Contemporary Native American Literature and the World: Issues, Debates and Representation in Selected Literary Texts

Abstract

Some of the core issues of American Indians and the world they live in, are portrayed in contemporary fictional, non-fictional, and literary writers of Native American descent coming from all across America and parts of Canada. The critical mass of literature covers almost all the Anishinaabe or Anishinaabeg tribes who were dislocated from their lands due to the, now well documented, greed and lust exhibited by the white man. The stereotypical depiction of the dead Indian was endeared to the public whereas there was, and neither is yet, no place for a living Native American identity. They were branded as “‘Vanishing Americans’ [when] most people believed that the tribes had largely been exterminated” (Vine Deloria, God is Red 1973, 2003, 1). Writers like Suzanne Evertsen Lundquist, in her book, Native American Literatures:

An Introduction emphasizes on the need for the Native Americans to remove the influence of colonial authority when it comes to developing a sense of their own literary values and aesthetics. She believes that the views of the tribes are deserving of individual recognition (Lundquist 2005, 291). This paper is an exploration of a people who have been put under erasure for more than five centuries, and consequently is an endeavor to define, record, and narrate their native experiences and their voices, rather than being represented by non-native exemplifications.

So tractable, so peacable, are these people, that I swear to your Majesties there is not in the world a better nation. They love their neighbors as themselves, and their discourse ever sweet and gentle, and accompanied with a smile; and though it is true that they are naked, yet their manners are decorous and praiseworthy.¹ (Brown 1970, 1)

The thirty year violence spanning from 1860-1890 across the North American continent meted out against the native American Indians is the focus of the American historian, Dee Brown’s book, Bury My Heart at Wounded knee (1970). His declarative comment to regard this era to be of “greed, audacity, sentimentality, undirected exuberance, and an almost reverential attitude towards the ideal of personal freedom for those who already had it” (Brown 1970, xv) speaks volumes when it is seen that these vices unleashed a series of such atrocities against the native American people which culminated into the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. The extent and the impact of this massacre and the subsequent genocide committed against the Native American Indians can be summed up in these words of Red Cloud, one of the Indian Chiefs of the Oglala Lakota tribe, who led his tribe from 1868-1909, “There was no hope on earth, and God seemed to have forgotten us” (Brown 1970, 439). Left with no hope on earth for such peacable people, who loved their neighbors, and for whom, their invader, Columbus was all praise, is something which should have annihilated these people but it is seen

that like a phoenix, they have risen from their ashes; and their renaissance can be seen in the body of literature of the twentieth century onwards.

David Treuer in his book Native American Fiction (2006) has countered the general conviction that “Native American does not exist” (Treuer 2006, 195). Truer notes that if we believe thus, we do so only “when we interpret Native American fiction with more stress placed on ‘Native’ than on ‘fiction’” (Treuer 2006, 5). He believes that the reading of a body of literature and its interpretation should be to preserve the integrity of that text. It is with this view that this research explores the themes and tropes of this ever increasing body of literature of Native American Indian literature.

Native American Indians are writing prolifically and have chosen to let their voice be heard, and “[o]ver the decades, various American Indian writers—N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Simon J. Ortiz, and Leslie Marmon Silko, among others—have revitalized Native American literature by combing their fluency in English with a deep understanding of their own languages and traditions (Bruchac n.d., 1). Vine Deloria Jr. believes that this is so because when “Western civilization grew and took dominance over the world, it failed to resolve some basic issues” (1995, 4). These issues arose when the natural habitats of the Native American Indian tribes were severely disrupted; when the Spokane tribes were made to face uncalled for calamitous situations due to the disruption of the natural habitat of salmon; when the tribes of Sioux, Pillagers, and the Iroquois nations were pushed to the North western region. Not only their plights were not accounted for, but they were also stereotyped as either being the most perfidious souls, who ambushed the innocent whites²; or were the embodiment of a beaten and downtrodden savage, who needed to be salvaged from the archives. The manifestations of these stereotypes could be seen in the general street signs like, “‘No Dogs and No Indians Allowed’” (Vine Deloria, God is Red 1973, 2003, 3). Yet another stereotype was geographically located towards the

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south as in the case of Pueblo tribe. Their plight is voiced by Silko when she says, “We Pueblo people were dealing with the Spanish government and the King of Spain, we were conquered nations but we were still sovereign nations and they applied international law to us. We did not forget, even though the Anglo-Americans came from the east coast of the United States and stole that land from Mexico and took over” (L. M. Silko 2015, 4). Therefore when these Native American Indians had nowhere to turn to and when the very world they lived in was shattered, they were bound to portray their contemporary issues in an all-encompassing form of expression— literature.

The voices of these tribes can be heard ranging from Tuscarora Reservation in Niagra County in the life of a spokesman for Native American Sovereignty, Mad Bear Anderson, (19271985); Rolling thunder, a Cherokee Indian (1916-1997); or Black Elk³ (1863-1950) of an Oglala Lakota background. Polingayasi Quoyawayma (1892-1990), another noted author, writes the novel Sun Girl, and her autobiography, No Turning Back, which “chronicle[s] her struggles in attempting to negotiate both her native Hopi world and the world of the Anglo” (Educator and Artist 2005). Vine Victor Deloria Jr. (1933-2005), a Native American author, theologian, historian, and activist is a resonating voice belonging to the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation. The corpus of the living writers writing about the cardinal issues concerning the American Indians are N. Scott Momaday (1934-), of Kiowa descent, Gerald Vizenor (1934-), Anishnaabe writer and scholar of Chippewa tribe, Thomas King (1934-), a Cherokee of Greek/ German descent and an American Canadian professor. The living writers also comprise of Leslie Marmon Silko (1948-), a Pueblo, representing the voice from American southern border with Mexico; Professor Ofelia Zepeda (1952-), is a Tohono O'odham poet and intellectual; Louise Erdrich (1954-), is an Ojibwe Indian novelist and a poet, and Sherman Alexie (1966-), a Spokane Indian, is a prolific and gifted writer, poet and a filmmaker.

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Contemporary Native American Literature…

The subject matter of some of some of the biographical non-fictional writings entail the renaissance of the actual idea of a Native American and not the stereotypes that may be seen in various forms of literature, art and media. Vine Deloria classifies Black Elk Speaks (1932), a biography by an American Professor Neihardt, as a “great religious classic” (Neihardt 1979, xii). Deloria marvels at the fact that the conversations and companionship between Neihardt and Black Elk “should produce a religious classic, perhaps the only religious classic of this century, is a testimony indeed to continuing strength of our species” (Neihardt 1979, xi). First published in 1932, the language of this biography is descriptive. Though a monumental change has taken place in the next part of the century, and consequently, the entire American approach towards life has changed, but Professor Neihardt makes the text of Black Elk Speaks (1932) speak to us. He gives us an idea how an Indian voice, sharing his knowledge, at the time when this book was written, had to be sifted, filtered, and made palatable for English readers. Reading through this text one realizes that how painful it must be for Black Elk to go through this catharsis of narrating his life and thoughts since he thinks that he has failed his elders. His tone in this book seems to be making amends, atoning, confessing, a reason to enliven and leave a legacy and understanding for posterity. However, since this book is recorded, arranged, and compiled by a white man, Professor Neihardt, it is apparent that the text of Black Elk Speaks (1932) is too organized and chronological. This text is a true memoirs of a Native American and the life he lived and lost.

A general survey of the writing of Native American writers, bring to surface, two very important themes of Indian ways of life; namely, one being the lamentation about the demise of the goodness of human heart, and the other theme is of altruism towards everything around, including the natural, living, or even the dead. When Black Elk says at one place, “I know it was the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy tree that should have flourished in a peoples’ heart with flowers and singing

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birds, and now has withered; and of a peoples’ dream that died in bloody snow” (Neihardt 1979, 2). This sentence is a metaphorical expression of Black Elk while narrating his life to his biographer friend, Neihardt. It is a realization of an Indian medicine man⁴, who himself, or other Indian people or leaders like him, could not do justice with the burden to be worthy of being called real human beings. Secondly, for a reader, who is so used to seeing the American Indian stereotypes, finds the theme of altruism in these words as quite striking. He is so used to reading and viewing literature associated with a Native American, so remote and alien from what Black Elk is speaking. The theme of altruism may be seen, specifically at a place in the text, when he tells Neihardt that the qualities of a good soul and a good warrior are not the ones which are usually associated with the Indians, but rather, as he once addressed a young warrior of his tribe and said: “what you do is good always; so today you shall feed the helpless. Perhaps there are some old and feeble people without sons, or some who have little children and no man. You shall help these, and whatever you kill shall be theirs…[the warrior] had to give gifts to those who had the least of everything, and the braver he was, the more he gave away” (Neihardt 1979, 56, 96). This biography of Black Elk, therefore asserts altruism, community service and charity, some of the core principles of a Native American Indian existence.