Writing Indian, Native Conversations

Notes

introductions 1. In an oddly ironic way, others challenge the ethnicity of the author, who is Sicilian. How, it is contended, could someone other than a Native person critique colonialism and the texts it produces? Given the multiple colonial forces that have occupied Sicily, one wonders. 2. There are texts that complicate this, and for these I would add one other marker: by its relationship to other works by the same author. Consider D’Arcy McNickle’s short story “The Hawk Is Hungry.” Read alone, it would not seem “Indian” (as if it needs to be if read alone), but in relation to his other stories one can see its Indigenous critique of Manifest Destiny and colonial attitudes. One could make a similar case after comparing Gorky Park and Stallion Gate by Martin Cruz Smith. 1. the 1970s 1. This is an approach regaining popularity with the works of David Treuer and James Cox, mentioned in the introduction. The interviews speak to the current critical productions of Native scholars and scholars of Native literatures. Therefore, I defer to the insights of those interviewed in these chapters. 2. And this is the purpose of this book: to offer ways to “open up” texts. 3. The ways that the Indigenous peoples of the Southwest incorporated non-Indigenous elements into their own ceremonies are evident in Silko’s “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” and the Deer Dances of the Yaqui. 4. In this concern about alienation Momaday’s novel reflects the literary conventions of its time; in the 1960s much of “mainstream” American literature was devoted to an exploration of the apparent unraveling of society: the concerns about the disintegration of “the|Notes 256 | notes to pages 22–87 nuclear family,” the various “counterculture” movements, and the novel of alienation itself. 5. This power is represented in numerous books and films, including Hopi filmmaker Victor Masayesva’s movie Itam Hakim, Hopiit. In the story of the Bow Clan’s migration we are told that the village chief at Oraibi greets the clan and asks three questions: “What power do you have to keep your children happy? What power do you move with? Do you have a dance or a song to bring into the village?” The conjunctions of these imperatives—power, song and dance, movement, children’s happiness—are all relevant for the Pueblo people Momaday depicts as well. 6. Interestingly, as he runs at the end of the book, it begins to rain; he is, after all, a rain maker and eagle hunter. 7. As Helen Jaskoski points out, however, Abel should go through a ceremony for returning warriors, and since he does not, this may be one explanation why he is unable to reintegrate and becomes violent . 8. It has not always been a cordial landscape, as the advertisement of the National Association of Scholars denotes. In the 1970s one colleague who teaches Native American literatures and participated in the Flagstaff conference endured the harassment of his colleagues, who termed the canon “shit lit” (see Roemer). 2. the 1980s 1. This is part of the point that Michael Dorris made in the late 1970s, using it to argue for a “reading” of Native stories from within the framework of the culture that produced it. 2. The critics surveyed in the introduction certainly moved the discourse in this direction, and writer-scholars such as Elizabeth Cook-Lynn formed writing groups that composed in Native languages . 3. I will come back to this idea in chapter 4 as a means of bringing this observation into the new millennium. 4. Interestingly, the only highway alternate is the proposed trip with the Airplane Man north into Canada, and this never happens. 5. This and all subsequent references are to the 1993 edition. 6. Although Trump argued against Native casinos and then in favor of their regulation and taxing, in 1993 he flew to New Zealand and, meeting the matriarch of an iwi near Auckland, noted how wonder- notes to pages 88–99 | 257 ful it was to go into partnership in a casino with the Indigenous people of that country. 7. It is interesting to consider Gerald Vizenor’s (Anishinaabe) stories in this context, particularly the scene in Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart where the pilgrims face the Evil Gambler, who has grown up on the nation’s interstates, and the short story “The Moccasin Game,” in which the people face the...