2. What defines
Native American identity?
Joy Harjo
b. 1951
Louise Erdrich
b. 1954
Sherman Alexie
b. 1966
Cherokee, French,
Irish-American
Chippewa, French,
German-American
Coeur d’Alene, Spokane
3. A person is judged as Native American because of
how he or she views the world, his or her views
about land, home, family, culture, etc. There are, I
think, no easy answers. I do believe, however, that
John Ross, the one-eighth blood Cherokee chief
(with seven-eighths Scottish blood), who fought
arduously against the removal of his people into
Indian Territory, was more “Indian” than John
Ridge, the seven-eighths Cherokee, who
collaborated with Andrew Jackson’s henchmen,
selling out his people.
- Geary Hobson, The Remembered Earth (1991)
6. Contexts for
Native American literature
• Oral tradition: storytelling, myth, ceremony,
ritual
• Native American writers: Samson Occom,
Charles Eastman, William Apess, Zitkala Sa,
Black Elk
7. [In 1987], I enrolled in a poetry workshop that changed my life. On the first
day, the teacher, Alex Kuo, gave me an anthology of contemporary Native
poetry called Songs from this Earth on Turtle’s Back. There were poems by
Adrian C. Louis, a Paiute Indian, and one in particular called “Elegy for the
Forgotten Oldsmobile.” If I hadn’t found this poem, I don’t think I ever would
have found my way as a writer. I would have been a high school English
teacher who coached basketball. My life would have taken a completely
different path.
This was the first line of the poem:
Oh, Uncle Adrian, I’m in the reservation of my mind.
. . . that line made me want to drop everything and be a poet. It was that
earth-shaking. I was a reservation Indian. I had no options. Being a writer
wasn’t anywhere near the menu. So, it wasn’t a lightning bolt—it was an
atomic bomb. I read it and thought, “This is what I want to do.”
When I wrote before, I was always wearing a mask—I always adopted a pose.
I was always putting on a white guy mask. The line captured that sense of
being tribal, being from a reservation—and the fact that you could never
leave. . . .
At the same time, I’d never seen myself in a work of literature. I loved books,
always, but I didn’t know Indians wrote books or poems. . . .
But as soon as I saw that poem, I knew I could write about myself—my
emotional state, the narrative of my emotional life. When I wrote before, I
was always wearing a mask—I always adopted a pose. I was always putting on
a white guy mask. And all of a sudden, I could actually use my real face.
(Sherman Alexie, The Atlantic, Oct. 16, 2013)
8. Contexts for
Native American literature
• Oral tradition: storytelling, myth, ceremony,
ritual
• Native American writers: Samson Occom,
Charles Eastman, William Apess, Zitkala Sa,
Black Elk
• Western literary tradition / English and
American poetry
9. Indian as “Other”
Noble Savage
Ignoble Savage
The Brave
The Bloodthirsty
Savage
The Indian Princess
The Squaw
The Drunk Indian
