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WORDARROWS: INDIANS AND WHITES IN THE NEW FUR TRADE BY GERALD VISENOR (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978.) Many nineteenth century personal narratives of Native Americans exhibit portraits of individual personalities influenced by tribal interaction with colonialism. Vizenor carries this on through stories. He often employs old realities of the fur trade to suggest new realities ofindividuals caught between bureaucratic colonialism and changing tribal cultures and the urban reservation . While Vizenor's stories are grounded in oral history, he molds the greater truth around facts. The characters are real and imagined compilations. Vizenor sees language as the prime tool of colonialism. Manipulative languages define manipulative cultures; those that strike out to shatter word-built illusions are word-warriors. Vizenor champions the oral tradition and this book is an example of how it survives even in cross-cultural confusion. He doesn't try to abstract to give us understanding ofhis years as a tribal advocate. Hedoes not analyze oral tradition, tum it into a scholarly question,rather, he gives us a series of stories which entertain and instruct. The real cures, like the real languages, do not come from bureaucratic word-cures, but through ceremonies, personal or sacred. There are fourteen narratives varying in subject from half-breed tricksters and white school teachers on the reservation to storytellers that attract flies and reincarnated Custers in charge of Indian programs. Though Vizenor may at places be too fanciful, too cryptically philosophical and even a bit self-serving, he writes with humor and insight. Humor helps us see Vizenor's mind and forms the bond through which the oral tradition continues to today. This book is a blending of storytelling and story-writing. It should interest those who seek the interface between the two created by contemporary Indian writers and those concerned with Indian activism, the urban Indian experience, modem oral tradition or just well-drawn characters. JIM RUPPERT* *JIM RUPPERT is a writer and teacher at Navajo Community College. He is working on a dissertation on translators of Native American Literature for U.N.M. 165 ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW ...

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