Voices from Four Directions: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America

Introduction

Introduction This volume is a follow-up and extension of Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America.1 The present collection continues both the format and the method of Coming to Light. The introductions that preface each translation give readers as much information as possible so that they can contextualize and understand the work that follows. Although much of the material may be familiar or comprehensible without special knowledge, much is also compellingly different. Also familiarity can sometimes be misleading: what we take for granted will often need interpretation since meanings change across cultures. The present collection includes retranslations of ‘‘classical’’ literature as well as translations of recent material. It is made up of new work both by contributors represented in Coming to Light, and by those, the majority, who are not. Of the former, Paul Zolbrod contributes more Navajo work and Herb Luthin more Yana. Robert Leavitt, whose Passamaquoddy work appeared in the earlier volume , presents Mìgmaq (Micmac) stories, this time with E. Nàgùgwes Metallic and Jennifer Andrews, while Richard and Nora Dauenhauer add to their Tlingit work and Judith Berman gives us more Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl)literature. Julian Rice provides a Lakota story, while Robert Bringhurst is present again with Haida work. This time Blair Rudes contributes, not Tuscarora, but Catawba material. The contributors new to the venture include John Enrico (Haida), David Kozak and David Lopez (O’odham), Monica Macaulayand Marianne Milligan (Menominee ), Lawrence Kaplan, Tadataka Nagai, and Minnie Gray (Iñupiaq), Edna MacLean (Iñupiaq), and Rex Lee Jim, a Navajo poet who reminds us that a number of contemporary Native writers are also working with traditional materials in original ways. ‘‘It may not be what you expected,’’ he wrote, ‘‘but it is the Coyote way.’’ Then there are Philip LeSourd (Maliseet), Rand Valentine (Ojibwe), Wendy Wickwire (Okanagan), Virginia Hymes (Sahaptin), Katherine Turner (Miguelino Salinan), Eleanor and Tom Nevins and Paul and Genevieve Ethelbah (Western Apache), Catherine Callaghan (Lake Miwok), Amy Miller and Millie Romero (Quechan), Ives Goddard (Meskwaki), Crisca Bierwert (Lushootseed), Jimm xiv introduction GoodTracks (Iowa-Otoe-Missouria), Willard Walker and Wesley Proctor (Cherokee ), Mary Linn, Jason Baird Jackson, Josephine Barnett Keith, and Josephine Wildcat Bigler (Yuchi), Eric Lassiter (Kiowa), Hao Huang (San Juan Pueblo– Tewa), Wallace Chafe (Seneca), Herbert Lewis (Oneida), William Seaburg (Upper Coquille Athabaskan), and Julie Brittain, Alma Chemaganish, Margaret MacKenzie , and Silas Nabinicaboo (Naskapi). By including Alexander King’s contribution (Koryak), I have taken it upon myself to extend our northern boundaries into Siberia, where cultural contacts with Alaska are being renewed. I have, however, illogically left our southern borders in place. As with all such collections, much is present, but much is also absent. For example, although I tried hard to recruit translators of Southeast materials for Coming to Light, only one is represented in that volume. I made extra efforts to obtain Southeast translations for the present volume, but again with only limited success. For the most part, Native communities seem to be directing more effort toward preservation and renewal than to translation. For instance, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma informed me that their language program was involved in so many projects that it would be a hardship to start anything else, and the Kiwat Hisinay Foundation, Preserving Caddo Culture, told me that they could not participate because they were ‘‘madly’’ trying to get down ‘‘all we can, knowing that careful editing of our cds, dvds, and other formats to come can be done for decades and centuries to come.’’ Such responses were typical, not just specific to the Southeast. In gathering material for this book I was dependent on the vagaries of who was working on what and who was interested in sharing the fruits of his or her labors. From the responses to my hundreds of letters, e-mails, faxes, notices in journals, and phone calls, I learned just how busy everybody is in an understaffed field, one in which a vast amount of work remains to be done. Apart from fieldwork there are archives full of materials that need attention, and fragile audiotapes and wax cylinders that need re-recording in new formats. In addition, language experts are frequently called on in law cases involving land rights and claims. Adding to the difficulty of recruitment, some experts, particularly linguists, are simply not interested in literature or translation. One prominent Algonquinist wrote me: ‘‘I am only interested in the original texts themselves, and...