Tracking Whiteness: Portrayals of Whites

TRACKING WHITENESS: PORTRAYALS OF WHITES IN AMERICAN INDIAN LITERATURE by MARY M. (PEGGY) RUFF Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON May 2008 Copyright © by Mary M. (Peggy) Ruff 2008 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I thank the Administration of DeVry University for supporting my doctoral work financially. To my Deans, Diana Thomas, Nara Stahl Walker, and Rhonda Lewis, thank you for working with my class schedules, for cheering me on throughout my studies, and for celebrating my accomplishments. For my DeVry colleagues, I am so thankful. Thanks go to Karen Stabeno and Jan Votto, for teaching my Honors classes when they conflicted with my studies. Ann Rogers, thank you for your continued interest in my work. Lory Hawkes, my mentor, thanks for inspiring and challenging me; your constant care and wise advice have kept me going. To all of my DeVry “family,” thanks for your encouragement and heartfelt wishes for my success. Certainly, I am indebted to my professors at the University of Texas at Arlington, whose teaching has opened up new realms of thought and awareness. Thank you, Dr. Ken Roemer, Dr. Stacy Alaimo, and Dr. Neill Matheson, for not only inspiring the genesis of this project but for seeing it through to the end. For your diligence in reading and your invaluable suggestions, I am deeply grateful. Dr. Roemer, thanks for introducing me to American Indian literature, especially the work of Louise Erdrich. Your passion for teaching is contagious, and your gentle guidance and kindness pulled me through this arduous but fulfilling process. My life has truly been enriched by the content of my studies and by the people who crossed my path. For my family, who have put up with my studies and stresses, I am so grateful. Karen, thanks for sharing this entire journey with me, even reading my dissertation. Thanks for your laughter, your praise, and your wisdom. Also, thank you, Karen and Charlotte, for your prayer iii support throughout. To Lacey, my wonderful daughter, thanks for always expressing how proud you are of your mom and for believing in me. To Mike, my amazing, amusing husband, thank you for sharing me with my studies, for consoling me and counseling me, for keeping me sane— I owe you big time. Finally, I thank God for directing my path every step of the way. March 16, 2008 iv ABSTRACT TRACKING WHITENESS: PORTRAYALS OF WHITES IN AMERICAN INDIAN LITERATURE Mary M. (Peggy) Ruff, PhD. The University of Texas at Arlington, 2008 Supervising Professor: Kenneth M. Roemer Although whites have pervaded the lives and literatures of American Indians since contact, their own portrayals of whites have remained, for the most part, unexplored. I examine selected works of nineteenth and twentieth-century American Indian writers to discern ways that whites are portrayed collectively and individually. The most salient categories of whites emerge early on as government officials, educators, and missionaries, those most directly engaged in the “civilizing mission.” Similar categories of white characters, with the addition of white doctors, are found throughout twentieth-century American Indian fiction. Also in these works, numerous individual whites are portrayed as multidimensional, dynamic characters whose actions range from greedy, self-serving, and contemptuous to benevolent, respectful, and compassionate. Viewing these portrayals through the lenses of postcolonialist theory and white studies reveals v that American Indian writers have probed beneath the white skin to see into the hearts of these people who have invaded their lands and lives. Beginning with collective portrayals of whites in nineteenth-century nonfiction works of William Apess, George Copway, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Charles Eastman, and Zitkala-Ša, this study then examines collective portrayals of whites in three twentieth-century novels of Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Linda Hogan. Individual portrayals of whites follow, as found not only in works of Silko, Erdrich, and Hogan, but also in those of D’Arcy McNickle, John Joseph Mathews, N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Michael Dorris, Sherman Alexie, Greg Sarris, and David Treuer. Overall, portrayals of white characters range from evil to good, from one-dimensional and stereotypical to richly complex and enigmatic. Exposing whiteness in such an array serves to displace it from its center of superiority, privilege, and power. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………….…………………………………. iii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………….. v PREFACE........................................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1. PALEFACE IN THE LOOKING-GLASS: COLLECTIVE PORTRAYALS OF WHITES IN NONFICTION........................................... 1 2. EXPOSING WHITENESS: COLLECTIVE PORTRAYALS OF WHITES IN FICTIONAL WORKS OF SILKO, ERDRICH, AND HOGAN........................................................................................................... 55 3. WHITENESS WITH A DIFFERENCE: INDIVIDUAL PORTRAYALS OF WHITES..............…..…………………………………………...…........ 107 4. WHITENESS WITH A DIFFERENCE: FALSE AND FAITHFUL “SAINTS”……..……………………………………………………………. 167 5. CONCLUSION............................................................................................... 233 WORKS CITED.......……………………………….………………………………….... 237 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION………………………..……………………........... 247 vii PREFACE In his preeminent text of postcolonialist theory, The Location of Culture (1992), Homi Bhabha affirms his hope for humanity on the cusp of a new century. Although already marked by strife, racism, oppression, and other legacies of colonialism, the twenty-first century becomes Bhabha’s “beyond,” a site of possibility and promise: The ‘beyond’ is neither a new horizon, nor a leaving behind of the past. Beginnings and endings may be the sustaining myths of the middle years; but in the fin de siècle , we find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. (Bhabha 1) Today, “[b]eginnings and endings,” as set forth in inscribed histories of peoples, no longer hold true when viewed by other than the dominant cultures; borders drawn to separate different groups of people no longer suffice in this “moment of transit.” Rather, a border or boundary becomes “not that at which something stops but. that from which something begins its presencing ” (Heidegger, qtd. in Bhabha 1). Viewed in this way, borders, no longer limiting features, open up spaces for “the emergence of the interstices—the overlap and displacement of domains of difference” (2). Such spaces in-between become springboards for the “beyond,” where “complex figures of difference and identity” are enacted. In the United States today, where minority groups still clamor for equality and justice, a need for negotiation endures. Following his claim that it is in “the emergence of the interstices. that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness , community interest, or cultural viii value are negotiated” (2), Bhabha poses questions applicable to our society rife with cultural difference: How do strategies of representation or empowerment come to be formulated in the competing claims of communities where, despite shared histories of deprivation and discrimination, the exchange of values, meanings and priorities may not always be collaborative and dialogical, but may be profoundly antagonistic, conflictual and even incommensurable? (2) Although numerous communities express “competing claims” and could certainly benefit from negotiation and “strategies of representation or empowerment,” my focus is on American Indians. I will explore their own particular “strategies of representation” of whites, as these groups have interacted throughout American history. Of course, American Indians are not a homogeneous community but are composed of a multitude of tribes with distinctive histories and cultural differences; however, they share in the scars of colonialism and are often viewed from a postcolonialist lens. Problems arise from such a perspective, though, because effects of colonialism in the United States are different from those explored by postcolonialist theorists, who have “drawn almost exclusively from the experiences of populations in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean” (Allen 4). Because of the ongoing colonialism that exists in the United States regarding the indigenous population, different issues arise and conflicts continue. The postcolonialist anathema, “essentialism,” becomes fitting for American Indians whose “discourses often emphasize land and treaty rights” (30). On the other hand, the thrust toward multiculturalism, with its categorizing of American Indians with other minorities, is felt to be “inadequate and misguided” (110). For these reasons, although ix postcolonialist theory is often applied to American Indian literature, it does not always play out similarly to that of other settler colonies’ literatures. However, I have chosen to apply aspects of this theory to the literature of American Indians, mainly because so many of what Ania Loomba terms “legacies of colonialism” are revealed. Also, embedded in their oral and written literatures, at least since the time of contact, are

Load more