Introduction: Native Americans in American Literature: Writing and Written

John Rollin Ridge, in 1850. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, BerkeLey, POR 1. Walt "Whitman, in 1848 or 1850. From a portrait ly Black. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-·DIG-ppmsca-07546. INTRODUCTION Native Am.ericans in Am.erican Literature: Writing and Written CAROLYN SORISIO Native Americans have always been "written" in the contact zone now called the United States-they typically feature as the romanticized , vilified, and fated objects of colonizers' texts. Yet long before the Native American Renaissance of the late I960s and early I970s, some Native Americans were of course also writing, at times in forms associated with their traditional cultures , and at other times in colonizers' languages that theywould make their own. I Nonetheless, as Joshua David Bellin argues, "literary critics have continued to overlook Indians as determinants of American-rather than specifically Native American -literature." The title of this ESQ issue-"Native Americans : Writing and Written"-assumes an intercultural relationship between representations ofNative Americans in the dominant cultures' texts and representations of Native Americans, and all U.S. persons, in texts authored by peoples of Native American cultures and descent. Interculturalism, as defined by Bellin, presumes that cultures come into contact, not as ((monolithic, self-contained, necessarily opposed entities," but rather through the ((complex, intricate, and even indeterminate interrelationships among their diverse members." Intercultural literary criticism "views texts as taking shape through, and shaping in turn, these cultural interrelationships."2 It recognizes that the pJ:ysical as well as textual presence ofNative Americans always was, and still is, a structuring feature in much of the literature written by people from dominant U.S. cultures. ESQ / V. 52 /lST-2ND QUARTERS / 2006 1 CAROLYN SORISIO The decades following the Native American Renaissance witnessed not only an outpouring ofwriting by Native American authors but also a rebirth of varied scholarship focusing on Native Americans as writing subjects and as written objects. Diverse theoretical viewpoints lead to significant diffe]~ences in pedagogicall m.ethods and disciplinary houndaries. 3 Without eliding these differences, it is fair to say that all approaches share at least one critical premise that also underlies the essays in this special issue: ((you just can't understand Am.erica, more specifically, the United States, without coming to terms with the indigenous presence on this continent," as Arnold Krupat argues succinctly.4: At first glance, this might seem an obvious statement, designed to secure common and perhaps innocu0us critical ground. Yet it contains a call for a significant shift in perspective, one that challenges critics to imagine what American literary studies would look like if they placed Native American literary scholarship in its center. Three scholars working in the field of Native American studies -Jean M. C)'Brien, Robert Warrior, and Philip J. Delloriaemphasized the importance of this critical revision at the 2002 American Studies Association's conference.5 O'Brien argues in the published version of her contribution that Hone could develop a model ofAmerican studies [and I would add ofAmerican literarystudies] inwhich Indian studies is indispensable to its practice ." After suggesting that Indian studies (([makes] it possible to think about sovereignty as a category of analysis to be taken seri0usly in critiquing U.S. colonialism," she asks: How is it possible to think about this nation without a deep and abiding recognition that its very existence is predicated upon conquest? That its principal task throughout its history has been the erasure of Indians and their Indianness ? That one of its most long-standing and enduring Hproblems" has been its inability to co:mplete this colonial mission?6 Despite divergent subjects and approaches, the essays in this ESQ issue concur that it is not possible to Hthink about this 2 NATIVE AMERICANS IN AMERICAN UTERATURE nation without a deep and abiding recognition that its very existence is predicated upon conquest." They demonstrate that interrogating-as well as resisting-U.S. nationalism and colonialism must be a key feature of Native American and American literary scholarship. Their recognition of an intercultural relationship between Native American and dominant culture texts argues for making the study of Native American literature central to the study of U.S. literature. The nineteenth...