New and Old Voices of Wah'kon-tah


Book Description

A collection of poems from Native American authors. Wah'Kon-Tah is the "Great Mystery", the sum total of all things, the conception of an impersonal, spiritual and life-giving power.




Our Faithfulness to the Past


Book Description

Essays by the late feminist philosopher Sue Campbell explore the entanglement of epistemic and ethical values in our attempts to be faithful to our pasts. Her relational conception of memory is used to confront the challenges of sharing memory and reconstituting selves even in contexts fractured by moral and political differences, especially those rooted in oppression and past injustices.




Native American Perspectives on Literature and History


Book Description

"James Ruppert explores the bicultural nature of Indian writers and discusses strategies they employ in addressing several audiences at once: their tribe, other Indians, and other Americans. Helen Jaskoski analyzes the genre of autoethnography, or Indian historical writing, in an Ottawa writer's account of a smallpox epidemic. Kimberly Blaeser, a Chippewa, writes about how Indian writers reappropriate their history and stories of their land and people. Robert Allen Warrior, an Osage, examines the ideas of the leading Indian philosopher in America, Vine Deloria, Jr., who calls for a return to traditional tribal religions. Robert Berner exposes the incomplete myths and false legends pervading Indian views of American history. Alan Velie discusses the issue of historical objectivity in two Indian historical novels, James Welch's Fools Crow and Gerald Vizenor's The Heirs of Columbus. Kurt M. Peters relates how Laguna Indians retained their culture and identity while living in the boxcars of the Santa Fe Railroad Indian Village at Richmond, California. Juana Maria Rodriguez examines power relations in Gerald Vizenor's narrative of a Dakota Indian accused of murder in 1967, "Thomas White Hawk." Finally, Gerald Vizenor, a Chippewa, discusses Indian conceptions of identity in contemporary America, including simulations he calls "postindian identity."".




Portraits of 'the Whiteman'


Book Description

'The Whiteman' is one of the most powerful and pervasive symbols in contemporary American Indian cultures. Portraits of 'the Whiteman': linguistic play and cultural symbols among the Western Apache investigates a complex form of joking in which Apaches stage carefully crafted imitations of Anglo-Americans and, by means of these characterizations, give audible voice and visible substance to their conceptions of this most pressing of social 'problems'. Keith Basso's essay, based on linguistic and ethnographic materials collected in Cibecue, a Western Apache community, provides interpretations of selected joking encounters to demonstrate how Apaches go about making sense of the behaviour of Anglo-Americans. This study draws on theory in symbolic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and the dramaturgical model of human communication developed by Erving Goffman. Although the assumptions and premises that shape these areas of inquiry are held by some to be quite disparate, this analysis shows them to be fully compatible and mutually complementary.




Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada


Book Description

Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada collects 26 seminal critical essays indispensable to our understanding of the rapidly growing field of Indigenous literatures. The texts gathered in this collection, selected after extensive consultation with experts in the field, trace the development of Indigenous literatures while highlighting major trends and themes, including appropriation, stereotyping, language, land, spirituality, orality, colonialism, residential schools, reconciliation, gender, resistance, and ethical scholarship.




The Extraordinary Book of Native American Lists


Book Description

While Native Americans are perhaps the most studied people in our society, they too often remain the least understood and visible. Fictions and stereotypes predominate, obscuring substantive and fascinating facts about Native societies. The Extraordinary Book of Native American Lists works to remedy this problem by compiling fun, unique, and significant facts about Native groups into one volume, complete with references to additional online and print resources. In this volume, readers can learn about Native figures from a diverse range of cultures and professions, including award-winning athletes, authors, filmmakers, musicians, and environmentalists. Readers are introduced to Native U.S. senators, Medal of Freedom winners, Medal of Honor recipients, Major League baseball players, and U.S. Olympians, as well as a U.S. vice president, a NASA astronaut, a National Book Award recipient, and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Other categories found in this book are: History Stereotypes and Myths Tribal Government Federal-Tribal Relations State-Tribal Relations Native Lands and Environmental Issues Health Religion Economic Development Military Service and War Education Native Languages Science and Technology Food Visual Arts Literary and Performing Arts Film Music and Dance Print, Radio, and Television Sports and Games Exhibitions, Pageants, and Shows Alaska Natives Native Hawaiians Urban Indians Including further fascinating facts, this wonderful resource will be a great addition not only to tribal libraries but to public and academic libraries, individuals, and scholars as well.




Wah'kon-tah


Book Description

In Wah’Kon-Tah, John Joseph Mathews relied heavily on the papers of Osage agent Major Labian J. Miles to recreate the world of the Osage during the last quarter of the Nineteenth century and first quarter of the twentieth century. Using his own experiences, Mathews stressed the spirituality, dignity, and humor of the Osages as they acculturated to the non-Indian world and adapted some of its aspects for their own use.




Speak to Me Words


Book Description

Although American Indian poetry is widely read and discussed, few resources have been available that focus on it critically. This book is the first collection of essays on the genre, bringing poetry out from under the shadow of fiction in the study of Native American literature. Highlighting various aspects of poetry written by American Indians since the 1960s, it is a wide-ranging collection that balances the insights of Natives and non-Natives, men and women, old and new voices.




Remembering the Osage Kid 


Book Description

A sweeping novel of the Native American experience as seen by a powerful and controversial member of the Osage nation. C.R. Jones was one of the wealthiest men in Oklahoma. A full-blooded Osage Indian, he'd parlayed the black gold of oil into a position of unassailable power. But behind the success lay a long and tumultuous past: the scrawny kid with a gun who'd ridden with outlaws and avenged his father's brutal murder; the passionate teen who'd pledged his undying love to the one woman he could never have; the driven tycoon who'd made enemies as fast as he made money. Everett Jakomin was the son of one of those enemies. A small-town storekeeper, he hated and feared C.R., until he unexpectedly found himself the keeper of C.R.'s legacy. And as Everett soon discovered, only by learning C.R.'s remarkable story would he ever know the truth about himself. Filled with the color and spirit of Oklahoma history—from the life and lore of the Osage nation to the hardscrabble frontier days of marauding outlaws to the prosperity of the 1950s—here is the stirring tale of two very different men linked by a fierce pride and a tragic secret.




The Queerness of Native American Literature


Book Description

With a new and more inclusive perspective for the growing field of queer Native studies, Lisa Tatonetti provides a genealogy of queer Native writing after Stonewall. Looking across a broad range of literature, Tatonetti offers the first overview and guide to queer Native literature from its rise in the 1970s to the present day. In The Queerness of Native American Literature, Tatonetti recovers ties between two simultaneous renaissances of the late twentieth century: queer literature and Native American literature. She foregrounds how Indigeneity intervenes within and against dominant interpretations of queer genders and sexualities, recovering unfamiliar texts from the 1970s while presenting fresh, cogent readings of well-known works. In juxtaposing the work of Native authors—including the longtime writer–activist Paula Gunn Allen, the first contemporary queer Native writer Maurice Kenny, the poet Janice Gould, the novelist Louise Erdrich, and the filmmakers Sherman Alexie, Thomas Bezucha, and Jorge Manuel Manzano—with the work of queer studies scholars, Tatonetti proposes resourceful interventions in foundational concepts in queer studies while also charting new directions for queer Native studies. Throughout, she argues that queerness has been central to Native American literature for decades, showing how queer Native literature and Two-Spirit critiques challenge understandings of both Indigeneity and sexuality.