Virtual Tribal Voices: Native American Literary Resources on the Web

MEDIA REVIEWS Virtual Tribal Voices: Native American Literary Resources on the Web Anna Christiansen Idaho State University As the Web increasingly becomes the tool offirst choice for researchers, so too JL X. do analyses of web sites become pivotal in determining what online materials are currently available and how they can be used. In usingweb resources for conducting research, one must keep in mind how electronic sources differ from print ones. Researchers must understand the transitory quality ofweb sites: the information as well as graphic interface of a source may change for a variety of reasons such as author preference, timeliness ofinformation, even administrative changes. Also, while the lack of"officers" on the information highway suggests a freedom from virtual hegemony through an anonymous leveling of power, the absence ofany kind ofpeer review invites a kind of"buyers beware" approach to materials found on the Web. Keeping all of this in mind, I review two web sites significantly contributing to the online study of Native American literature. In narrowing the scope of this review to two sites, I am not suggesting that Native American literature is poorly represented on the Web. Indeed, there are many electronic sources on NA fiction, many of them commercial as well as noncommercial sites. The two sources I index here serve as fairly comprehensive, for the most part non-commercial sites for the study ofNativeAmerican literary texts on the Web. Storytellers NativeAmerican Authors Online http://hanksville.phast.umass.edu/poems/poets/index.cgi Karen Strom constructs and maintains this site which is still very much in process , although conspicuously (to my relief) without the "Under Construction" signs. Even with a two-week span between my initial perusal ofthe site and when I first began to write this part of the review, Strom had added two more author pages. As architect ofthis site, Strom cites her aim as wanting to "make the writing ofmodern Native American authors, particularly the poets, both more visible and more widely available." Listed on the main page by name, most of the writSPRlNG 1998 +ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 65 ers' pages have been constructed with their cooperation and through collaboration with Strom. She notes that the authors approve the sites before they go public , edit their pages, contribute material, etc. An example ofa collaborative effort between Strom and a NativeAmerican author is Luci Tapahonso's page listing her personal as well as academic biography, her writing available online, writing featured in print sources and in translation, as well as interviews/papers/media presentations on her work. Most pages also include a photo ofthe highlighted writer or examples of her/his artwork as well as external links to Amazon.com so that researchers can order the writer's work. (A small percentage ofthe sale reverts back to the author ifbooks are purchased this way.) When possible, Strom provides outside links to author-maintained web sites or admirer' pages about authors, sites she deems 'unofficial' because they were not constructed with the writer's input. Such pages Strom indexes only if they contain substantial information and they are not, for the most part, as extensive in scope as the collaborative efforts between Strom and the writer; some ofthe links even failed to work. While each author page Strom has constructed so far is, indeed , fairly comprehensive, I emailed her to ask why some NativeAmerican writers are conspicuously missing from her site. She responded, indicating that she is still in the process ofmaking contactwith writers as well as workingcollaboratively to construct new sites. She points out that "it takes much longer to develop a site and obtain approval when the person is not online and doesn't feel the project is important." Strom also provides an internal link to a calendar detailing readings and appearances ofthe authors indexed at her site. Some ofher external links connect to book reviews, early 20th-century Native American authors (etexts from a University ofVirginia site and the Internet Public Library), traditional storytelling (which she notes does not translate well online) and related sites. That her collection of author pages is not as comprehensive as, say, the Internet Public Library's collection would be the only warning I have for...