seriously engaged with indigenous critical theory. As indigenous studies conversations about ethical methodologies that support the aims of sovereignty mature and develop, there is increasing awareness that while postcolonial studies have largely overlooked the specificities of indigenous studies, returning the favor (in other words, ignoring postcolonial or “high theory”) will not do. More ardent and thorough study of the interstices between the two is required. Byrd's book exemplifies the productive dialogue possible when scholars of indigenous and postcolonial studies examine the ways that particular geographies, intimacies, and anxieties persist in colonized or formerly colonized communities, especially in their interactions with one another. Byrd's emphasis on transit is significant to her identification of “cacophony” within these interactions. In the preface she reflects on conversations with her late father that inspired this book. Byrd asserts that her father's struggle, emblematic of the struggles of Chickasaw people under U.S. empire, was about “home, place and belonging” (p. xi). She goes on to explain that Chickasaws maintain relationships between community and place through balance, or haksuba, between upper and lower worlds. Compromising indigenous peoples' relationships to land and disrupting their senses of place continue to be the primary means by which the U.S. government undermines indigenous presence. And as Byrd reveals in the succeeding chapters of her text, writers, theorists, politicians, and activists—even some who are themselves members of colonized communities—echo this disruption.