From the Editors

It is my good fortune to have as a colleague at the University of Texas at Austin Professor Loriene Roy. Professor Roy teaches in UT's School of Information and recently completed a term as president of the American Library Association. She also runs "If I Can I Read, I Can Do Anything," a reading club for Native American children (http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~ifican/). On April 15, 2010, representatives of "If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything" and readergirlz, GuysLitWire, and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) will deliver thousands of donated books to Native American teens at reservation schools. "Operation Book Drop 2010" is spotlighting sixteen Native American authors, including some of ASAIL's favorites: Sherman Alexie, Joseph Bruchac, Louise Erdrich, Patricia Grace, Joy Harjo, Winona LaDuke, Larry Loyie, Dimi Macheras, Lurline Wailana McGregor, Joseph Medicine Crow, Simon Ortiz, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Chad Solomon, Robert Sullivan, Luci Tapahonso, and Tim Tingle. For information about the event, please go to http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~ifican/otbd_index.html. The Web site lists the schools that are already enrolled in the program and, at the bottom, provides instructions for nominating other schools.

This issue again brings together a rich collection of texts from multiple Indigenous worlds. These worlds are geographically distant but united by the creative writers and scholars who honor the Indigenous artistic and political expression that emerge from each one. Keith Camacho brings us a Chamorro voice from 1521 in his poem "romanticizing warriorhood." This eyewitness to the arrival [Begin Page vii] of Magellan watches as Antonio Pigafetta, a member of Magellan's crew, walks away assuming, incorrectly, that the poem's narrator and his family and friends have suffered fatal spear wounds. Renate Eigenbrod argues in her essay that Aboriginal literatures must have a place in Native Studies programs in Canada. Native Studies disciplinary perspectives, in turn, have much to teach about methodology and pedagogy to departments of English. Chanette Romero's article on Hopi photographer Victor Masayesva's film takes us to the Hopi Nation. Romero considers Masayesva's ambivalence about, his desire for but suspicion of, filmic representations of the Hopis as well as his reclamation and recontextualization of non-Native images of the Hopis. Mareike Neuhaus discusses ancestral languages and discourse conventions in Indigenous writing in English with a specific focus on Maria Campbell's Michif (Cree and French) English, while Blake M. Hausman responds to Quentin Youngberg's recent SAIL essay on Sherman Alexie's interpenetration of queer and Native spheres in his film The Business of Fancydancing by reading the film's additional interpenetration of the Shakespearean sphere. Hausman describes specifically how Alexie's riffs on Hamlet catch the conscience of the film's audience.

We hope, as always, that you enjoy the articles and creative work in your new issue of SAIL. [Begin Page viii]