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This collection celebrates the resurgence of Native Americans within the cultural landscape of the United States. During the past quarter century, the Native American population in the United States has seen an astonishing demographic growth reaching beyond all biological probability as increasing numbers of Americans desire to admit or to claim Native American ancestry. This volume illustrates a unique moment in history, as unprecedented numbers of Native Americans seek to create a powerful, flexible sense of cultural identity.
Diverse commentators, including literary critics, anthropologists, ethnohistorians, poets and a novelist address persistent issues facing Native Americans and Native American studies today. The future of White-Indian relation, the viability of Pan-Indianism, tensions between Native Americans and North American anthropologists, and new devlopments in ethnohistory are among the topics discussed. The survival of Native Americans as recorded in this collection, an expanded edition of a special issue of boundary 2, brings into focus the dynamically adaptive values of Native American culture. Native Americans’ persistence in U.S. culture—not disappearing under the pressure to assimilate or through genocidal warfare—reminds us of the extent to which any living culture is defined by the process of transformation. Contributors. Linda Ainsworth, Jonathan Boyarin, Raymomd J. DeMallie, Elaine Jahner, Karl Kroeber, William Overstreet, Douglas R. Parks, Katharine Pearce, Jarold Ramsey, Wendy Rose, Edward H. Spicer, Gerald Vizenor, Priscilla Wald
List of contents
Native American Resistance and Removal / Karl Kroeber 1
The Nations of a State/ Preface by Rosamond B. Spicer / Edward H. Spicer 27
An Interview with Jack Salzman, Director of the Columbia University Center for American Culture Studies / Karl Kroeber 50
The Navajo Nightway and the Western Gaze / William Overstreet 58
Terms of Assimilation: Legislating Subjectivity in the Emerging Nation / Priscilla Wald 78
Plains Indian Native Literatures / Douglas R. Parks and Raymond J. DeMallie 106
Transitional Narratives and Culture Continuity / Elaine A. Jahner 149
Francis LaFlesche's "The Song of Flying Crow" and the Limits of Ethnography / Jarold Ramsey 181
Europe's Indian, America's Jew: Modiano and Vizenor / Jonathan Boyarin 198
Manifest Manners: The Long Gaze of Christopher Columbus / Gerald Vizenor 224
If Texts are Prayers, What do Wintu Want? / Linda Ainsworth 237
December 1880–1990 / Wendy Rose 248
Retrieving Osceola's Head, Okemah, Oklahoma, June 1985 / Wendy Rose 250
Own / Katharine Pearce 252
Index 253
Contributors 259
About the author
Karl Kroeber is Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and editor emeritus of Studies of American Indian Literatures.
