ROOTS TO ROUTES: CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS FICTION BY WOMEN WRITERS IN THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, AND NEW ZEALAND By PAULA ANCA FARCA Bachelor of Arts West University of Timi şoara Timi şoara, Romania 1999 Master of Arts West University of Timişoara Timi şoara, Romania 2000 Master of Arts Oklahoma State University Stillwater, Oklahoma State University 2003 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for The Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December, 2009 ROOTS TO ROUTES: CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS FICTION BY WOMEN WRITERS IN THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, AND NEW ZEALAND Dissertation Approved: Dr. Edward P. Walkiewicz Dissertation Adviser Dr. Linda Leavell Dr. Lindsey Claire Smith Dr. Doren Recker Dr. A. Gordon Emslie Dean of the Graduate College ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all of those who have influenced and supported me throughout the years, whether in the academic field or in my personal life. My dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Angela and Mircea Sârbu, who gave me life and taught me how to live it. I thank them for their love, encouragement, support, and memorable advice. I would also like to express my wholehearted appreciation to my wonderful husband, George, for his love, luminous personality, words of encouragement, patience, and understanding. I am grateful to my enthusiastic little muse, my son, Sergiu Patric, who was born during the writing of my dissertation; he offers me much joy and many laughs every day. I would also like to thank my brother, Vlad, for the love and support he has always given me. I wish to express my special appreciation to my adviser, Dr. Edward Walkiewicz, for his patient and constructive guidance, his comments on my numerous, tedious drafts, and his kind words of encouragement. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Linda Leavell for her visionary insight, comments, and moral support. To Dr. Walkiewicz and Dr. Leavell, I owe a special debt of gratitude for their consistent and careful guidance during my graduate studies and entry into the profession and for their endless inspiration. I also would like to thank Dr. Lindsey Claire Smith for her invaluable suggestions on my drafts, her enormous patience and dedication, and her constructive criticism. I owe many thanks to Dr. Doren Recker, who provided assistance and excellent advice. iii I am especially indebted to the faculty of the Department of English at Oklahoma State University, especially Dr. Jeffrey Walker, Dr. Elizabeth Grubgeld, Dr. William Decker, Dr. Hugh Manon, and Dr. Martin Wallen, who helped me become a confident scholar and teacher. They provided an intellectually stimulating, nurturing, and professional environment that enabled me to grow. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................1 Preliminary Remarks ...............................................................................................1 Theoretical Places ..................................................................................................11 Chapter Summaries ................................................................................................24 II. BORDERLINE INDIANS, PLACES, AND TRADITIONS: LOUISE ERDRICH’S LOVE MEDICINE ...........................................................................28 III. STORYTELLING IN MULTIETHNIC PLACES: LINDA HOGAN’S SOLAR STORMS .................................................................................................................54 IV. TRAVELING THROUGH MEMORY AND IMAGINATION IN DAUGHTERS ARE FOREVER BY LEE MARACLE .....................................77 V. PAINTING THE INDIGENOUS LANDSCAPE IN GLORIOUSLY DARK COLORS: JEANNETTE ARMSTRONG’S WHISPERING IN SHADOWS ......103 VI. LAND AS MEDIATOR: VIOLENCE AND HOPE IN ALEXIS WRIGHT’S PLAINS OF PROMISE ........................................................................................127 VII. GOING PLACES, GOING NATIVE: DORIS PILKINGTON’S CAPRICE ....150 VIII. THREE M ĀORI RESPONSES TO ONE PLACE IN PATRICIA GRACE’S COUSINS .............................................................................................................178 IX. NATION AS AN INTERSECTION OF CULTURES AND ETHNICITIES: KERI HULME’S THE BONE PEOPLE ..............................................................199 X. CONCLUDING REMARKS ................................................................................221 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................227 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Preliminary Remarks This study, intended for literature students and professors, Indigenous community members, critics, historians, sociologists, cultural geographers, and environmental activists, analyzes the role of place and its cultural significance in the fiction of eight contemporary Indigenous women writers from the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, four former colonies of the British Empire. More specifically, it addresses the interaction between Indigenous people and the locations they inhabited after colonization. 1 Roots to Routes addresses how the places Indigenous people go to and imagine reveal the cultural directions toward which Indigenous people are moving and the changes that occurred in their traditions. Places also reveal how Indigenous people survive in a postcolonial world, heal, regain homes and rituals, and subsequently build new homes and create new traditions. I argue that places are social and cultural constructions that regenerate themselves as a result of their inhabitants’ active 1 Fleras and Elliott define contemporary Aboriginals as “the existing descendants of those who are commonly thought to be the original inhabitants of a territory, who now occupy an encapsulated status as subordinate members of a larger society, but who continue to identify with a cultural lifestyle at odds with that of the dominant sector” (1). Tony Swain discusses the etymology of the word “Aborigine”: “‘Aborigine’ (Latin ‘from the beginning’), which, like primitivus (‘first of its kind’), conjures the image of a timeless essence, was defined vis -à-vis the colonists as unchanging and when they did, undeniably, change, this was ignored” (278-79). Despite the colonists’ depictions of Indigenous inferiority, Aboriginal cultures changed like any other culture, so the “image of a timeless essence” does not fit the profile of any culture or country. It goes without saying that the places where they resided changed as well. 1 participation; at the same time, the inhabitants’ experiences in specific places aid them in renewing their relationships with their tribal and national histories and cultures. Responding to much postcolonial scholarship, which focuses on the violence of colonialism and on Indigenous people’s loss of land and family members, I have found a different approach to place which deals with their losses. I suggest that even the most recent definitions of place can be revised and expanded so that they include an internalized and creative component, one which is shaped by people’s imaginations and memories and also by their experiences of places. The Indigenous writers I examine show that places are not only concrete locations but also internalized processes that result from individuals’ mental interpretations. In other words, places are not inert pieces of land but textual constructs that are created by those who experience and imagine them. This new way of thinking about place is relevant to many Indigenous people who lost their land and their family members because it implies an approach to place that involves going beyond one’s physical presence in a particular location. For instance, one does not necessarily need to remain on the reservation to maintain certain connections to the reservation; one does not lose a place in its entirety if that place changes radically. Through mental re-creations, memories of places, and journeys to specific places, Indigenous people might regain their land and traditions, heal their physical and psychological wounds, and create new places in which their cultures can persist. The various experiences and stories that individuals take from and bring to places shapes them both and facilitates dialogues among generations and across time. Emphasizing the fluidity of place as a concept, the Indigenous writers I analyze demonstrate the survival and flourishing of their communities. 2 The Indigenous authors included in this study are Louise Erdrich, Linda Hogan, Lee Maracle, Jeanette Armstrong, Alexis Wright, Doris Pilkington, Keri Hulme, and Patricia Grace, eight of the most widely read women writers in their own countries and in recent Indigenous literature. As I discuss influential works by women writers along with novels that have not received enough critical consideration, I bring more attention to Indigenous people’s relationships to places. My cross-continental and cross-national analysis emphasizes that, despite their tragic colonial pasts and the loss of their lands and even family and community members, Indigenous people are able to create and re-create places in which their cultures and ethnic identities survive and flourish. By negotiating relationships to new places, people, and cultures, reconsidering their old places, and inscribing their stories across nations, contemporary Indigenous women adapt their community’s traditions to new