SLEZSKÁ UNIVERZITA V OPAVĚ
Filozoficko-přírodovědecká fakulta v Opavě
Kateřina Fajová
Obor: Angličtina (jednooborové)
Development of Native American Literature with a Focus on Native American Women Writers in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century
Diplomová práce
Opava 2020 Vedoucí diplomové práce PhDr. Diana Adamová, Ph.D.
Abstract
The thesis deals with the development of Native American literature with a focus on indigenous women writers in the 20th and 21st century. The major objective is to demonstrate the role of Native women writers in the process of self-awareness and survival of the Native American cultural heritage. The introductory part discusses the position of women in the pre- contact Native societies. Literature is analyzed in chronological order, starting with the oral storytelling traditions. The thesis is first concerned with the literature of Native women writers in the 19th century and analyzes the most important autobiographies of this period and works, which enabled preservation of the cultural heritage. Then Native literature of the 20th century is explored and its importance in the process of its further development is summarized. Emphasis is put on Native literature of the 21st century and new direction, which appear in modern Native literature due to a changing social environment. The analysis concludes that women, as in the pre-contact era, continue to be the storytellers owing to the women writers of the past two centuries who made the survival of the Native identity possible.
Keywords: Native American, oral storytelling, autobiographies, cultural preservation, tradition, ceremony, feminism, self-awareness, identity.
Abstrakt
Tato práce se zabývá vývojem literatury původního obyvatelstva Severní Ameriky se zaměřením na spisovatelky této menšiny ve 20. a 21. století. Cílem práce je ukázat jakou roli hrály spisovatelky této menšiny v procesu sebeuvědomění a záchrany kulturního dědictví původního obyvatelstva. Úvod práce popisuje postavení žen v původních společenstvích v době předkolonizační. Analýza literatury je prováděna v chronologickém pořadí, s počátkem v tradičním vypravěčském umění. Práce se věnuje literatuře ženských autorů původního obyvatelstva 19. století a analyzuje nejvýznamnější biografická díla tohoto období a díla, která umožnila záchranu jejich kulturního dědictví. Práce dále zkoumá literaturu původního obyvatelstva ve 20. století a shrnuje důležitost této literatury v procesu jejího dalšího vývoje. Důraz je kladen na literaturu spisovatelek této menšiny ve 21. století a nové směry, které se v moderní literatuře původního obyvatelstva objevují díky neustále se měnícímu sociálnímu prostředí. Ženy, stejně jako v době předkolonizační, i nyní plní roli vypravěčů díky spisovatelkám minulých dvou století, které umožnily, že jejich kultura a tradice přežily.
Klíčová slova: původní obyvatelstvo Severní Ameriky, vypravěčství, autobiografie, záchrana kultury, tradice, obřad, feminismus, sebeuvědomění, identita.
Čestné prohlášení
Prohlašuji, že jsem předkládanou diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně, všechny použité prameny a literatura byly řádně citovány a práce nebyla využita k získání jiného nebo stejného titulu.
V Opavě dne 25. 4. 2020 Podpis:
Development of Native American Literature with a Focus on Native American Women Writers in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century
I. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..1 II. Native American storytelling…………………………………………………………...4 III. Nineteenth-century Native American literature………………………………………...8 i. Autobiographers and novelists of the nineteenth century…………………………10 ii. Cultural preservation as an aspect of the nineteenth century Native American literature....………………………………………………………………………....11 IV. Early twentieth century………………………………………………………………...14 i. Zitkala-Sa ……………………………………………………………………….....14 ii. American Indian Stories…………………………………………………………....18 V. Late Twentieth Century and the Native American Renaissance………………………..23 i. Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko………………………………………………..24 ii. Poetry of Jo Harjo………………………………………………………………….28 iii. Non-fiction by Paula Gunn Allen...………………………………………………..35 iv. Ranging across genres in Storyteller……………………………………………....39 VI. Proliferation of drama………………………………………………………………....44 i. Woman Who Was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance………………………..46 ii. Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light…………………………………… 48 VII. Overview and direction for the twenty-first century………………………………....53 VIII. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...61 1
I. Introduction
Native American women’s expression was subdued since the European colonization. Before the colonists arrived, Native women had power within their families, were involved in internal decision making, were respected within their matrilineal clans.1 Their world was rather gynocentric, their traditions were tightly bound to ritual and spiritual understanding rather than on economic or political aims. In general women have more power “when descent is matrilineal, residence is matrilocal and restrictions on female sexuality is limited.”2 It is not coincidental that these woman-based traditions were suppressed and degraded due to the patriarchal system of the colonizers.3 The Native women suffered twice, first they were considered and treated as racially inferior and secondly as gender inferior. Women used to be central figures in keeping tribal cultures alive in the pre-contact era by telling stories and teaching the young generations. Since the nineteenth century Native and mixed-blood women have played a key role in activism, renewing the lost traditions, self-awareness and empowerment of the Native American communities, stricken by social problems as alcoholism, domestic violence and the overall feeling of non-belonging, suffered by the Natives4. I have turned my attention to Native Women writers to discover not only their artistic and literary talents, but also their resilience and determination to overcome the personal and cultural oppression and to help their communities rise up and “survive in the face of collective death.”5 Native American literature has evolved from anonymous and unwritten oral traditions to the current fully-fledged literary compositions. Native Americans are known to have chanted songs to bring rain, ease pain, overcome their enemies, pray for harvest, or even cure diseases. More so, they had prose short stories that focused on their origins, heroes, and
1 Devon Abbott Mihesuah, Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, Empowerment, Activism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 43. 2 Laura F. Klein and Lillian A. Ackerman, Women and Power in Native North America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 236. 3 Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 195. 4 Mihesuah, Indigenous American Women, 143-146. 5 Allen, The Sacred Hoop, 156. 2
religious affiliations. These oral traditions made up for a vibrant literary collection, which until recently were not known to the world as they were passed orally from one generation to the next. The first interpretations of these stories were done by missionaries and English speakers who translated the stories they heard from tribal elders. The turn of the twentieth century marked a new beginning for Native American literature with the autobiographical genre. Native American literature further developed in the late twentieth and early twenty- first century owing to prolific Native American women writers who have made great strides in using written language to represent the pertinent issues that are associated with their culture. Some of the dominant themes in their literature include betrayal, resentment, grief, defeat, and destruction of their native culture owing to US government policies, but also protest, tradition, feminism, gender, self-discovery, love and ultimate survival. An analysis of Native American literature concerning the women writers helps in establishing its uniqueness in storytelling as it has progressed through centuries. Each century marks a different phase in the development of this literature as each of them builds on the successes of the previous. For instance, the twentieth century witnessed the proliferation of more women writers most notably Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (1876-1938), who wrote under the pseudonym Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird). Some of Zitkala-Sa’s publications include American Indian Stories and Old Indian Legends which mirrored her experiences as an Indian growing up in a white-dominated society. This century witnessed the rising of more women writers including Leslie Marmon Silko (1948), Joy Harjo (1951), Linda Hogan (1959), Paula Gunn Allen (1939-2008), Diane Glancy (1941), LeAnn Howe (1951) and many others from both the literary and academic circles. These women focused on different literary genres including novels, poetry, non- fiction works, as well as drama. The thesis focuses on the novel Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, poetry of Jo Harjo, the collection of non-fiction essays The Sacred Hoop by Paula Gunn Allen and Silko’s multi-genre Storyteller. Some of the most notable drama include Woman Who Was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance (Diane Glancy) and Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light (Joy Harjo). The developments of the twentieth century have left a massive imprint on the Native American literature. Recent times create more opportunities for Native American writers to write about newer experiences while sticking to their cultural identity. 3
The thesis focuses on the historical development of Native American literature by Native American women writers. It is essential to understand what initiated the change from oral traditions into written form. The thesis shifts its attention to women writers who have been entirely instrumental in changing the Native American literary landscape. An analysis of women writers’ works helps in understanding how each century contributed to literary development and provides the basis for thesis’ aim, which is to show what role has literature written by indigenous women played in the process of self-awareness and preservation of Native American cultural identity and heritage. The dominant themes such as cultural erosion and social issues aim at preserving their unique cultural experience through bridging the gap among cultures, most notable among the authors of mixed heritage as e.g. Leslie Marmon Silko or Diane Glancy. The English language has become the means of expression for Native writers. It now serves the purpose of cultural survival, the energy of the Native writers “transformed the enemy languages”6 to serve its aims. English empowered the same people, who lost their native language due to it, rather than destroyed them.
6 Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird, Reinventing the Enemy’s Language (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), 22. 4
II. Native American Storytelling
Native Americans have a vibrant and profound literary culture, which is comprised of their stories that are representative of their interaction with nature. Before the discovery of writing, Native Americans passed stories from one generation to the next through the word of mouth. These stories were meant to teach the generations valuable lessons on the population's history, beliefs and wisdom. Moreover, it was the primary way of conveying crucial moral knowledge, meanings as well as social values Native Americans held within their tribes. Many of their stories dealt with serious environmental and psychological problems central to their immediate wellbeing.7 Native Americans’ oral traditions are based in their ancient stories, rites, myths, and many are projected into their rituals and ceremonies. They adhere to the population laws and rules in as much as they mirror the passage of time. Storytelling forms an integral part of the Native American culture. For one, storytelling is seen as establishing cultural indexes that are used to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate conduct and behaviors.8 At this point, it is essential to confirm that Native Americans told stories to preserve their culture and traditions which were being threatened by the “modern” world. Indian people valued their culture and history as it was not just abstract or secular pursuits but rather pathways for keeping their identities alive. In this regard, then, storytelling became the primary avenue for elders to pass their teachings to the younger generations in the hope of preserving their unique culture. Apart from the educational purpose Native American storytelling was a form of entertainment. Storytellers were valued individuals in their societies as they helped to preserve the rich culture contained in the stories. These individuals were also tasked with the responsibility of educating people about their immediate nature such as medicinal plants, trees, and animals. This kind of knowledge was necessary for these communities, as their lives were dependent and interconnected to their immediate landscape.9
7 Karl Kroeber, Native American Storytelling. A Reader of Myths and Legends (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 6. 8 Felicia Schanche Hodge, Anna Pasqua, Carol A. Marquez, “Utilizing Traditional Storytelling to Promote Wellness in American Indian Communities,” Journal of Transcultural Nursing, Vol 13, (January 2002): 6-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/104365960201300102. 9 Kroeber, Native American Storytelling, 3. 5
Native American storytelling is quite distinct regarding form and content, considering that it revolved around various themes. American Indians had to be efficient individuals who out of necessity, had to survive and thrive in harsh conditions. In as much as their lives were always in jeopardy, their storytelling techniques reveal a people who delighted in funny tales, exaggerations, and jokes. Storytelling provided to Native Americans new ways of adapting to the continually changing natural world, which constantly required of them new ways of adapting to it.10 Sometimes it is comprised of weird, impossible, and powerful features that seemed escapist and fantasy like. According to Paula Gunn Allen these supernatural, heroic figures act in series of events as agents of both the events and symbols, on which the Native myth stories rely on. That is why, Allen says, these stories demand the immediate, direct participation of the listener.11 These extreme exaggerations could be viewed as a way of bringing to light private sentiments that were not expressed in the public. In this case storytelling was considered an exercise that evaluated and highlighted proper social structures to help the society function productively. Most cultures view storytelling as a way of being amused and entertained as they take a break from the demands of life. However, this is not the case with the Native Americans' storytelling as it marked an important cultural and educational activity. Their sacred rituals were based in some form of narrative as a way of keeping the practices live throughout generations. Silko believes that people have nothing if they do not have stories, according to her, words can change reality through a ceremony, which is the only cure.12 In this case, one could establish that storytelling was the basis for articulating the foundations of this population's unique way of life. Of importance here is the fact that narration was the primary avenue for examining, understanding, modifying, sustaining, and improving cultural commitments and systems.13 The stories had to be told in an entertaining but also a memorable way so that they could be easily passed down to other generations. At the end of it, these stories were indicative of the Native Americans' history, their lives, and what they needed to do to survive and prosper.
10 Kroeber, Native American Storytelling, 3. 11 Allen, The Sacred Hoop, 105. 12 Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), chap. 1, Apple Books. 13 Kroeber, Native American Storytelling, 6. 6
Narrative American stories helped to capture believable circumstances as indicators of religion and everyday life struggles associated with the communities. Some of the stories focus on critical cultural personalities who managed to come up with inventions having been aided by nature. The stories tend to revolve around plants, seas, the sun, ice, fire stars, planets, and the moon as pointers of human origins and endeavors. They act as roadmaps defining structures, gender roles, as well as establishing the position of every member in ensuring harmony and maintain order in the social and cultural sphere.14 For the Tewa people, a pueblo tribe, mask was an important part of their self- manifestation. The story about a Laughing Warrior Girl tells about a girl, who was not willing to act according to the tribe’s expectations. She would get angry and stubborn easily. She was put under a test, when enemies came and threatened the Pueblo. She was asked to fight with the men that day. She was excited and not afraid, even laughing while she went. She proved to be a great warrior, using her warrior mask, which only strengthened her skills. Since then, she became the “leader in war.”15 Since then she was a well-behaved girl, not protesting anymore. She and the people of her tribe have discovered her unexpected talent and the elders proclaimed “even if she is a girl, she is a man too.”16 When she died, she left the mask with her people to give them strength. “I will be with you all the time,” she said, “the mask is me.”17 This story teaches a lesson about how freely accepting individuals that are different than the rest is important in keeping the community together. The same acceptance was applied for all other “differences” including sexual orientation etc. Everyone had their place in the community which strived for harmonious existence. What is important here to mention is that the stories go hand in hand with rituals and ceremonies and thus the idea of discrete genres is not possible in Native culture, since the stories could be told (later written), danced, drummed etc. “Elements of diverse genres can occur simultaneously, or a story in one genre may create a story in another.”18 This ranging across genres, which is dealt with later in the thesis, has thus been instrumental for Native
14 Hodge FS, Pasqua A, Marquez CA, Geishirt-Cantrell B, “Utilizing traditional storytelling to promote wellness in American Indian communities,” J Transcult Nurs. 2002;13(1):6–11. doi:10.1177/104365960201300102. 15 Kroeber, Native American Storytelling, 17. 16 Kroeber, Native American Storytelling, 17. 17 Kroeber, Native American Storytelling, 17. 18 Karen A. Foss, Sonja K. Foss, Cindy L. Griffin, Feminist Rhetorical Theories (Waveland Press, 1999), 214. 7
American literature and even drama, where stories, myths, fiction, poems and songs tend to intertwine. The Native American intricately crafted legends, myths and stories are the essential heritage, wisdom, and unifying concept of the Native peoples and continue to be a source of inspiration to both Native and non-Native writers today.19
19 Eugene Benson, Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (New York: Routledge Ltd, 1994), 837. 8
III. Nineteenth-century Native American Literature
The nineteenth century is considered a transition century concerning the Native American literature as it marked the end of oral traditions and led to the beginning of the so called Native American Renaissance during the 1960’s, a period of significant increase of literary output by Native Americans. The term has been widely criticized on numerous points and became controversial but is still widely used as a term to name the era. Nineteenth-century Native American literature was written in English, because that was the language taught in missionary and boarding schools and thus being forced onto the Native population. In 1830 the Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson. It authorized the President to relocate the southeastern Native tribes, known as the Five Civilized Tribes (Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, Cherokee, and Creek), to unsettled, less desirable lands west of the Mississippi, present-day Oklahoma, in exchange for their original ancestral lands, which the government needed for white settlement. The forced relocation during 1838 – 1839 is called the Trail of Tears, suggesting the devastating effect the hundreds of miles’ march to the “Indian Territory” had on the Native people. The relocated tribes were confined on reservations and experienced less than human treatment by the American government. The writers turned to English to use as a tool of cultural retention to retain the remnants of their cultures. Native Americans had for long explored culture-specific oral traditions, which served a higher purpose of preserving their unique culture from getting lost following the interaction with Europeans. The nineteenth century saw a significant break for these oral traditions as they were not only kept in writing but also hybridized by Euro-American authors. Interaction with European culture paved the way for the adoption of the novel and autobiographies, which the Native Americans used to address their own concerns. These autobiographies mostly involved experiences of conversion to Christianity and education in the boarding schools.20 The earliest novels and autobiographies demonstrate the Indian authors struggle as they tried to find their literary voice in the literature sphere. These old texts reveal
20 “Early Native American Literature”, Native American Writers, accessed February 25, 2020, https://www.nativeamericanwriters.com/index.html. 9
stereotypical Indian indications that establish that this population was viewed differently from the other cultures. Their writing is an expression of the humiliation and hardship they faced within the new country. Some authors of this period presented themselves as real Native Americans, tribal members, while others were Christianized, aiming to belong to the mainstream society. Autobiographies, in the sense of formal biographies of oneself narrated by oneself 21, which were a dominant European literary aspect, marked a significant element of the 19th century Native American literature. These biographies are considered peculiar as they marked the beginning of written literature, which was a new concept for Native Americans at the time. Native American writers had yet to master the art of writing and had to collaborate with interpreters to write their work, as, for example, the Chief Black Hawk (1767-1838) in his 1833 Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk (1955).22 Autobiographies contributed to the bulk of written literature for authors to express an awareness of themselves not just as individuals but as community’s representatives. Indians who had converted to Christianity wrote the earliest autobiographies, and they tend to be representative of concerns and anxiety about losing ties with Native culture and finding oneself being more severely judged as non-white people.23 However, with time, these autobiographies became more secular and political owing to increased and forced assimilation. At this point, one could assert that the writers adopted double consciousness in that they negotiated in the capacity of outsiders and insiders. In this regard the autobiographies helped writers to position themselves as authentic Indians as well as formally educated members of Christian societies. As a result, the Native American autobiographies appear to have bifurcated views owing to the complexities of balancing conflicting roles. This turn of events is captured in these bibliographies, which is seen as a way of expressing and preserving the Native society’s cultural underpinnings.
21 Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, “Autobiography,” Accessed March 30, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/art/autobiography-literature. 22 Black Hawk. Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk (New York, Project Gutenberg, 2009. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7097/7097-h/7097-h.htm. 23 Ekaterina Kupidonova, “Life in Two Worlds: Autobiography Tradition in Native Women Writers' Literature” (master’s thesis, University of Nebraska, 2017), 2, https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss/127/. 10
i. Autobiographers and novelists of the nineteenth century
Nineteenth century is a period of literary transition that witnessed the rising of various- writers; in the beginnings they were all men. Among them was William Apess (1798-1839, Pequot) and George Copway (1818-1869, Ojibwe), dealing with conversion to Christianity, discrimination and illusion of being accepted by the mainstream and the dangers of non- belonging. The most notable autobiographers of the time include Sarah Winnemucca (1844- 1891, Paiute), who wrote Life among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883) in response to cultural and social disruption and reminds the North American public that Native women bear a strong history of leadership.24 Winnemucca, an author, activist and educator, is credited as being the first Native American woman to write an autobiography. Winnemucca drew parallels between Christian and Paiute morality, hoping that her people would be granted citizenship in the segregated system. Life among the Paiutes focused on seeking support for the reunification of Native Americans in their traditional lands. Winnemucca did not get a chance to advance her education to higher levels, and this is the reason why her writing has limited diction.25 Nonetheless, Sarah’s book adopts persuasive techniques that help in demonstrating the brutality and ferocity of ordained Christian ministers towards Native Americans. Life among the Paiutes is indicative of gross outrages that the whites committed among the natives to enforce Christian doctrines. Winnemucca uses second-person narratives to highlight the Native Americans' restraint in as much as men were shot without reason, women and daughters violated and their territories were taken. In writing this book, Sarah was seeking empathy and hoped for a redress to deal with escalating tension. She also funded a school for Indian children with her own funds and donations.26 A bronze statue of Winnemucca was donated by the state of Nevada to the National Statuary Hall of the U.S.
24 Sean Kicummah Teuton, Native American Literature: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 146. 25 José Gómez Soliňo, "Historia de la literatura nativa, Study notes for English Language“, Universidad de La Laguna, accessed March 5, 2020, https://www.docsity.com/es/historia-de-la-literatura-nativa/3561533/. 26 Mihesuah, Indigenous American Women, 46. 11
Capitol in 2005 to honor her as a defender of human rights, educator and an author of first book by a Native woman.27 Emily Pauline Johnson (1861-1913) was a daughter of a Mohawk chief and an English woman and was born in Vancouver, Canada. She was also known under the stage name Tekahionwake and was a prominent Native American female poet, author and performer in the nineteenth century. In as much as her father was one-quarter white making her appear more of white, by law, she belonged to Canadian First Nations tribes. Pauline felt that she belonged to both worlds which is evident in her writing. Her mother infused the white culture by concentrating on European literature while her father focused more on Iroquoian culture28. Pauline was proud of her mixed heritage and she embraced both her white appearance as well as being a native at heart. The Moccasin Maker (1913), an autobiographical collection of eleven short stories, is Pauline’s publication highlighting the realities of both Mohawk and white Canadian experiences. Her short stories are a portrayal of various women characters who face challenges when trying to balance two opposing and demanding cultural expectations. The women are honest and resilient as they are focused on being at peace with their beliefs in as much as they do not match the popular and conflicting opinions. “My Mother,” which is one of the stories in the collection, is indicative of Pauline’s desire to connect Mohawk and Euro- Canadian cultures. The same theme is evident in “A Red Girl Reasoning,” revolving the struggles that an Indian woman faces having been married to a white man. This story and others in the collection highlight the racial and cultural tensions that existed between Native Americans and the white society of that time.
ii. Cultural preservation as an aspect of the nineteenth-century Native American literature
Preservation of Native culture through writing featured prominently in the nineteenth century as writers sought to shield it from cultural erosion. Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (1800-1842,
27 “Sarah Winnemucca”, Architect of the Capitol, accessed March 30, 2020, https://www.aoc.gov/art/national- statury-hall-collection/sarah-winnemucca. 28 Ekaterina Kupidonova, Life in Two Worlds, 17. 12
Ojibwe), or Bamewawagezhikaquay (The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky) played a crucial role in this preservation by transcribing Ojibwe folklore and publishing individual Native American stories in English in the mid to late nineteenth century. Schoolcraft collaborated with her husband, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who was a famous ethnographer in publishing the Literary Voyager, a journal that entailed Native American history, essays, and poems. Schoolcraft went on to publish poems that reflected her knowledge on both European and classical literature, something that earned her a place in the literary circles. Some of her poems that adopt European poetry meter and structure are Lines Written under Affliction and Otagamiad, which were published in 1827. Jane Schoolcraft serves as an important link in the transference of American Indian culture to the rest of the literary world.29 One of Schoolcraft’s best-known short stories is a transcript of a Chippewa tale The Forsaken Brother. The tale was first published in the Literary Voyager in 1827. It is a moral folk tale with one-dimensional characters and magical transformations. The story opens with a father dying, at his deathbed are the mother, a sister and a brother, who are almost grown up, and the youngest boy who is still a baby. As the father dies, his last wish is for the older children to look for the youngest brother when he and their mother are gone. They promise to help each other and take care of their brother. The mother dies a short time afterwards, reminding them of their promise on her deathbed. Soon after that the brother decides to leave them for his own selfish interests and does not return. The girl gets tired of constant caring for her brother, and thinking only of herself she abandons him, promising to return. She was enjoying her knew pleasurable life that she too forgot about the boy. The younger brother had to depend on the wolfs, had to eat what they left from their hunt. The older brother went on his canoe once and heard a child cry. He came closer and recognized his brother. The boy started singing “My brother, my brother! I am turning now into a wolf. I am turning into a wolf!”30 He ran away fast, even though the older brother called for him to come back. The brother’s conscience returned and felt a sense
29 Steven Petersheim, “Jane Schoolcraft’s Literary Contributions: Transcribing Ojibwe Folklore as Short Stories”, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, No 1, (Vol 29, 21-25): http://doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.2016.1201418. 30 “The Forsaken Brother”, Indians.org, accessed Feb 25, 2020, https://www.indians.org/welker/forsbrot.htm. 13
of guilt. The child called the brother’s and sister’s name and then the change was complete, he turned into a wolf and disappeared. The older brother and the sister, who was told what happened, mourned until their death. The tale carries a moral of society’s responsibility for individuals stressing that family is over one’s selfish desires. A typical Native American value, where the good of the family and the tribe is always above any individual wants and desires. Sophia Alice Callahan (1868-1894, Muscogee), became the first Native American Woman to write a novel with her title Wynema: A Child of the Forest, published in 1891 just six months after the Wounded Knee Massacre at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This romantic novel is considered a reform novel as it was directed at the white audience, considering that Alice had both Native American and Euro-American roots, a child of a Muscogee-Creek father and a missionary’s daughter. The novel deals with a friendship between a Native American girl named Wynema and her white teacher Genevieve, projecting her own dual cultural bonds. The book was Alice’s way of preserving the Native cultures by helping the readers understand her unique cultural experience. Alice, even though she came from a well-off family, fought for the Native American communities of which she was part of, and who were suffering. She hoped that the novel would bring to light these injustices as well as preserve Native Americans' vibrant culture. She was also addressing the duality of both cultures and their presence in mixed-blood Native Americans. As she wrote about friendship of the two women, she wished for the unified identity of all Native Americans, mixed-bloods or full-bloods. Alice’s efforts were at the turn of the century compounded by Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Yankton Sioux) who in 1901 wrote Old Indian Legends, a collection of stories that had been narrated to young non-Native audiences in Dakota and American Indian Stories (1921), an autobiography and collection of stories and poetry, which is analyzed in the following chapter.
14
IV. Early Twentieth Century
The twentieth century is considered one of the most critical eras in the further development of Native American literature due to the so called Native American Renaissance, which is regarded as a vital era marked by profound literary development. This century witnessed a growth of novels, autobiographies, drama, short fiction, ethnography, poetry publishing, and political writing, but also painting, philosophy and music.31 At this specific century, the political environment was still harsh considering that the assimilation policy was quite advanced owing to the General Allotment Act of 1887. More so, the US had instituted the boarding schools' system for Indian children, which meant even deeper assimilation and a higher risk of cultural erosion. Twentieth-century writers were aware of this fact and their writing was geared towards ensuring that future generations would still be in sync with their Native identity and culture. The writers were faced with yet another realization considering that the boarding school system created an entirely new culture. Children from different Native American tribes had a chance to live together and as a result, they had to base their communications only on English. This new reality led to Pan-Indian consciousness and identity, which manifested in unique and powerful political movements during the Civil Rights era.32 English thus became a common language connecting the Native tribes, allowing for the emergence of parallel English literary genres.
i. Zitkala-Sa
The twentieth century allowed for new writers who were focused on ensuring that Native American literature was preserved in written formats. Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (1876- 1938) who wrote under the pseudonym of Zitkala-Sa, meaning “Red Bird” in her native Lakota language, is a notable writer of this era. Gertrude received her formal education at a
31 Jennifer McClinton-Temple and Alan Velie, Encyclopedia of American Indian Literature (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007), 7. 32 Abigail M. Gibson, “The Last Indian War: Reassessing the Legacy of American Indian Boarding Schools and the Emergence of Pan-Indian Identity,” Global Tides: Vol. 10, Article 2. http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/globaltides/vol10/issl/2.
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boarding school, which was sponsored by the Quakers missionaries. At the school, which was based at Wabash, Indiana, Zitkala-Sa learned reading, writing, and speaking in English. When she reached fifteen, she went to White’s Labor Institute where she earned a diploma in 1885 having given a speech on gender inequality.33 She later enrolled at Earlham College in Indiana and while here, she translated Native American legends into English, aiming for children’s audience. On completion her college studies, Gertrude was hired to teach at Carlisle College, a task that proved challenging as the college’s assimilation principle was “kill the Indian, and save the man” from a speech by Capt. Richard Pratt delivered in 1892 at George Mason University.34 Carlisle’s curriculum aimed to “civilize” and “Americanize” the Indian. Zitkala-Sa could not work under such conditions owing to the innate consciousness that pushed her to work towards ensuring that Native Americans got their rights. It was for this reason that Zitkala-Sa resigned at Carlisle in 1901 which paved the way for her robust literary career soon after. Despite her strong concerns for her people and openly speaking about Native’s problems, she did not live among the Lakota tribe, “failed to retain strong kinship ties, and therefore lost status among her people.”35 Zitkala-Sa’s literary career began quite early as her desire to champion for the rights of her people grew from her own experiences. Her career could be divided into two phases, with the first one starting from 1900 to 1904 and the other one from 1916-1924. During the first phase, Zitkala-Sa concentrated on autobiographical narratives and legends drawn from the Native American culture. Zitkala-Sa published several autobiographies in the Harper’s Monthly and Atlantic Monthly from 1900 to 1902.36 These autobiographies were indicative of Gertrude’s disapproval of her employer’s policy of alienating Indians. Zitkala-Sa wrote these autobiographies to depict the struggle associated with maintaining the Native American
33 Bruce E. Johansen, American Indian Culture: From Counting Coup to Wampum (Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2015), 359. 34 “Kill the Indian, and Save the Man”, Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center. Capt. Richard H. Pratt on the Education of Native Americans, http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/teach/kill-indian-and-save-man- capt-richard-h-pratt-education-native-americans. 35 Mihesuah, Indigenous American Women, 52. 36 Laura Klein, Women and Power in Native North America, 12. 16
cultural identity amidst mounting pressures to adopt the popular American culture.37 Since 1916 she was also an activist and a spokesperson for Native American matters. In 1901, Gertrude wrote an essay that was titled Why I am Pagan, published in Atlantic Monthly in 1902, which is considered an attempt to discredit Christianity which was threatening Native Americans' culture and traditions. Zitkala-Sa felt that the colonialists were hiding behind religion to enforce discriminatory policies against the Indians and wished that this hypocrisy would stop. This essay is indicative of the desire by the Native Americans to stick with their cultures in as much as they were being viewed as heathen, retrogressive and backward. Her writings are reflective of her childhood experiences, which were turned into pieces of writing for the world to see. Zitkala-Sa was keen on helping her readers to resonate with her unique knowledge of preserving a minority culture that was being threatened by a dominant one. This essay was also later included in her collection American Indian Stories under the name The Great Spirit. In 1913 Bonnin collaborated with William Hanson, a music composer, and they together wrote a libretto for the opera titled The Sun Dance. The opera was conceived by the authors as an alternative to the outlawed Sun Dance ceremonial of the Plains tribes.38 This spectacle that infused operetta, Plains Indians rituals and a melodramatic love triangle, provided Native Americans with an opportunity to participate in forbidden rituals. The Sun Dance was a palpable resistance to US government policies that were keen on suppressing the Native American cultures. Zitkala-Sa’s efforts at writing and performing Sun Dance proved fruitful as the New York Opera Guild selected this opera as the best opera in 1938.39 At the same time, she became the American Indian Magazine editor, a platform that paved the way for her to contribute editorials, articles, and poems. In line with this, Zitkala- Sa played a pivotal role in the pan-Indian Society of American Indians as its secretary.40 These two related roles meant that she had a more significant opportunity to advance her and
37 Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Zitkala-Sa.” February 18, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zitkala-Sa. 38 Jane P. Hafen "Zitkala Ša: Sentimentality and Sovereignty." Wicazo Sa Review 12, no. 2 (1997): 31-41. Accessed February 29, 2020. doi:10.2307/1409205. 39 Jane P. Hafen, “A Cultural Duet Zitkala-Sa and The Sun Dance Opera”, Great Plains Quarterly No 2, (Vol 18, Spring 1998, 102-11): https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2028/. 40 Mary Beth Norton et al., A People & A Nation: A History of the United States (Stamford: Cengage Learning, 2015), 455. 17
her community sentiments regarding their place in society. Her efforts were rewarded considering that the US passed legislation in 1924 that allowed Native Americans to apply and be granted US citizenship. Zitkala-Sa collaborated with Mathew Sniffen and Charles Fabens and jointly authored a political writing Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians, an orgy of graft and exploitation of the five civilized tribes, legalized robbery (1924). This publication is an expose revolving the grabbing of Indian land by the US government when oil was discovered in Oklahoma to the peril of the Indian owing to the ensuing mistreatment by the several American oil companies.41 Following such an unfortunate outcome, Gertrude founded and served as president of the National Council of American Indians with the hope of helping Indians to get justice. In her capacity, Gertrude advocated for improved healthcare, improved educational opportunities and cultural preservation and recognition. Of importance is the fact that she conducted investigations into cases of land grabbing affecting Native Americans, which landed her a position as an adviser at Merriam Commissioner. Zitkala-Sa efforts contributed to significant land reforms that favored Native Americans when it came to land ownership matters as was the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Zitkala-Sa's writing style is unique considering that it is reflective of her thoughts and events that shaped her life while growing up in such turbulent times for the indigenous people. Having lived in a minority community that was facing discrimination by the dominant majority, Zitkala-Sa’s writing indicates the emotional attachment to the Indians who were subjected to oppression in the 1880s. She lived at a time when the US government was continually finding ways of tightening its grip on the Indians through various policies. The most notable policy of the time is the 1883 Code of Indian Offenses aimed at discrediting traditional Indian religion in favor of Christianity. The system was focused on enforcing Christian doctrines at the expense of Indians customs, which Zitkala-Sa promoted in most of her literary pieces. Zitkala-Sa felt that the US government had run out of options regarding eliminating Native American culture and thus chose religion as the vehicle of oppression.
41 Zitkala-S̈ a, Charles H. Fabens, and Matthew K. Sniffen, Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery, Philadelphia, Pa.: Office of the Indian Rights Association, 1924. https://digitalprairie.ok.gov/digital/collection/culture/id/6553/. 18
Zitkala-Sa’s writing style adopts a nonfiction approach as the way of presenting the issues that revolve around the Native American communities concerning the Euro-American Christian domination.42
ii. American Indian Stories
The collection contains three autobiographical stories, an essay, a political report and selected poetry, each providing a different perspective on the kind of lives that Native Americans lived in the twentieth century. An analysis of these stories establishes Zitkala-Sa’s writing style which she used to present pressing issues in her Native American communities. Zitkala-Sa starts her collection with a chronological autobiography. The first story is called “The Impressions of an Indian Childhood” and presents almost idyllic childhood on the Dakota plains. She stresses the harmony that she felt as a part of her social and natural environment. During her childhood she first learned about the “palefaces”43 from her mother, how they forced their tribe out of their lands and how their family members had died during or as a result of the Trail of Tears. “The School Days of An Indian Girl” is a story in the American Indian Stories collection, which is more of Zitkala Sa’s account of her coming to age experience. The story starts with an excited Zitkala-Sa who is leaving her village on a steam engine, or the “iron horse”, as she calls it, to attend a residential school. However, on arrival to the new school, the excitement fades and in its place appears frustration as she realizes that the white school has strange and strict rules and regulations. She is forced to learn how to write, dress and eat like a white person, something that makes her aloof and incapable of making new friends. She mentions several major cultural differences, which she as a small child did not understand. She talks about a how a “rosy-cheeked paleface woman” tossed her in the air up and down and comments this as “my mother had never made a plaything of her wee daughter.”44 She considers such behavior inappropriate and rude. She mentions being stared at, which in her culture is considered very offensive. Her long hair is “shingled like a
42 Sidonie A. Smith and Julia Watson, Before They Could Vote: American Women’s Autobiographical Writing, 1819-1919 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 299. 43 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories (New York: Modern Library, 2019), Part 1, Apple Books. 44 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories. Part 2, Apple Books. 19
coward’s”45, where she describes how cutting of her hair made her feel, because in many tribes long hair represents a strong cultural identity, which promotes self-esteem, self-respect and sense of belonging, it is a part of a connection to family, tribe, the ancestors and the Creator himself.46 This story, which is written in first-person narration, allows the reader to focus on the cultures through the eyes of a stranger and pass judgment. It embodies the theme of Indian versus white religion and culture, where the writer communicates the natural longing for her home. Zitkala-Sa also protests such as when the white teacher showed them a book with an illustration of the devil on it. Little Zitkala-Sa found it distressing and she later scratched the devil’s eyes from the book, so it would not terrify her anymore. After several years she returns home for the summer and calls this period “four strange summers.”47 She talks about a distance that has emerged between her and her mother due to a cultural gap that was created by the time spent in the boarding school: My mother was troubled by my unhappiness. Coming to my side she offered me the only printed matter we had in our home. It was an Indian Bible, given her by a missionary. I took it from her hand, for her sake, but my enraged spirit felt more like burning the book, which afforded me no help, and was a perfect delusion to my mother.48
“The Indian Teacher among Indians” is Zitkala-Sa’s personal and narrative account of her life, which reflects her struggles while living within the expectations of white and Indian cultures. She wrote this story to show the complexity that Native Americans underwent with the call to assimilate to the white world. According to Zitkala-Sa, the US government felt that Native Americans had to learn English, start farming, and adopt Christianity if they were to survive and be part of the larger society. The writer criticizes this approach by saying, “In this fashion, many have passed idly through the Indian schools during the last decade… But few there are who have paused to question whether real or long- lasting death lies beneath this semblance of civilization.”49 This reference establishes the
45 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories, Part 2, Apple Books. 46 Barbie Stensgar, “The Significance of Hair in Native American Culture”, accessed February 2, 2020, https://sistersky.com/blogs/sister-sky/the-significance-of-hair-in-native-american-culture 47 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories, Chapter 2, Apple Books. 48 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories, Chapter 2, Apple Books. 49 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories, Chapter 2, Apple Books. 20
complex nature of societal clashes because the white culture was quite impulsive, causing family breakups and loss of cultural identity. The story depicts Zitkala-Sa’s frustration by being forced to assimilate and compromise her beliefs and thoughts, which do not offer solutions either. She had pursued education with the hope of becoming a better person only to realize that this education was primarily aimed at corrupting minds with superficial beliefs. “The Great Spirit” is a story that establishes the negative consequences that are associated with an attempt to force one culture onto another. In this story, Zitkala-Sa uses the juxtaposition of Christianity and the Great Spirit to establish the differences between two different cultures and viewpoints. Native Americans have their spirituality, which embodies God in nature and highlights the divinity of nature. The writer uses anthropomorphism as a way of describing the nature around her, which symbolizes the Great Spirit or God in her eyes. According to Zitkala-Sa, “cloud shadows in their noiseless play” and rivers “bespeak with eloquence the loving Mystery round about us.”50 The use of anthropomorphism helps the audience to understand the connection between the Great Spirit and life and its importance in writer's life. She feels the Great Spirit’s presence while looking at the flowers:
I seek the level lands where grow the wild prairie flowers. And they, the lovely little folk, soothe my soul with their perfumed breath. Their quaint round faces of varied hue convince the heart which leaps with glad surprise that they, too, are living symbols of omnipotent thought. With a child’s eager eye, I drink the myriad star shapes wrought in luxuriant color upon the green. Beautiful is the spiritual essence they embody.
The writer cannot help but far for those individuals who have been converted to Christianity and refers to them as “creatures” which is dehumanizing. Of Christianism she speaks as of the “bigoted creed” and “superstition.”51 A departure from the Great Spirit in favor of Christianity is indicative of a society that is bowing under pressure to assimilate. Sadly, Native Americans have failed to understand the value of their spirituality, which the writer personally prefers and feels more at ease with. While the Great Spirit offers life, conversion to Christianity is equated to death as the Native American converts seem to lose a part of themselves, which she shows on the example of her cousin, a convert preacher.
50 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories, Chapter 4, Apple Books. 51 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories, Chapter 4, Apple Books. 21
She writes about “creatures who are for a time mere echoes of another’s note.”52 Overall, the story is intended to provoke a thought in Native Americans to uphold their culture and identity, which is the only right thing to do according to Zitkala-Sa. “A Warrior’s Daughter” is a story that Zitkala-Sa wrote to challenge the cultural beliefs, which portrayed men as more advantaged compared to women. In the patriarchal Euro-American system, men were considered to possess more legal, political, social and economic rights as compared to women. In the same breath, women were viewed as vulnerable, permissive and passive while men were presented as being fierce, brave, and assertive. The story revolves around feminine power as it focuses on Tusee, a woman who causes the downfall of her enemy by using feminine charm. The enemy had captured Tusee’s lover during a battle, and it is up to her to rescue him. Tusee lured the enemy out with a smile who believes that “he has impressed her with his bravery and battle prowess. “53 The enemy agrees to follow Tusee into the darkness where Tusee kills him and ultimately rescues her lover. The story is indicative of conceited men who underestimate women for their weakness but end up falling prey to feminine charm. The story is a call to women to understand that they possess unique feminine powers, which they can use to deal with the challenges they face in life. It reminds women about the power Native women had in the pre-contact era and it is a call for Native women to be strong and proud and resist being assimilated into the mainstream American way of life. It is a reminder to Native women that they must fight to regain their position of gender equality, an important feature of Native American life, which was quashed by patriarchal American society. “A Dream of Her Grandfather” is a story that uses symbolism to a large extent to represent the rich Indian heritage. The main symbol in this short story is a chest that the main character got from her grandfather. She describes the chest “clean, strong, and durable in its native genuineness.”54 When she opened the chest, she saw visions of Indian childhood that
52 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories, Chapter 4, Apple Books. 53 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories, Chapter 5, Apple Books. 54 Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories, Chapter 5, Apple Books. 22
she remembers all too well. The story praises a strong and durable Indian culture, which is passed from one generation to the next. However, in this story Zitkala-Sa seems to bring in a hybridized culture and believes that it is possible to adopt the white culture in addition to Native American way of life. Despite the writer working in Washington, D.C. and speaking English well, she remembers her roots and treasures her Native values. This story seems to indicate that perhaps it is acceptable to explore the positive elements of other cultures as long as one is not enslaved by them. Zitkala-Sa tries to strike a balance between two conflicting cultures by showing no antagonism but instead sees both as having fundamental values in Native people’s lives.
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V. Late Twentieth Century and the Native American Renaissance
Native American literature grew spontaneously in the late twentieth century as writers sought to build upon what earlier writers had written concerning Native American experience. The century witnessed the rise of all literary genres most notably poetry and drama as well as a further development of the novel and non-fiction. Most of the Native Americans living in cities, following the Termination Policy of 1953 and the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, received significant college and university education, and thus “helped build the Indian professional middle class, which played a central role in revitalizing Indian life in the latter part of the twentieth century.”55 The exponential literary development is credited to the period of so called Native American Renaissance, which followed the publication of N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning House Made of Dawn in 1968, a period which marked an increased sense of achievement among the Indians. The 1960’s and 1970’s are also marked by the Red Power Movement, a movement for social rights of the Native Americans. The phrase Red Power expressed a sense of pan-Indian identity among the Native people, which was also expressed in the twentieth century’s literature. According to some sources, as e.g. the Yale National Initiative, there are two main waves of twentieth century Native American literature.56 The first wave starts with the publication of the already mentioned House Made of Dawn in 1969, a moment when Native Americans began to be recognized as successful authors. The fact is that only nine novels were published prior to 1968.57 The first wave is marked by the World War II, the terrible economic situation at the reservations and the loss of cultural identity which led to a return to Native roots and tribal values. Authors of the first wave are James Welsh, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko and N. Scott Momaday. The second wave reflects the aftermath of the Indian Self Determination and Educational Assistance Act of 1975 and is characterized by a search of identity and what it
55 Charles Wilkinson, Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations (Norton: New York, 2005), 65-66. 56 Tara Ann Carter, “First and Second Wave Native American Literature,” accessed March 19, 2020, https://teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/viewer/initiative_16.01.03_u. 57 Louis Owens, Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1992), 24. 24
means to be a Native American in an age, when civil rights and enfranchisement have been granted.58 Native Americans tried to position themselves in and outside of reservations. The Second Wave analyzes and explores what it is like to be an Indian and an American in the twentieth and twenty-first century. The authors of the Second Wave are Sherman Alexie, Joy Harjo, Paula Gunn Allen, Louise Erdrich, Diane Glancy and other modern writers.59 An analysis of these writers and their works establishes their immense contribution to the success of the modern Native American literature.
i. Novel Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Leslie Marmon Silko (1948), a Laguna Pueblo Indian writer, is one of the most iconic symbols of the Native American Renaissance. Leslie was raised in or near the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico. She did not have an opportunity to participate fully in the tribal rituals due to her mixed blood heritage, but she got a chance to learn about her Laguna heritage through the stories that her grandmother narrated to her. These stories sparked in Leslie an interest in Native Americans' heritage, culture, and literature and helped her to accept her mixed heritage. Her earliest work was a short story titled "The Man to Send Rain Clouds," which demonstrates the strength and resilience of Native people and brings to the fore Indians' perception of death and the conflict between Native American and Christian burial traditions. The Ceremony, a 1977 novel, is the most famous and acclaimed work by Leslie Marmon Silko. The novel opens to the reader the distinctive Pueblo and Navajo ceremonial practices and oral traditions against the backdrop of World War II. The plot revolves around Tayo, a half-breed Laguna Pueblo man who returns from World War II suffering from battle fatigue, today commonly known as post-traumatic stress disorder. He loses his cousin Rocky at the war and when seeing all the horrors of the war and killing of the Japanese, who he considered to be people just like him, he suffers a mental breakdown and stays seriously ill. Tayo feels that he is nothing but “white smoke” that “had no consciousness of itself”. He is hospitalized at the US Army mental hospital, but their treatments are turning him into an
58 Tara Ann Carter. Yale National Initiative. “First and Second Wave Native American Literature”, Accessed: March 19 2020, https://teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/viewer/initiative_16.01.03_u. 59 Carter, “First and Second Wave Native American Literature”. 25
“invisible scattered smoke”60, addressing his loss of identity amidst the “whiteness” of the Euro-American ways. As he realizes the doctors cannot help him, he starts his healing process by returning to his family, especially his grandmother who is a lady proud of her Native heritage. Tayo also has an “auntie” who becomes Christianised and who always, even though she raised him, was much closer to her own son Rocky. An important figure in Tayo’s life was his uncle Josiah, who died during Tayo’s time in war. He was the closest person to Tayo. His mother Laura, who died when Tayo was a child, was a prostitute and had Tayo with a white man, whom he never met. Laura was a disgrace to the family, and that is the reason for auntie’s distance towards Tayo. She never forgot to remind everyone that Tayo is not her son. Rocky is portrayed as an assimilationist, a football player, a good student at the white school, not adhering to the Native ways and calling them inferior. On the other hand, Tayo, even though a half-breed, has much more traditional view of life. He believes in the old traditions and the power of stories. He is also quite sensitive to other peoples’ attitudes and feelings, most likely due to his harsh childhood with his mother, his half-breed status and the family situation following her mother’s death. Tayo’s uncle was a cattle farmer, had Hereford and later Mexican cattle, which were a strong and intelligent breed to survive in draught and harsh conditions,61 which serve as a symbol of Native peoples’ endurance. Tayo always wanted to work with his uncle and was inclined on staying home, safe, within his culture and family. It was Rocky who made him enroll in war. As for the other characters in the novel, there is his childhood friend Harley, who after returning from war is a heavy alcoholic, which affects him tremendously, Emo, Tayo’s childhood friend, who is critical of Tayo and at the end even enraged against him, and Leroy, another childhood friend, who is Emo’s drinking buddy. It was the grandmother who noticed that the white doctors have not helped Tayo and suggested help of a medicine man Ku’oosh, who performed healing process with Tayo, and was partly successful. Tayo felt better physically but was still visibly ill psychologically and mentally. Ku’oosh calls the world “fragile”, suggesting that the world is easy to be harmed,
60 Silko, Ceremony, Apple Books. 61 Silko, Ceremony, Apple Books. 26
like a web, which even one person can destroy. Ku’oosh later sends Tayo to Betonie, a hazel- eyed Navajo with Mexican roots, who was a known medicine man. Ku’oosh was aware that Betonie was knowledgeable of different cultures, was educated in the white world and has traveled widely, which gave him a much better chance of understanding what Tayo is going through. At first Tayo did not trust Betonie, his hogan seemed too chaotic and poor, and he did not understand the meaning of the stories old Betonie was telling him. Betonie had all those strange old things coming from the white world62. Betonie explained to Tayo that “all these things have stories alive in them”63, that their energy could be used later in his healing process. Betonie tells him about the world below his Hogan in the mountains, the corrupted town, where all the Indian war veterans drank every day, slept with women, where there was violence and evil, coming from the clash with the “white” way of life and as the aftermath of the war. He tells him about the work of a medicine man and how it had to change in today’s complicated world, where everything becomes more complex. Betonie explained to Tayo that today the ceremonies must be changed to meet the demanding and constantly changing world. He tells Tayo that if he does not want his help, he could: go back to that white place, but if you are going to do that, you might as well go down there, with the rest of them, sleeping in the mud, vomiting cheap wine, rolling over women. Die that way and get it over with. In that hospital they don’t bury the dead, they keep them in rooms and talk to them.”64
He is referring to the ways medical psychiatry treated patients at the psychiatric hospital. Betonie knows that this kind of treatment is useless in Tayo’s case and is aware that Tayo’s sickness is a “part of something larger, and his cure would be formed only in something great and inclusive of everything.”65 Tayo learns from Betonie the basic narrative to fight the atrocities of the war, the immense evil it represented, because he felt all people are the same, he could not comprehend the terms “enemies”, “killing in the name of the country” etc. Betonie tells him “You saw
62 Silko, Ceremony, Apple Books. 63 Silko, Ceremony, Apple Books. 64 Silko, Ceremony, Apple Books. 65 Silko, Ceremony, Apple Books. 27
who they were. Thirty thousand years ago they were not strangers. You saw what the evil had done: you saw the witchery ranging as wide as this world.66” He tells him a story about the Ck’o’yo magic, when the witches, the ultimate ruling beings here called the Destroyers, in a game which turns wrong, create the white race as a tool for the destruction of the world. Betonie connects his illness with his responsibility to help the community. His healing will require his participation in the ceremony to find his role within the process. He will need to find the strands that connect him to the whole of humanity. Tayo meets Ts’eh, a medicine woman, a rainmaker, who teaches him about nature and love and tells him that his uncle Josiah’s cattle have been stolen by a white man. Tayo finds the cattle, which is an important part of his healing process. As the ceremony continues, Tayo realizes how “all the disparate voices of his dreams and all the previously entangled memories are delicately linked and interwoven into a single web.”67 After understanding that there is a force and a counterforce in all he does, he needs to find his position in everything that happens around him. He understands that he has the power to end his illness and whatever he chooses will affect the story, the Native Americans and the whole world. He realizes the counterbalance of birth and life over the destruction and death. He returns home, to his roots, recovers a connection to his birth mother and finally locates “a coherent identity and his place in the universe.”68 He succeeds in his quest, and the witchery is defeated for now. There are no chapters in the novel, the prose and poetry are interspersed throughout as to reflect the interconnectedness of all things. Jorge Luis Borges imagined God as a circular book – no beginning and no end.69 Silko here also suggests that there is no end and no beginning, all directly affects everything that follows. The past and present occur almost simultaneously, and in the novel past and present overlaps to form a uniform picture of life, again adopting the image of an interwoven web.
66 Silko, Ceremony, Apple Books. 67 Bonnie C. Winsbro, Supernatural Forces: Belief, Difference, and Power in Contemporary Works by Ethnic Women, (University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), 106. 68 Winsbro, Supernatural Forces, 107. 69 Dean Rader, Engaded Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film, From Alcatraz to the Nmai,” (Austin: University of Texas Press), 135. 28
The Ceremony is reflective of Leslie Marmon Silko’s experience of living in mixed cultures of Native Americans and the whites. The novel is indicative of the contact between these two cultures. Silko’s book does not call the white man evil. Betonio says to Tayo that he should not hate every white man, just like he cannot trust every Indian. Betonio and Tayo are both half-breeds, people with mixed genes, who represent clash of cultures, the typical people of the new world. The novel brings up an idea that universe has several worlds in it. Their Laguna world, founded on and directed by the spiritual and the world outside the Pueblo, the world separated from spirit and directed by science.70 We must balance the different world views this universe offers and find the one, in which we recognize ourselves. Only then we avoid confusion and loss of identity and become whole human beings. Tayo, by reconnecting with his family, succeeds in locating himself and his place in the universe. This is the main theme of the novel and the crucial message the author aimed to give to the Native Americans, but not only to them, the same could be applied to the whole of humanity. Stories as well as ceremonies have the power to reconnect people and allow for the healing process to happen.
ii. The Poetry of Joy Harjo
The late twentieth century witnessed the emergence and development of poetry as an independent literary genre capturing the Native American experience at the time. Joy Harjo (1951), a Muscogee poet, musician, playwright and author, is one of the most influential poets of this era and a first Native American US Poet Laureate. Joy Harjo has become the first Native American person to receive this title, which is the highest title a poet can get in the United States. Joy Harjo's poems draw heavily from Native Americans' histories and storytelling, which helps her come up with compositions on social justice and feminist issues. Moreover, her poems infuse Native American symbols, myths and values which in a way, helps in incorporating her unique experiences as a member of the Native American tribes. Her poems are based on landscapes that include the Southeast, Southwest, Hawaii, and Alaska which
70 Winsbro, Supernatural Forces, 108. 29
aim in capturing the Native Americans' life through poetic lenses. These landscapes are crucial as they aid in advancing the themes of transcendence and remembrance of Native American cultural underpinnings.71 Joy Harjo sees herself as tasked with the responsibility of representing her tribe, ancestors, women, and the world to advance their cause. Joy Harjo began publishing in 1975 with her first volume titled The Last Song and has written eight poetry books, children’s books and a memoir.72 The Last Song focuses on the clash of values, contrasting the traditional Native and the modern world. In 1980 Harjo published What Moon Drove Me to This? which is considered as the first full-length poetry volume. “Four Horse Songs”, one of the poems in this volume represents the use of a horse as a symbol in Joy Harjo’s works. Harjo established that a horse is a universal symbol for the Native American tribes, which helps her achieve psychic dualism. In this regard, the use of a horse helps individuals to view themselves both as part of and apart from nature. Harjo keeps this familial connection with horses, as she regards them as a species that has all aspects of humans.73 In 1983 Joy Harjo published her third collections of poems titled She Had Some Horses containing poems such as “Anchorage” and “Nandia,” which explore womanhood. These poems focus on women’s despair, their place in society, but also on how to break free, on their power and love. Secrets to the Centre of the World (1989) is Joy Harjo’s fourth poetry collection which allowed her to collaborate with Stephen Strom to expand her major ideas and concerns. The book is more of descriptive poetry as it combines poems with photographs of Navajo reservation in New Mexico. “My House is Red Earth,” one of the poems in this collection contrasts the reservation to great cities of the world, including Tokyo, Paris, and New York. This poem was also recorded as a song by “Jo Harjo and Poetic Justice”, a band where Harjo plays saxophone and sings.
71 Poetry Foundation, “Joy Harjo,” Accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/joy- harjo. 72 Kerri Lee Alexander, National Women’s History Museum, “Jo Harjo”, Accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/joy-harjo. 73 Adel El-Sayed Hassan, Sayed Sadek, “Animal Symbolism in Indian American Poetry,” European Scientific Journal April 2015 edition vol.11, No.11, https://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/article/view/5439/5228. 30
In 1990, Joy Harjo published In Mad Love and War, her fifth poetry volume which marked a break from the previous themes. “Deer Dancer,” “Rainy Dawn,” “We Encounter Nat King Cole as We Invent the Future”, “Bird,” and "City of Fire" are some of the poems found in this collection. “The Real Revolution is Love” and “City of Fire” are poems that demonstrate the power of love as viewed from both political and social contexts. The collection has won the 1991 American Book Award. The volume is divided into two sections, “The Wars,” which focuses on oppression and survival in the face of challenges and “Mad Love,” which is more quiet, lyrical and personal. Some of the poems in this collection include “Eagle Poem,” “Deer Dancer,” “We Must Call A Meeting” and “Strange Fruit.” An analysis of these poems will help shed light on the literary themes of the late twentieth century when this volume was written. “Deer Dancer,” which is drawn from the first section, is a unique poem that depicts a shift in lifestyle and moral culture. The deer is symbolic of the changes that have occurred in her community as people embrace a new culture that is very different from their own. Harjo uses the bar laden with lowlifes, strippers and thugs as a symbol to depict "broken survivors, the club of the shotgun, knife wound, of poison by culture.”74 The bar is not only symbolic of their meeting point but also indicates the hardships that the people face with the new moral reality. The bar is representative of remnants of her culture, which elicit painful memories, which can only be cured by sacred dances. These dances seem to cure women and men who are broken-hearted who are grappling with the harsh realities of shifting morals and lifestyles. This poem seems to indicate the need to embrace one's heritage and culture despite the pressure to assimilate to other contrary cultures in the modern world. “We must Call a Meeting,” is a prayer in song acknowledging the need to reconcile with the enemy. The poem establishes the need to use both determination and fragility in naming the community’s enemy as well a finding the way forward.75 The poem points to a search that is set to hunt down the enemy who is, for the most part, elusive and unknown. The poem employs creativity as a piercing arrow, which is “painted with lightning”, is
74 Jo Harjo, In Mad Love and War (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press), Apple Books, 5. 75 Sally Michael Hanna, Academia.edu, “War, Death and What Remains in the Poetry of Jo Harjo”, Accessed March 19, 2020, https://www.academia.edu/22548889/War_Death_and_What_Remains_in_the_Poetry_of_Joy_Harjo?auto=d ownload. 31
capable of transforming the enemy language into the nature’s language of “lizards and storms.”76 I am fragile, a piece of pottery smoked from fire made of dung, the design drawn from nightmares. I am an arrow, painted with lightning to seek the way to the name of the enemy, but the arrow has now created its own language. It is a language of lizards and storms, and we have begun to hold conversations long into the night.
The reader can establish that the poem has managed to infuse nature with humanity, which is a characteristic of Native American heritage. Harjo manages to delineate loss, starvation, grieving, and suffering, which are constant features of American Indian lives by invoking the powers vested in her ancestry and nature. Harjo views this as the only way of getting out of the ashes of destruction, which tend to define American Indian pain. In as much as the poem seems to be confrontational, it assumes a tone of inclusion and love necessary to survive. “Strange Fruit” is a famous poem from In Mad Love and War, a title, which is taken from the 1937 poem by a Jewish poet and songwriter Abel Meeropol and adapted into a famous song by Billie Holiday two years later. The original poem which is more historical than literary, captures the lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp members of the Ku Klux Klan group.77 The poem is an attempt to tell about the struggles associated with minority ethnic groups in the United States and is an example of the connection between Native Americans and African Americans which emerged during the slavery era and the Underground Railroad.78 It adopts a deep and robust tone to find justice for individuals who have suffered in the hands of white supremacists. Harjo says: How quickly I smelled evil, then saw the hooded sheets ride up in the not yet darkness, in the dusk carrying the moon, in the dust behind my tracks. Last night there were crosses burning in my dreams…
76 Jo Harjo, In Mad Love and War, 9 77 Dorian Lynskey, “Strange Fruit: the first great protest song”, The Guardian, Accesses Feb 30, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/feb/16/protest-songs-billie-holliday-strange-fruit. 78 Roy E. Finkenbine, “The Native Americans Who Assisted the Underground Railroad”, History News Network, The George Washington University, https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/173041. 32
Please go away, hooded ghosts from hell on earth. I only want heaven.79
Joy Harjo captures the historical events surrounding the Trail of Tears era which led to a special relationship between African Americans and Native Americans. Some of the African American slaves decided to join Native American communities when they were evicted from their homeland. Native Americans assisted African Americans once they escaped from the plantations by helping them to find secret houses and routes to escape into the free states. This poem is indicative of widespread racism and legal differences despite the abolishment of slavery. The poem could be viewed as an ingenious way of Harjo using Black Nationalism and consciousness to build upon national consciousness and inclusiveness. If one is to overcome oppression, he or she should stop viewing individuals or communities as separate entities but rather as united together in resisting oppression. “Eagle Poem,” which is the last poem in the collection In Mad Love and War, departs from the theme of oppression witnessed in other poems in this volume. It offers hope which is to be found in the relaxing and calming nature. The poem allows Joy Harjo to express herself more truly and write more freely while catching reader’s attention to view the beauty of nature. “Eagle Poem” indicates the fact that individuals can feel in place when they connect with nature. Nature allows one to open and feel oneself in a better way without fear of being judged. Nature is a central aspect of Native Americans who feel connected to the sun, moon, the sky, the earth, and the animals. The poem emphasizes the need for prayer as a way of uniting with nature in a circle of never-ending interconnectedness. Joy Harjo says in the “Eagle Poem”: To pray you open your whole self To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon To one whole voice, that is you.
We are truly blessed because we Were born, and die soon within a True circle of motion, Like eagle rounding out the morning Inside us. We pray that it will be done In beauty.
79 Jo Harjo. In Mad Love and War. 12. 33
In beauty.80
Overall, the poem is a call for individuals to forget the pat pain and open to the possibility of communing with nature and the sublime through a prayer. According to the document Surrounded by Beauty: Arts of Native America from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, in Native American thought there is no distinction between what is beautiful or functional, and what is sacred or secular.81 The document mentions that design goes far beyond concerns of function, and beauty is much more than simple appearances. For many Native peoples, beauty arises from living in harmony with the order of the universe.82 The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994) is the seventh in the line of Joy Harjo’s poetry collection, published in 1994. The collection, which consists of prose poems, revolves around the forces involved in creating and destroying the modern world. The book comprises two sections namely Tribal Memory and The World Ends Here. Both parts are indicative of Joy Harjo’s experiences about Native American ancestry as well as contemporary life. This collection is known for a poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here”, which uses an interesting metaphor of a kitchen table. It is not an apocalyptic poem, as the title may suggest. The poem tells about life, which begins and ends at the table, encompasses the whole human life The best and the worst of human life happens here, it is so comforting that children feel safe there, many emotions arise at and around the kitchen table. Harjo says: “Our dreams drink coffee with us and put their arms around our children”83, which suggests family and friends, community, open and welcoming space, home, which is always welcoming, not judgmental. People have different concepts of their kitchen table, but it is always very personal. In a video interview for the Ikeda Center, Professor Wider from the Colgate University suggests that this poem brings us the concept of how we might bring these “kitchen tables”, the idea of safety and openness with us everywhere we go, so we can be our best selves.84
80 Jo Harjo, In Mad Love and War, 65. 81 Minneapolis Institute of Art, “Surrounded by beauty: Arts of Native America”, 1. Accessed March 19, 2020, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED481924.pdf. 82 Minneapolis Institute of Art, “Surrounded by beauty: Arts of Native America”. 83 Joy Harjo, Poetry Foundation, “Perhaps the World Ends Here”, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49622/perhaps-the-workd-ends-here. 84 Sarah Wilder, “Metaphor of the Kitchen Table,” interview by Daisaku Ikeda, Ikeda Center, February 23, 2015. https://www.ikedacenter.org/media-galleries/videos/wider. 34
An American Sunrise, published in August 2019, is the eighth poetry collection that tackles and confronts the injustices meted on Native Americans. Some of the poems in this collection include “Washing My Mother’s Body,” “Granddaughters,” “My Man’s Feet,” and “For Earth’s Grandsons.” Together these poems help Joy transform ancestral and tribal memories, and culture into feelings of compassion grief, acceptance, and togetherness to forge a new beginning. Harjo’s poems often leave the readers with aching hearts, but there is also the resilience and love for nature, and a belief that through a tough road through collective memory there is a more equitable world awaiting. The last poem of the collection “Bless This Land” allows for reconnecting with the land, together with the title poem “American Sunrise” suggests unity, peace and beauty in the Native sense:
Bless us, these lands, said the rememberer. These lands aren’t our lands. These lands aren’t your lands. We are this land.
And the blessing began a graceful moving through the grasses of time, from the beginning, to the circling around place of time, always moving, always 85
The idea of being connected to the ancestors through the land is one of the most important aspects of the Native culture, a reason why Native tribes consider their lands sacred, and why losing the land which was so dear to them, was more painful and destructive that we non- Natives can ever imagine. Paula Gunn Allen quotes chief Luther Standing Bear: “We are the soil and the soil is of us.”86 This is, according to Allen, a fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life, the land (Mother) and the people (mothers) are the same. Jo Harjo says that there needs to be a counterbalance to hate speech, the divisiveness, and that it is possible with poetry.87 As a poet, but also as a musician and author she has played an immense role in the American literature sphere and the Native American sense of self-awareness. She inspires women and allows Native people to get in touch with their roots. As a U.S. Poet Laureate, she has mastered the English language and adapted it to for the
85 Joy Harjo, “Bless This Land”, World Literature Today, Accesses March 10, 2020, https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2019/autumn/bless-land-joy-harjo. 86 Paula Gunn Allen. The Sacred Hoop, 119. 87 Joy Harjo, “The First Native American U.S. Poet Laureate on How Poetry Can Counter Hate”, interview with Olivia Baxman Time, August 22, 2019, Issue September 2, 2019. https://time.com/5658443/joy-harjo- poet-interview/. 35
Native purpose. She offers her talents and charisma to the Native community to heighten their self-esteem through reviving and celebrating the Native culture and heritage.
iii. Non-fiction by Paula Gunn Allen
Paula Gunn Allen (1939-2008), a Native American poet, literary critic, activist, professor and novelist, was a great contributor to Native American Literature in the late twentieth century through her poetry, novels and anthologies, but she is mainly known for her anthropological non-fiction writings. In her work she draws from experiences and sentiments as a Laguna Pueblo with European-American descent but identifying more as a Native American. Allen is considered a feminist writer who focused on the role of Native American women on the background of the mainstream patriarchal society. Allen stressed the notion that Europeans had deemphasized the role of women in society as they based their views through patriarchal lenses. In pursuit of this feminist objective, she focused more on non- fiction as she considered it to be the best way to capture the situation as it was real and, on the ground, as opposed to fictional writing. Allen is considered one of the most influential Native American writers, her work sparking the beginning of Native American feminism. She was capable of exploring the pertinent issues affecting the Native women. She was an advocate for the inclusion of Native American voices in the mainstream of American literature.88 The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, a collection of critical essays published in 1986, is one of the most critical and pioneer non- fiction works written by Paula Gunn Allen. The book focuses on American Indian traditions, which are presented as profound as compared to the system that threatens them. Women are central to the preservation of these traditions as the book emphasizes on a tribal life that is centered around women. The book draws its title from the Native American concept of the Medicine Wheel or the Sacred Hoop, based on the Sioux concept that everything is intertwined, it is a symbol of unity, the circle of life.
88 Jocelyn Y. Stewart, “Champion of Native American Literature,” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 2008, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jun-07-me-allen7-story.html. 36
The book is divided into various sections with the first section titled “The Ways of Our Grandmothers,” focuses on Native Americans' traditions, myths and rituals. The essays in this section counter the stereotypical views of Native women by examining female deities, the honored place of lesbians in the Native communities and the importance of mothers and grandmothers to the Indian identity.89 This section explores the effects of the genocide through several centuries in a patriarchal-based colonial era and introduces the term gynocracy90, in context of certain powers Native women had inside their tribes. Allen takes this opportunity to clear popular misconceptions regarding how Native Americans treat and view their womenfolk. The section ends with Allen’s personal experience as a Native American woman with a focus on being a Keres Laguna woman. In the first part’s essay “Grandmother of the Sun,” Allen introduces the Laguna female deity of the Thought Woman, whose name was in ceremonies changed to Spider Woman. Pueblo tribes’ creation myth is this:
Ts’its’tsi’nako, Thought-Woman, is sitting in her room and whatever she thinks appears. She thought of her sisters, Nau’ts’ity’i and I’tcts’ity’i, and together they created the Universe this world and the four worlds below. Thought-Woman, the spider, named things and as she named them, they appeared.91
According to the older texts, Allen mentions, Thought Woman is not limited to a female role in the theology of the Laguna people. Since she is considered the Creatrix, the supreme Spirit, she is both mother and father to all people and all creatures. She is the only creator of thought and thought precedes creation.92 In this essay Allen also brings forth at that time a controversial topic of the already mentioned gynocracy among certain tribes, to which her own tribe of the Keres Laguna Pueblo belongs. She describes the system having dyadic structure, which emphasizes complementary rather than opposing roles and compares the relationship between the masculine and the feminine as analogous to the external and internal
89 Stewart, “Champion of Native American Literature.” 90 Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop, 13. 91 Silko, Ceremony, Apple Books. 92 Allen, The Sacred Hoop, 15. 37
fire, the relationship of sun and earth.93 The end of the essays evaluates the importance of the word Mother, carrying a higher sacred meaning, and Allen supposes there is much more to mothering than the power to give birth, but that there is the power to make, create, and transform.94 Allen concludes that woman-centered societies are cultures that value peacefulness, harmony and cooperation due to the parallel worlds of male and female roles. The second part of the book, which is titled “The Word Warriors,” studies both indigenous and modern tribal literature concerning Native American thought, culture, style, and structure. Apart from exploring the tribal perspective, this section establishes that tribal literature cannot be approached from a Western perspective, as it would lead to bias. Instead, Native American literature should be studied within the tribal confines if it should make sense and stand out among world literature. She also brings out the importance of oral traditions to the Indian resistance and the fact that contemporary Native American poets and writers take their cue from the oral tradition, to which they return for theme, symbols and inspiration, as well as philosophic bias.95 She compares the differences in Native American symbolism, where symbols found in nature lead to thought, a mystical and psychic journey.96 The final section, which is titled “Pushing up the Sky,” focuses on the issues that affect modern American Indian Women. This section, which is pro-feminist, is Allen’s attempt to encourage women who struggle with various alarming social and psychological issues facing the Native communities. It is also a result of Allen’s involvement specifically in lesbian feminism and gay rights on the background of how these people were regarded in their tribes before the patriarchal propaganda. Allen stresses that the traditional roles, as understood by Christians, were not as strict among the Natives, individuals fit into the roles on the basis of proclivity and temperament.97 Gay men were sometimes played a role of “women” in terms of their roles, and on the other hand lesbians (“dikes”) were designated as men in tribal cultures, according to Allen. The end of the book raises the strength of Native American Women and here Allen brings up an interesting notion of continuance of women’s traditions and the “transitoriness”
93 Allen, The Sacred Hoop, 19. 94 Allen, The Sacred Hoop, 29. 95 Allen, The Sacred Hoop, 53. 96 Allen, The Sacred Hoop, 68. 97 Allen. The Sacred Hoop, 196. 38
of men.98According to her the male principle is transitory and the female is permanent. If the female principle is enduring, she realizes that the Indians are not doomed to extinction but rather will endure.99 It is a call to women to stay true to their female principle and to be proud and unafraid. According to a Cheyenne proverb “a nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it’s finished, no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons.”100 As Long As the River Flow (1996) is yet another nonfiction work by Paula Allen Gunn, which she coauthored with Patricia Clark Smith. It is a collection of dramatic essays focusing on the lives of respected Native Americans. The title of the book is related to the language that was used to establish treaties between the Native Americans and the US government, most of which were breached. The book covers both female and male historical and contemporary figures drawn from several tribes and academic disciplines. Some of the individuals that have been studied in the book include Louise Erdrich, Geronimo, Will Rogers, Weetamoo, Jim Thorpe, and Wilma Mankiller. Gunn Allen and Smith create cultural mosaic into which each of these individuals fits with Native American cultural underpinnings. Off the Reservation (1998) is a collection of both published and yet unpublished essays exploring the relationship between Native American and Western cultures. Paula focuses on finding a connection between these two cultures to deal with the demands of a global multicultural community. These essays deal with Native America life, women’s issues, and spirituality, western world’s silencing of women and violence towards them, which mirrors its relation to Native people.101 These academic essays are her reflections on the concept of gynosophy,102 the idea of “female source of social authority”, and on the “notion of society based on the feminine.”103 Some of the essays in this volume are more
98 Allen. The Sacred Hoop, 267. 99 Allen. The Sacred Hoop, 267. 100 Goodreads, “Cheyenne Proverbs.” Accessed March 20, 2020, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/857542. 101 Colleen M. Tremonte, “Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-Busting, Border-Crossing Loose Canons by Paula Gunn Allen (review).” Western American Literature. Volume 35, No 2 (Summer 2000): 204-206, https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2000.0010. 102 Tremonte, “Off the Reservation”. 103 Allen, The Sacred Hoop, 81. 39
personal, almost autobiographical, dealing with identity awareness of a mixed blood individual. Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat (2003), is a biographical story of the famous Pocahontas from the Native American perspective. The story of an Indian maiden who helped Jamestown colony to survive. Her marriage to John Rolf helped to bring peace between Native Americans and colonialists. Allen offers a fresh, new look at the story and includes contemporary view on the historical meeting of the two cultures and the ongoing fight for freedom and equal rights for all people.104 Paula Gunn Allen was a prolific author and renowned scholar, and is considered as a first native American feminist, empowering Native women throughout the United States. She is also credited with founding women’s Native American spirituality as an academic discipline.105 In her work she dealt with the themes of democracy, feminism and equality. In the Sacred Hoop she also elaborated on the restoration of gay and lesbian Native Americans and stressing the roles and powers they held in Native communities. She played a role in establishing the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures.106 For her whole life she promoted Native American writings and culture and received numeral literary awards for her life-long writing of exceptional quality.
iv. Ranging across Genres in Storyteller
Storyteller, which was published in 1981, is a crucial literary piece by Leslie Marmon Silko that contributed to the development of Native American literature in the late twentieth century. Storyteller is neither a novel nor a collection of a particular literary genre, but rather a multi-genre collection of short stories, poems, mythology, autobiography and photographs that depict Laguna Pueblo culture and traditions. In a way, Storyteller could be viewed as an attempt to move beyond the mainstream literary forms by incorporating various genres, taking its form from the Native American storytelling. The short story of the same name
104 Theresa C. Dintino. “Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat by Paula Gunn Allen (First Published in 2003),“ Accessed April 1, 2020, https://nastywomenwriters.com/pocahontas-medicine- woman-spy-entrepreneur-diplomat. 105 Anette Van Dyke, “A Tribute to Paula Gunn Allen (1939-2008),” Studies in American Indian Literatures, Winter 2008, Series 2, vol.20, No.4, pp. 68-75, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20737444. 106 Van Dyke, “A Tribute to Paula Gunn Allen (1939-2008)”, 71. 40
focuses on the clash of cultures in Alaska was first published in 1975 in Puerto de Sol journal. The text indicates that the landscape, stories, and the people are woven together, and is about recreating this interconnectedness in readers. Silko understands the importance of the reader, and it is for this reason that Silko invites readers from the start so that they, too, can contribute to enhancing Laguna’s sovereignty and continuity. Silko writes:
As with any generation the oral traditions depend upon each person listening and remembering a portion and it is together_ all of us remember what we have heard together_ that creates the whole story the long story of the people107
The Storyteller is focused on establishing the importance of Native American narratives and storytelling. Narratives and stories are presented as possessing the ability to shape individuals and communities. “Storyteller” revolves round the clash of cultures within an indigenous Alaskan community concerning an upcoming Eskimo storyteller. The Eskimos must confront the “Gussucks” who are not interested in living in this community but are keen only on exploiting the people and their territory. Leslie used the term "Gussucks" as a derivation of the word "cossack” to refer to outsiders in general, a Yupik word that refers to any non-indigenous person.108 The story also focuses on the main character who resist the American culture which is evidenced by her resistance to speak English in school as required. The young woman is portrayed as a becoming storyteller, her role cannot be separated from the theme of resistance and cultural clash. She desires revenge following the death of her parents at the hands of a red-haired Gussuck. However, the reader can establish that her concerns represent the broader concerns of her Native American community that struggles against cultural interlopers. Silko uses the community storyteller to witness, record and relate circumstances and events that are of communal importance.
107 Silko, Storyteller, Apple Books. 108 Silko. Storyteller, Apple Books. 41
Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller should be viewed as a “tribalography” where Indian storytellers adopt various voices, stories or genres to tell their stories. The term was created by a Choctaw scholar LeAnne Howe, meaning not completely fiction or history but a story that draws on the past, present, and future, facts and imagination, the spaces between reality and memory.109 Native stories put all these elements together, as storytellers would naturally do to present their stories to their audience. The narrator, in this case, uses varied voices to pass on the community’s tribal values and spiritual beliefs. At one point, the storyteller is an Eskimo girl tricking her parents’ killer to his death and, at another time, a child who torments her uncle’s goat. The narrator also assumes the role of a mystic Yellow Woman who, together with her lover, rides the mountains. At other times, Leslie uses male characters to narrate stories, most specifically in an amusing story "Coyote Holds a Full House in His Hand” and in “Tony’s Story.” In “Tony’s story” the main character himself is the narrator, meeting an old friend of his, Leon, who has just returned from the army. He yells Tony’s name, which is not considered good manners among the Pueblo Natives. Afterwards Tony notices a brown bag hiding a bottle of wine underneath, which explains Leon’s behavior. Tony has been drinking, as many returning veterans did. The narrator also says that Leon “grabbed my hand and held it tight like a white man,”110 noticing that Leon’s Indian ways were maybe lost during the time he served in the army. Later there is a scene with a cop wearing dark sunglasses. The cop had approached the man and without speaking he hit Leon in the face. Stories about witches came to Tony’s mind, he had a dream about the cop pointing “a long bone at me – they always use human bones. He didn’t have a human face – only little, round white-rimmed eyes on a black ceremonial mask.”111 Here Silko’s witchery concept appears again, the one already dealt with in the novel Ceremony. The term witchery means manipulation of evil, disorder, and disharmony.112 Just like the old masks, the eyes were not seen and children were not supposed
109 Jill Doerfler, “An Anishinaabe tribalography: investigating and interweaving conceptions of identity during the 1910s on the White Earth reservation.” The American Indian Quarterly. Vol 33, No 3 (Summer 2009): 295-324, accessed March 21, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1353/aiq.0.0052. 110 Silko, Storyteller, “Tony’s Story,” Apple Books. 111 Silko, Storyteller, “Tony’s Story,” Apple Books. 112 Jennifer McClinton-Temple and Alan Velie, American Indian Literature (New York: Facts on File Inc., 2007), 347. 42
to look at the mask’s eyes. Tony was becoming aware about who they are dealing with, but Leon was not able to see the truth, he talked about law and rights instead. Tony knew that “it wasn’t rights that he was after, but Leon didn’t seem to understand; he couldn’t remember the stories that old Teofilo told.”113 The stories of an old storyteller, who provided the pre- contact wisdom to the Pueblo children and which Tony did not forget. Tony offered an arrowhead on a string to Leon for protection, but Leon laughed and refused to accept. He said he doesn’t believe in that, he believed in his .30-30 gun.114 Once when they were driving to Leon’s uncle’s sheep camp, the cop was again following them. He pulled them over, again with his sunglasses on. Tony knew what they must do “We’ve got to kill it, Leon. We must burn the body to be sure.”115 Tony was addressing the cop as “it”, knowing what “it” is, Leon still was unaware. The cop “moved towards Leon with the stick (referring to a billy club) raised high, and it was like the long bone in my dream when he pointed it at me.”116 Tony shot him in a trance, without even remembering aiming. Leon was terrified and Tony said calmly “Don’t worry, everything is O.K. now, Leon. It’s killed. They sometimes take on strange forms.”117 Referring of course to the witches, as we know from the Ceremony, the Destroyers. What is put into contrast here is the law, either Pueblo law or the U.S. Constitution, which is being mentioned by Leon and which he turns to and trusts versus the pre-contact oral storytelling of the old storyteller, which Tony believes in and through which lenses he understands the world around him. Silko, as Tony, wants to see the world differently, she wants to show how it could be understood through the pre-contact eyes. An important aspect of the Storyteller book are the family photographs, taken by Silko’s father, a Pueblo photographer. Silko’s desire was to create temporal fluidity where future, present, and past possibilities can coexist. The three family photographs that follow immediately after the section titled “Coyote Holds a Full House in His Hand” help advance this fluidity. The first photograph was of Leslie when she was a teenager with her horse Joey, and the second photograph is a portrait of her grandfather while the third photograph depicts
113 Silko, Storyteller, “Tony’s Story,” Apple Books. 114 Silko, Storyteller, “Tony’s Story,” Apple Books. 115 Silko, Storyteller, “Tony’s Story,” Apple Books. 116 Silko, Storyteller, “Tony’s Story,” Apple Books. 117 Silko, Storyteller, “Tony’s Story,” Apple Books. 43
her grandfather as a young boy. The photos indicate the importance of Silko’s ancestors in her development as an author and storyteller. In Storyteller Silko tried to present the Native American oral traditions in writing and managed to capture the spirit of storytelling at its best. These stories are told in a seamless manner where the past and the present are linked seamlessly to celebrate the survival of the Laguna community as well as its stories. Some stories aim to entertain, while others serve as prophetic interpretations of the modern world.118 From the Storyteller, one can conclude that Silko has managed to exhibit her brilliance and imagination to capture different aspects of Native American storytelling culture.
118 Jennifer McClinton-Temple, American Indian Literature, 347. 44
VI. Proliferation of Drama
The late twentieth century witnessed serious development of Native American drama as a literary genre. Even though throughout the history the Native tribes had their performative traditions including ritual, ceremony, pow wows, and dance, the theatrical development was suppressed since the start of the European colonization. It was in the second half of the century, after the Native American Renaissance, when Native playwrights had a chance to develop these performative traditions into a full genre. The Native drama takes its inspiration in the Native traditional storytelling, as other genres of Native art often do. As with the other genres, it took some time to evaluate the old traditions and transform them into a dramatic form. During this transformation the critics called for a better awareness of the problematic “translation of one culture’s performance events into another people’s language.”119 The rise of the Civil Rights Movement and the Red Power social and political movement helped to start a renewal of the Native American culture and pride, which was being reflected also in the form of drama being written by Native playwrights for Native actors. The development of Native drama was possible because of several Native theatre companies, which allowed Native people to have creative control of their work.120 In 1971 the American Indian Theatre Ensemble (NATE) was established. NATE’s aim was to become a pan-tribal company and put together all the Native tribes in the quest of creating Native theatre by Indians for Indians, that would address the so cial and political issues that were applicable to all Native tribes at that time as poverty, alcoholism and loss of spiritual strength.121 In 1976 the Spiderwoman Theatre was created by Muriel Miguel and her two sisters as a woman-focused theatre, inspired by the feminist movement of the 1970s. Performances throughout the 1970s and 1980s were about women’s issues, gender roles, cultural stereotypes and sexual and economic oppression, and violence in women’s lives.122 In their
119 Linda Carol Walsh Jenkins, The Performance of Native Americans as American Theatre: Reconnaissance and Recommendations (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1975), 66. 120 David Krasner, “A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama” (Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 337. 121 Krasner, “A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama, 338. 122 Hemispheric Institute, “Spiderwoman Theatre,” accessed February 20, 2020, https://hemisphericinstitute.org/en/hidvl-interviews/itemlist/category/476-spiderwoman-theater. 45
play “Reverb-Ber-Ber-Rations” the sisters talk about the gift which “we all have and through which we maintain our connections with our ancestors and layers of existence.”123 The play draws from Native spiritual traditions and through the image of weaving the web, the performance weaves its story in a hope to pass the importance of connectedness to the audience. At the end of the play Muriel Miguel addresses the audience directly with the aim to pass the healing power of stories not only to the people watching, but also for the future generations: I am an Indian woman. I am proud of the women that came before me. I am a woman with two daughters. I am a woman with a woman lover. I am a woman whose knowledge is the wisdom of the women in the family. I am here now. I say this now because to deny these events About me and my life Would be denying my children.124
The Spiderwoman Theatre is the longest-running Native theatre which is still opened and still welcoming its audiences at the LaMaMa in Brooklyn, NY. Women writers of this century started writing plays that could be staged in various theatres to highlight Native American literary background. The most notable women playwrights of the century include Diane Glancy, Joy Harjo, Leanne Howe, and Linda Hogan. Diane Glancy (Cherokee), is one of the most prolific Native American writers, known for her novels and poetry and with over ten plays in her name since 1995. Her plays focus on the Native American experience by highlighting both the successes and challenges of the Native American culture. Some of Glancy's work include Woman Who Was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance (1995), War Cries: A Collection of Plays (1997), and from the newer works it is e.g. American Gypsy: Six Native American Plays (2002) and The Words of My Roaring (2006).
123 Hemispheric Institute, “Reverb-Ber-Ber-Rations,” Accessed February 21, 2020, https://hemisphericinstitute.org/en/hidvl-collections/1704-reverb-ber-ber-rations.htm. 124 Krasner, “A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama, 344.
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i. Woman Who Was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance
Woman Who Was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance, a first play by Diane Glancy (1941), written in 1995, is a play that focuses on the conflict that plays out between two main characters, the Grandmother and the Girl. It takes form of dialogues/monologues between the two characters, each defending her own way of life. Glancy is keen on resolving this conflict and creates an ambivalent outcome, a third space of spirituality, storytelling and traditions, which are the means to bridge the gap among different generations in a wider context among different cultures.125 Glancy, as many other Native American writers, deals with the ways of overcoming differences to live in a more harmonious world. She is a firm believer in the importance of cultural identity in dealing with the noticeable cultural differences exhibited by different tribes and the mainstream society. The Girl in this play is in a state of denial as she does not freely accept her cultural affiliation and heritage. The Girl’s attempt to understand her Grandmother, who represents an entirely different generation, is not easy owing to obvious communication problems. The Grandmother, a non-talkative person, is keen on preserving her culture and her character underscores the importance of the Native spiritual heritage and traditional storytelling as means of helping to overcome the girl’s feelings of isolation and non-belonging. The granddaughter talks about contemporary life, she does not believe in spirits, she no longer feels connected with her ancestors. She is influenced by the material world, does not understand her relationships with men, is unstable with jobs and uncertain of her place in the world. The Grandmother talks of Ahw’uste, a mythological female spirit deer. The girl is not able to listen, she asks: “How can you be a deer?” (in a deer dance). “You only have two legs?”, which suggests the Girl is only focusing on what she can see, on the material face of life. The Grandmother answers “I keep the others under my dress.” Suggesting there are things in life which we believe exist, even though we cannot see them. Later the
125 Marwah Mohammed, “Harmony of the Fabric in Society in Diane Glancy’s The Woman Who Was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance.” (University of Baghdad, College of Education for Women, 2018: 2), accessed February 10, 2020, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327646839_Harmony_of_the_Fabric_of_Society_in_Diane_Glancy' s_The_Woman_Who_Was_a_Red_Deer_Dressed_for_the_Deer_Dance. 47
Grandmother confirms her opinion “I don’t like this world anymore. We’re reduced to what can be seen.” The timelines intertwine, sometimes the Girl looks back at talking to her Grandmother from the future:
She said once there were wings the deer had when it flew. You couldn’t see them, but they were there. They pulled out from the red-deer dress. Like leaves opened form the kitchen table – Like the stories that rode on her silence. You knew they were there. But you had to decide what they meant. Maybe that’s what she gave me – the ability to fly when I knew I had no wings. When I was left out of the old world that moved in her head. When I had to go on without her stories. They get crushed in this world. But they’re still here. I hear them in the silence sometimes. I want to wear a deer dress. I want to deer dance with Ahw’uste-126
The Girl experiences problems fitting into the modern world, she talks about her negative experiences with several men, she cannot keep a job, but still she defends her way of life. The Grandmother sights “Why can’t my granddaughter wait on the spirit? Why is she impatient? It takes awhile sometimes,”127 referring to the instant world that surrounds us and warning the Girl about the consequences of losing touch with one’s self: “ The spirits push us out so we’ll know what it’s like to be without them. So, we’ll struggle all our lives to get back in.”128 At one point the Grandmother questions the spirits, saying that they let her down a few times, that her life has been hard. At the last part of the play the Girl, in the future, reconnects with the Grandmother, while having a series of job interviews, indicating that she is still trying to find her way in the system. She realizes that commodities are not the most important thing, she is able to be “reeled in” by her ancestors, she had sewn her own style of a red-deer dress “a dress of words”129 she calls it, and is able to finally see Ahw’uste also. Thus, she has managed to find her true self, to realize what she can do and how to take advantage of it. She says her
126 Diane Glancy, American Gypsy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 9. 127 Glancy, American Gypsy, 15. 128 Glancy, American Gypsy, 15. 129 Glancy, American Gypsy, 18.
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Grandmother did not teach her to make her own deer dress, but she took her traditions and wisdom and transformed it into words, into something of her own, something which helped her to stand up to materialism herself. She suddenly realized what the Grandmother was trying to make her understand:
At the fifth interview I continued – I’m sewing my own red-deer dress. It’s different than my grandma’s. Mine is a dress of words. I see Ahw’uste also. My grandma covered her trail. Left me without covering. But I make a covering she could have left me if only she knew how.130
The Girl realizes the supernatural when she thinks of her Grandmother. “I think I hear her sometimes – that crevice you see into the next world. You look again, it’s gone.”131 She thus understands there is a link to her ancestors. Furthermore, she asserts her fusion with nature, a characteristic of Native American philosophies:132 “My heart has red trees. The afterworld must be filling up with leaves.”133 In this play Glancy celebrates the Native identity, but at the same time incorporates this “otherness” into the real modern world and shows that it is not impossible to live in the mainstream and build on the connection with the past. It is a genuine guideline on how to connect the present and the past, how to gain strength and resilience. It is the harmony of one’s self and the harmony of society that Glancy strives in many of her works.
ii. Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light
Joy Harjo (1951) is another Native American female author who contributed to the growth and proliferation of drama as an independent literary genre. The most notable play that was written by Harjo is Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light introduced in 2008. It is a one woman show, where Harjo tell stories, sings songs, plays saxophone, recites poetry, and dances. Here again a typical fusion of genres was implemented, a form that is central to any
130 Glancy, American Gypsy, 18. 131 Glancy, American Gypsy, 18. 132 Marc Maufort, Labyrinth of Hybridities. Avatars of O’Neillian Realism in Multi-ethnic American Drama (1972-2003) (Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang S.A., 2010), 165. 133 Glancy, American Gypsy, 18. 49
Native American ceremony. But apart from the ceremonial purpose of the play, Harjo says: “it’s a dramatic show with a character and a story. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”134 There are only two characters in the play. The main character Redbird, with a role of a Spirit Helper, who is a Muscogee woman of uncertain age, and a Guardian Musician, a guitar player, who accompanies Redbird on her journey.135 He sits at the right corner of the stage. The play starts with a myth involving a rabbit, a trickster figure. The trickster character takes on different forms in Native American storytelling, often he is portrayed as a coyote. This rabbit, out of boredom, creates a man out of clay without any real purpose. The man copies and learns from the trickster, his master, and as a result he demonstrates insatiable hunger for women, games, and later riches, throwing the world into chaos. “Soon it was countries and then it was trade. The wanting infected the earth. We lost track of the purpose and reason for life.”136 Here Harjo suggests the clay man’s greed is “our greed, the very greed that drives our capitalistic society.137 At this point, the rabbit understood that he had made a fatal mistake when creating the clay man, calling him back and wanting him to stop, but the man did not listen. The rabbit realized he had created a man with no ears. The nature was being destroyed due to the man’s greed and as a result the rabbit had no place to play. The trick had backfired on him. Following the rabbit story there is a scene when the main character Redbird tells about two women walking the Trail of Tears, singing and holding each other up when they couldn’t walk anymore, giving each other courage and determination to continue together, even to the highest place.138 Those two stories open up the play and introduces the purpose of the ceremony being performed with the audience. The play sets the theme of dysfunctional family relations, Redbird talks to the Spirit Helper about the “keeper”, her mother’s second husband, who was a domineering sadist. She
134 Craig Harris, Heartbeat, Warble, and the Electric Powwow: American Indian Music (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 114. 135 Joy Harjo, and Priscilla Page, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2019), Apple Books. 136 Harjo. Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. Apple Books. 137 Priscilla Page. “Reflections on Joy Harjo, Indigenous Feminism, and Experiments in Creative Expression”, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. Apple Books. 138 Harjo. Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. Apple Books. 50
talks about losing her soul, because she was not allowed to play music at the house, and the keeper has destroyed her records, which brought happiness to her life. The Spirit Helper reveals that they need to return to the beginning of the story to find all the pieces of her lost soul. She returns to her birth in memories though the magic of the Helper, knowing everything before she was born, but then forgetting everything after birth. Redbird autobiographically tells the story of her childhood. She mentions the terrible effect alcohol had on her father. The play's heroine is a woman of Cherokee and Creek heritage which brings about a tribal conflict. The father who has Creek ancestry and a drunkard blames his wife, who is a Cherokee for the unfortunate turn of events during the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. This kind of bitterness causes bad blood between the couple, which ultimately complicate the marriage ending up in divorce. Redbird was growing up in an environment of oppressive men, and amongst women who were forced to remain in such relationships due to economic and social reasons. The men portrayed in the play so far reflect the creation myth of the rabbit and the clay man, which present greedy and uncontrollable men who out of different reasons end up dominating women’s lives. In scene 4, Redbird talks about the Native American issue of the so-called inherited grief, that effected the Native people in the past and still continues to be present today. She uses the death of her father’s mother as an example of this phenomenon:
She liked to paint, blew saxophone in Indian territory and traveled about on Indian oil money. Still, grief from history grew in her lungs. She was dead on tuberculosis by her twenties. The grief had to go somewhere. We had no one left in our family who knew how to bury it. So it climbed onto her little boy’s back.139
Harjo suggests that Native people have disconnected with the power of ceremonies, that there was no one left to stop the grief from literally moving from one generation onto the next. There are passages, when it is difficult for Redbird to carry on and she wants to stop the ceremony, but the Spirit Helper reminds her, that it is her ceremony and that she cannot stop.
139 Harjo. Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. Scene 4. Apple Books. 51
“She sang me a song to help me make it through.”140 And Harjo intertwines the play with songs in moments like this one, bringing a sense of a real ceremony being performed on the stage. Redbird continues to recall her memory with her leaving to a boarding school to escape the keeper. Her broken mother agrees with her leaving. The school does not offer much reprieve as she stays in a restricted dorm with other girls who have engaged in various violations, mostly drinking. It is at the dorm that Redbird accesses alcohol, as other girls who are not in the restricted dorm bring them alcohol out of pity. Ironically, these girls are in this restriction due to alcoholism, but this does not prevent them from drinking. Redbird in a monologue, says, “I call to order the meeting of girls on restriction at Indian school. We broke the rules. Now we are locked up in the dorm on Saturday night.”141 Redbird’s frustration does not end at the school as she gets into an unfortunate and stifling marriage union just like her mother’s two marriages. It is at this time that the Spirit Helper appears to her and promises that she could heal Redbird from a car wreck she had suffered and that has put her in a coma. Redbird has gone through many misfortunes and frustrations. However, Redbird can get over her condition if she goes back through her entire life and reclaims the pieces of her lost soul. Redbird feels miserable as she is hanging between death and life. She needs to understand that great potential lies within her, and it only requires her to adopt a positive attitude. She does not necessarily have to consider herself a victim of circumstances but must believe she can change her narrative by facing her frustrations. In the closing scene, Redbird appears onstage with a basket of foods and goods and says:
Spirit Helper brought me home again to this table. Everything you need for your healing is here, she told me. “The table is within you; it has always been within you. You must remember to acknowledge the gifts. You must remember to share.”142
This realization marks the beginning of a new journey of self-recovery and healing, which poises Redbird for better days ahead. At the end of it, the narrator gives up hope of ever finding happiness and fulfillment in a relationship and dissolves it by singing about “love
140 Harjo. Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. Scene 6. Apple Books. 141 Harjo. Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. Scene 12. Apple Books. 142 Harjo. Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. Scene 20. Apple Books. 52
supreme,”143 about inward kindness towards ourselves, love to our family and overall consideration to the whole mankind, suggesting the Native American “web” of interconnectedness and stressing that we are all related. Joy Harjo also reuses the concept of a kitchen table, which appeared in her poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here.” The kitchen table is on the scene at the end of the play, not having a realistic meaning, but again it is used as a metaphorical symbol. The scene with a table links the end with the beginning of the play where Redbird says, “We could no longer see or hear our ancestors, or talk with each other across the kitchen table.”144 The table thus again represents the circle of life, the personal “home” inside us, which we should take with us everywhere we go. Each of the two plays analyzed above were written in a different decade, but still they share a similar message directed mainly to the Native American people. As all the other genres of Native art, drama forms an important part of the process of regaining the lost Native identities. Both plays offer hope and provide help and strength to fight the oppression which existed since the colonial times. It provides the Native people with a guide to find their roots and when found, to be proud of them and to cherish the newly discovered hybridized identity.
143 Harjo. Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. Scene 20. Apple Books. 144 Harjo. Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. Scene 1. Apple Books. 53
VII. Overview and direction for the twenty-first century
Native American literature has cut a niche for itself in the global arena considering that it has developed significantly over the last few centuries. This literature has managed to move past oral traditions into written forms that include novels, poetry, drama, non-fiction, and narratives. Over the centuries, various writers have contributed significantly to the development and influence of Native American literature. Female writers have created an avenue for other women in the twenty-first century who must then continue to advance Native American themes in this era. It is crucial to note that some of the twenty-first century writers debuted their writing careers in the twentieth century. Some of the women who continue to leave a literary mark in the new century include Joy Harjo, Diane Glancy, Louise Erdrich and Leslie Marmon Silko. Joy Harjo, a Native American musician, poet and author, has made considerable contributions to the twenty-first century indigenous literature through her poetry, plays, nonfiction, children’s literature and discography. Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015) by Joy Harjo is a significant addition to Native American literature produced in this century. The collection that has forty-three poems is divided into four sections namely “How It Came to Be,” “The Wanderer,” “Visions and Monsters,” and “The World.” The collection includes prose poems, feature poems, songs, epigraphs, and prayers that help people to listen, to reconnect with their humanity. This collection is quite diverse as Harjo includes the voices of birds to explore how humans create violence and the ways of solving these conflicts. The collection leaves behind a literary mark in this century that is plagued with human conflict at every angle. An American Sunrise (2017), which is the latest poetry collection by Joy Harjo, is making headlines in this century concerning Native American literature. The poems therein are aimed at confronting and tackling the injustices that have Native Americas have suffered from over the centuries. Other works by Joy Harjo include Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo (2011), Crazy Brave: A Memoir (2012) and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (2018). Joy Harjo, a multi-talented artist, has not stopped here, and she is likely to write more works to advance themes that are inherent in her culture but also the broader global culture. 54
Leslie Marmon Silko, a Laguna Pueblo writer, is another contributor to Native American literature who offers new literary directions in the twenty-first century. Silko started her literary career in the twentieth century, and she continues to contribute as a commentator on Native American affairs. The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir, which was released in 2010, marks her literary development in this century. This nonfiction work written in prose and mirroring Native American storytelling explores religion, suffering, and environmentalism in the natural world. The memoir, which is more of a journal, is Silko’s way of expressing the harmony that exists between her ancestors “native ways and her own 30 years of experience in an Arizonian desert.”145 Turquoise, as it appears in the title, signifies rain and water, which are crucial for the survival of the indigenous people in Arizona. The memoir is indicative of Silko’s knowledge about the Laguna's rich cultural heritage as well as their history at the hands of the American government. Leslie is one of the Native American female authors who plays a pivotal role in the development of indigenous literature in the twenty-first century. Diane Glancy, a Cherokee female author, poet and playwright, is one of the writers who have been entirely instrumental in shaping Native American literature in the new century. In this century alone, Glancy has written and published more than twenty literary pieces including plays, poems, novels, and prose works. Some of her works are One of Us (2015), Mary, Queen of Bees (2017), No Word for the Sea (2017), The Keyboard Letters (2017) and The Book of Bearings (2019). The long list which includes poetry, plays, and novels indicates that Diane Glancy is a prolific writer who is capable of writing up to two books each year. In 2020 Glancy has already published a poetry collection titled Island of the Innocent: Considerations on the Book of Job. The constant publishing of new books is an indication that Glancy is focused on leaving a literary imprint in this century and developing Native American literature further. One of the most prolific Native American woman writer is Louise Erdrich (1954), a Chippewa (Ojibwe) tribe member, who is an essential contributor to the development of Native American literature especially in the twenty-first century. She became widely recognized for her first novel Love Medicine (1984), receiving the National Book Critics
145 Leslie Marmon Silko, The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir (New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2010), 12. 55
Circle Award for Fiction. Having debuted her writing career in the late twentieth century, Erdrich has managed to remain literary relevant in this century as well. As a writer, Erdrich has several titles to her name, which include poetry, novels, children's books, short stories, and a memoir of early motherhood.146 All of her titles revolve around Native American settings and characters. In the literary world, Erdrich is considered one of the most famous Native American female authors who contributed to the Native American Renaissance’s second wave.147 Some of her works were published in the twenty-first century include The Plague of Doves (2008), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Price, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001), and The Round House (2012). This list establishes that Louise is still an active writer, something that helps steer twenty-first century Native American literature to greater heights. Another known Native American writer, activist, award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist is Linda Hogan (1959, Chickasaw). Her first novel, Mean Spirit (1990), was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Price.148 She authored several poetry collections in the twenty-first century including Dark. Sweet.: New & Selected Poems (2014), Rounding the Human Corners (2008). Hogan is also the author of prose. She published her autobiography The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir (2001) and a novel People of the Whale (2008). Later in 2020 two of her new books are forthcoming. It is The Radiant Lives of Animals, where Hogan depicts her own intense relationships with animals as an example we all can follow to heal our souls and reconnect with the spirit of the world.149 Her latest poetry collection A History of Kindness is also going to be published in 2020. In 2016 her poem “History” appeared on the website of Split this Rock, a poetry organization.150 This poem encompasses some of the main ideas that Linda Hogan has been concerned with throughout her literary career. The poem has four stanzas written in a free rhyme structure. It is written in the first person, conveying thus the attitudes of the writer
146 HarperCollins Publishers. “Louise Erdrich.” Accessed March 10, 2020, https://www.harpercollins.com/author/cr-100712/louise-erdrich/. 147 Timo Muller, Handbook of the American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries,” (Berlin: Walter de Gruyer GmbH: 2017), 428. 148 Poets.org, “Linda Hogan,” https://poets.org/poet/linda-hogan. 149 Penguin Random House, “The Radian Lives of Animals,” Accessed on March 30, 2020, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/645818/the-radiant-lives-of-animals-by-linda-hogan/. 150 Linda Hogan, “History,” accessed March 15, 2020, https://poets.org/poem/history-1. 56
herself. The main issues of the poem are greed, nature and environment and the consequences of misusing it, religion, conflict and self-discovery. The tone of the poem could be described as critical, reflective and nostalgic. The author uses a metaphor for nature, she personifies nature and sees the mother Earth as: a woman and a child in beautiful blue clothing walking over a dune, spreading a green cloth, drinking nectar with mint and laughing beneath a sky of clouds from the river near the true garden of Eden.151 The first stanza starts with the line “This is the world that is always bleeding”, suggesting the constant violence of various kind going on in the world. She continues to mention that some countries cover up the violence and hide the truth, but that does not mean it does not exist. The second stanza depicts the beauty of nature, being juxtaposed to the “breaking the holy vessel” suggesting the misusing of natural resources due to greed. The third stanza talks of a lack of love amongst people towards themselves and towards nature. The fourth stanza is the longest and it brings up the issue of religion. The author reveals her opinion that religion of no kind is more important than the way people treat each other. She mentions all the major religions in the following stanza: We do not need a god by any name nor we need to fall to our knees or cover ourselves, enter a church or a river,152 The social issue of negative aspects of religion is also mentioned there: What any of our brothers or Sisters do to nonbelievers, How we try to discover who is Guilty By becoming guilty.153
151 Hogan. “History”. 152 Hogan. “History”. 153 Hogan. “History”. 57
The poem ends with the continuous “opening of the veins of the world more and more in its search for something gold,”154 revealing the author’s attitude towards misusing nature and sees connection with the land as instrumental in the Native American philosophy and way of life. Linda Hogan is often presented as an eco-feminist, even though she does not accept this term. In the interview for C-Span radio on July 3, 2011, she says she works for the people and the living creatures, she stresses the sacredness of the land, the interconnectedness of everything. She says she works “for the seventh generation” and even beyond that, far ahead to the future. Hogan does not agree with the applied term of eco-feminist, to her it is only a notion of the fact that the body of a woman and the body of the earth, are connected. Hogan laughs at the term and its meaning in the interview, she does not want to be categorized. She thinks of race and class first, and then as a woman. The issue of poverty concerns her more than gender, but in the interview, she brings up the issue of equal opportunities and confirms that men have more advantages in this world compared to women, even in the literary sphere.155 The Native American culture has been, since the colonization, interpreted through the eyes of the colonizers, through the white perspective. The social structure and the cultures of the various tribes were misunderstood and also deliberately reinterpreted to fit the ideas of the colonizers. The Native cultures were referred to as primitive and pagan, their culture and traditions were systematically oppressed and violated. African philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon argues that there are stages of colonialism, its final phase being when the colonized people see themselves through the eyes of the colonizer. Native people in America actively resist these misrepresentations and stand up for their national consciousness. The pan-Indian social movement of the twentieth century has allowed for a development of Native literature, in Frantz Fanon’s words “combat” literature, which in its true sense calls upon a whole people to join in the struggle for the existence of a nation.156 It was up to the Native intellectuals to become political through
154 Hogan. “History”. 155 “In Depth with Linda Hogan”, interview C-Span, 3. 7. 2011. https://www.c-span.org/video/?299921- 1/depth-linda-hogan. 156 Frantz Fanon, The Wreatched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2004), Apple Books. 58
literature. They reconstructed a national identity by retracing their history and looking into the future to find a way to survive. Another way to accomplish national identity and peace with the past is the concept of “hybridity,” a term of a post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha, which means not only the genetic hybridity of a mixed race, but in this concept it is a cultural hybridity, which brings a completely new cross-cultural national identity. Native Americans were able to look at themselves with their own eyes through the development of Native American literature. The literature allowed them to fight the oppression and to renew their Native pride, the lives of their tribes and families. Even though the Native community still has many social and political problems, it is aware of its uniqueness, the tribes are represented by tribal governments and have a status of sovereign tribal nations. They have their own cultural centers, websites and organizations. The women writers of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries paved the way for women to fight for their own rights and identity, encouraging others to write their stories. Native writers cherish their culture and strive to pass it to future generations. They want to educate about the past, but they also strive to be relevant in today’s world. Some women writers thus focus on writing children’s fiction to introduce the world to the young ones from a Native perspective and thus help children to understand their “otherness” and be proud of their indigenous identity in the twenty-first century. One of those writers is Cynthia Leitich Smith (1967, Muscogee Creek) who writes fiction for children about modern-day Native Americans. Her characters are contemporary characters children can associate with. She focuses on the contemporary Native fiction, which in her view is underrepresented.157 In regard to this opinion she said: I make lousy fry bread. I’m usually feather-free. I don’t start conversations with phrases like ‘as my grandfather once said’ and then burst into poignant lectures about the religious tradition related to my Native identity, let alone anybody else’s.158
157 Cynthia Leitich Smith. “Native Now: Contemporary Indian Stories”. American Library Association, accessed April 3, 2020, http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/resources/nativenow. 158 Doris Seale, Beverly Slapin, A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children, (Lanham: Altamira Press, 2006), 19. 59
She writes books for the Native and non-Native children’s audience and realizes it needs to be up to date to capture their attention. Some of her best known and awarded books are Jingle Dancer (2000), a picture book for ages four and up and Rain Is Not My Indian Name (2001), a realistic novel for ages ten and up. Native American playwrights make their voices heard loudly in the twenty-first century. Playwright and choreographer Larissa FastHorse (Rosebud Sioux, Lakota) introduced her The Thanksgiving Play in the season 2019/2020 at New York’s Playwright Horizons.159 The play has been a hit and ranked as one of the ten most produced plays for the season according to the American Theatre magazine. She strives for accurate presentation of Native values through translating the indigenous contemporary experiences for the white audiences.160 The play presents, with humor, the culturally sensitive issue of celebrating Thanksgiving. In 2018, Portland Center Stage produced a play by DeLanna Studi (1976, Cherokee) called And So We Walked (2017), inspired by the author’s six-week, 900-mile journey along the Trail of Tears to better understand her own identity and the conflicts of her nation.161 Another talented Native American woman is Mary Kathlyn Nagle (Cherokee), who is an author of Manahatta (2013), a powerful story about culture and commercialism, home and family.162 The play moves between Oklahoma and the seventeenth-century Manhattan (“Manahatta”), the ancestral home of the Lenape people. Nagle is also a partner at Pipestem Law, a firm specializing in tribal sovereignty. Even though the pan-Indian movement brought the Native tribes together to stand up and fight for the common purpose, the Native people were always associated with their tribe of origin. There are large differences between the tribes and there is a plethora of cultures among the various Native tribes. Even though their culture is still not being widely introduced at schools and most non-Native people are not aware of the nuances between the individual
159 Makeda Easter. “Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse is taking down white wokeness”. Los Angeles Times, accessed April 1, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2019-11-05/larissa- fasthorse-profile-thanksgiving-play. 160 Easter. “Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse is taking down white wokeness”. 161 Portland Center Stage at the Armory, “And So We Walked,” Accessed April 5, 2020, https://www.pcs.org/walked. 162 Nicole Chung. “Mary Kathryn Nagle Asks Us to Remember “Manahatta,” accessed march 25, 2020, https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/a19856226/mary-kathryn-nagle-asks-us-to-remember-manahatta/. 60
tribes, the Native authors bring their world to the wider audience through their literature and plays. There is also a scholarly discipline of the American Indian Studies at American Universities and a leading journal in this discipline Wicazo Sa, which brings together Native scholars and intelligence. There is evidence of exciting times to come in the rest of the twenty-first century as for the Native American literary genres and theatre. There are new books each year that contribute to the Native American but also the mainstream American canon. The new writers tend to focus more on the urban lifestyle of Natives living in the cities, as almost seventy percent of them live in the cities, not reservations. Young Native American writer Tommy Orange (1982), a Pulitzer price finalist, brings forth a fact of being Native in a city, a contradiction Natives and their children must reckon with.163 New writers also strive to become universal. Their focus is local, but their struggles might be appliable even to a wider audience, as it often does. They are young Native people in American cities, as Tommy Orange is saying “trying to think of the new thing we’re going to be. We have to make new ways.”164 This trend, stemming from a new social environment, might as well be the new direction for the twenty-first century’s Native literature. What seems to be instrumental here is finding ways to remain Indian, but without the need to be strictly connected to the historical stereotypes usually associated with the Native people.
163 Tommy Orange in interview with Marlena Gates. “Tommy Orange Gives Voice to Urban Native Americans”. Electric Literature, Accessed March 25, 2020, https://electricliterature.com/tommy-orange- gives-voice-to-urban-native-americans/. 164 Tommy Orange. “Tommy Orange Gives Voice to Urban Native Americans”. 61
VIII. Conclusion
Native American literature had grown enormously from the oral traditions and narratives passed in a form of storytelling from one generation to another which defined the Native culture and education before the adoption of writing. The success of this literature is credited to Native American writers most specifically women who throughout the centuries, have written literary works that mirror culture-specific themes. Their writing has developed from autobiographies, which were dominant in the nineteenth century, a transition era marking the end of oral traditions to prose, poetry, drama, and nonfiction. The autobiographies are indicative of authors who were adopting the art of writing, but they still managed to capture the intended themes. The most notable women autobiographers of the time are Sarah Winnemucca (Hopkins's Life among the Paiutes) and Pauline Johnson (The Mocassin Maker). Alice Callahan and Jane Johnston Schoolcraft contributed to the preservation of Native American culture through writing essays and poems. Literary Voyager, a journal set aside to publish Native American history, poems essays were the brainchild of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and her husband. On the other hand, in 1891, Alice Callahan wrote Wynema: A Child of the Forest, the first novel written by a Native American woman. The early twentieth century witnessed further development of the Native American literature with more women authors coming into the fore to mirror the prevailing political conditions evidenced by the boarding school system. Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, who wrote under the name Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird), led other women in writing content that was cognizant of the pan-Indian philosophy. Zitkala-Sa of Lakota descent was not spared from the boarding schools’ experience and her writing is reflective of the challenges associated with the system. Her most notable works include Why I Am Pagan, (1901), The Sun Dance (1913), Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians (1924), and the collection American Indian Stories (1921). These works are considered important in Native American literature and history as they add an imprint on the development of Native American literature. Zitkala-Sa was an advocate of Native people, she preserved the Native oral tradition by transcribing oral tales into written form. She used her pen as a weapon in voicing out the issues that affected the Native people in the early twentieth century. 62
The late twentieth century is considered by most a critical century as it coincided with the era of the so called Native American Renaissance marked by formidable literary development. New and existing female writers published more autobiographies, novels, short fiction and poetry to add on to the existing literature. The most notable female authors of the time include Leslie Marmon Silko, Paula Gunn Allen, Joy Harjo, Diane Glancy, Louise Edrich and Linda Hogan. Each of these women was keen on capturing various themes related to Native Americans and as such, they wrote novels, plays, poems, mixed genres as well as nonfiction. Leslie Marmon Silko, a Laguna Pueblo, is famed for Ceremony, a 1977 novel that is a call to Native Americans to adhere to their cultures but still welcome changes. Joy Harjo, a Muscogee poet and author, is credited with writing more than thirty literary pieces that include poems as plays and novels. Some of the works that featured in the late twentieth century include What Moon Drove Me to This? (1980), She Had Some Horses (1983), and In Mad Love and War (1990). Her poems are about capturing the issues that affect indigenous communities as they relate to the broader world and universe. Another woman contributor to Native American literature in the late twentieth century is Paula Gunn Allen, who focused mainly on scholarly work and nonfiction with Sacred Hoop (1986) being her most famous work. Ranging across genres is a typical feature for Native American literature, which draws inspiration in the oral traditions, storytelling and ceremonies, including all forms of narratives, songs and dances to form a unified whole. The multi-genre form was incorporated in Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko and is still widely used in the Native literary circles but is also central for many Native theatre plays. Native American literature is poised for more significant development, especially in the twenty-first century considering that most of the late twentieth-century women authors are still active writers. The most notable writers of this century include Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Linda Hogan and Diane Glancy. Joy Harjo still writes poems with Soul Talk, Song Language: (2011), Crazy Brave: A Memoir (2012) Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015) Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (2018),) and An American Sunrise (2019) featured in this century. Leslie Marmon Silko’s The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir (2010) is indicative of her role in shaping Native American literature in 63
yet another century. Diane Glancy has made similar contribution with publishing Island of the Innocent: Considerations on the Book of Job (2020). Louise Erdrich (Chippewa) is one of the most prolific Native woman authors, debuting with her novel Love Medicine (1984). Some of her works that were published in the twenty-first century include The Plague of Doves (2008), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Price, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001), and The Round House (2012). According to the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln, Erdrich continues to be one of the most widely read Native American writers.165 Another important figure that continues to shape the Native American literature in the twenty-first century is Linda Hogan (1959, Chickasaw). Hogan became known with her novel Mean Spirit (1990), a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Price. In the twenty-first century she authored Dark. Sweet.: New & Selected Poems (2014) and Rounding the Human Corners (2008). Further she published her autobiography The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir (2001) and a novel People of the Whale (2008). Hogan’s main beliefs are reflected in the poem “History” (2016). Linda Hogan stresses the indigenous values and way of life, which according to her is more valuable and spiritually rewarding than adapting and accepting the material world. The modern Native writers realize the importance future generations have on their cultural identity. One of those writers is Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee Creek) who writes fiction for children about modern-day Native Americans. She is known for the picture book Jingle Dancer (2000), and a children’s novel Rain Is Not My Indian Name (2001). One of the important avenues of modern Native American art is the theater. Every year there are new plays written by the Native Americans. The most notable playwrights are Diane Glancy and Joy Harjo. Writers of drama from the newer generation are, for example, Larissa FastHorse or Mary Kathlyn Nagle, whose plays Thanksgiving Play and Manahatta, respectively, received very positive reviews and became successful. As majority of Native Americans live in cities, a new form of prose seems to be emerging from young writers of the twenty-first century. The focus is to bring the modern
165 Center for Great Plains Studies. “Louise Erdrich”. Accessed Feb 18, 2020. https://www.unl.edu/plains/publications/resource/erdrich.shtml.
64
world to the modern Indian and vice versa while at the same time continue with the trend of preserving the indigenous unique cultural heritage and wisdom. The aim of Native writing is to become universal, not to be confined as a literature for or by the Natives only. This development establishes that Native American literature is heading in the right direction. It seems that the twenty-first century is already defined as a century of enormous literary growth. More Native American writers will take a cue from the already established writers, steer their literature in a new direction, and make it competitive on a global scale. Many of today’s writers are women, because as it was in the pre-contact era, it is mostly women in the indigenous societies who are the storytellers and carriers of culture. In today’s world we do not call them storytellers anymore, they are writers, poets, playwrights, teachers, and mothers. Even though the Native Americans went through the painful process of colonization, were forced from their sacred lands, had to suffer all the hardships and struggle associated with their removal and loss of identities, their soul was never conquered due to the strength, talent and resilience of the Native American women writers, who made it possible that the culture of indigenous peoples of America was not only saved, but was able to grow and develop despite the colonizers’ political and social system. The voices of Native American women writers are most likely going to be heard even louder on both the American and international literary scene. They are still relevant and may become even more so in the near future. The world has much to learn from the indigenous cultures which originated on the American continent.
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