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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [100], (1) Lines: 0 t ——— -1.1025pt ——— Short Page PgEnds: T [100], (1) 6. seeing (and reading) red Indian Outlaws in the Ivory Tower Daniel Heath Justice “You will find the settlement of this land dark and bloody.”—Chickamaugan Cherokee war chief Tsiyu Gansini (Dragging Canoe), upon the signing of the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, 1775 This Is a Ghost Dance Tsiyu Gansini was one of the Real People’s greatest warriors,and one who was greatly feared by yoneg land-stealers.1 He didn’t die in battle; instead, he died in his sleep at his birthplace of Running Water, Tennessee, following a victory dance.2 He died as he had lived: in defiance of Invasion’s devastation. And even in death,Tsiyu Gansini was a terror to the yoneg squatters,as told by Cherokee historian Brent Cox:“It has been said thatWhite settlers and soldiers feared that Dragging Canoe had supernatural powers, and even possibly the ability to [resurrect].When Dragging Canoe was buried in 1792, it was said that white soldiers [stole] his body, and divided it into two halves. One half was left as his burial near Nickajack, and [the] other portion was taken away. This was done to prevent Dragging Canoe from coming back.”3 That Tsiyu Gansini was cut into pieces is no surprise, as it’s the standard stereotype for Native peoples throughout the Americas: we’re measured by pieces and parts, “torn between worlds,” relegated to some romanticized past, never fully of the present. And sometimes, in reality, we’re pulled between the ranks and privileges of powerful institutions and the kitchen tables of our families, where life and culture so often gather. Native wholeness is a threat to white dominance,as it evades the allotment of our lives and lands and faces the threat directly. Our fight is that of all Indigenous peoples: to remain whole, unbroken, and adaptive through tradition. seeing (and reading) red 101 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [101], (2) Lines: 52 to 66 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Short Page PgEnds: TEX [101], (2) This is a Ghost Dance that raises the fire and makes our uncle whole again. This Is a Reminder Tsiyu Gansini’s words are worth heeding:“You will find the settlement of this land dark and bloody.” He wasn’t speaking only to the yonegs who came for the land; he was also speaking to his kinsmen who signed away the lands of the People. He knew, better than most, that the ravenous hunger of the Invaders wouldn’t be satisfied until not only the land but the very presence of the Indigenous inhabitants was consumed. Native scholars, when focused on decolonization and academic Ghost Dancing, are part of this battle. We can’t forget, as Koyangk’auwi Maidu poet Janice Gould reminds us, that“there is not a university in this country that is not built on what was once native land. We should reflect on this over and over, and understand this fact as one fundamental point about the relationship of Indians to academia.”4 The Academy is the privileged center of meaning-making in this hemisphere dominated by imperial nation-states; as such, its primary history is one that has served colonialist cultural interests, both directly and covertly. This reality—the creation of institutions of learning erected on the lands and the literal bodies of Native people—brings me to the central questions of this essay: How, if at all, can we “indigenize the academy”? And in the struggle for Indigenous Nationhood and self-determination, what is the role of the literary critic? In the Belly of the Beast, at the Edge of the Fire In considering the first question—how do we “indigenize the academy ”?—I have a connected query: Should we even do so? If our definition of the academy is the hierarchical,institutional structure that enforces an understanding of “knowledge” as that body of mores that have emerged more from a clash of ideas than a thoughtful consideration of them...

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