Captured in the Middle: Tradition and Experience in Contemporary Native American Writing

James Welch's Indian Lawyer

James Welch's Indian Lawyer ~ THE WAYS IN WHICH AMERICAN INDIAN LITERATURE reflects traditional Indian worldviews, as well as the ways it responds to theoretical frameworks, such as Arnold Krupat's notion of indigenous literature, are varied and complex. In his analysis of N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, Louis Owens says, "What has matured with Momaday is not merely an undeniable facility with the techniques and tropes of modernism, but more significantly the profound awareness of conflicting epistemologies that had been suggested by Mathews and made explicit by McNickle. With Momaday the American Indian novel shows its ability to appropriate the discourse ofthe privileged center and make it 'bear the burden' ofan 'other' world-view." I The melding ofmainstream discourse with American Indian worldviews , a tradition started by Momaday, has been carried forward by other American Indian writers, each in his or her own way. One ofthese writers is James Welch, who began his literary career with Winter in the Blood, a recognizably modernist text that also reflected contemporary Gros Ventre and Blackfeet cultures, and has progressed to a head-on 10 4 lames Welch's Indian Lawyer unpacking of one of America's most treasured myths in his 1994 book, Killing Custer. Welch's body ofwork has grown to be rich and varied, but it is perhaps The Indian Lawyer (1990) that best captures the natural resistance ofAmerican Indians to postrnodern schizophrenia, a resistance that has also been misunderstood as a failure to assimilate. Although The Indian Lawyer is a competent work of fiction, it is a much better example of resistance and redescription, while employing American Indian and Euramerican storytelling styles. By combining plot, character, and setting with certain devices of oral tradition, such as minimalization, Welch is able to assert a different perspective. The change of perspective, or of what has been termed otherness, is a complex process, as Welch's work reflects, beginning with the po. sitioning ofWinter in the Blood. Welch's later writing is different in certain ways, moving in the direction of redescribing particular historical, social, and political realities of modem Indian life. Two examples are found in The Indian Lawyer, which redescribes relationships between Indian men and white women, and relationships between Indians and the legal system. The critical reception of Winter in the Blood acknowledged elements of the modernist canon, such as an alienated protagonist, fragmented cultural context, experimental narrative, and dependence upon mythic structure, similar to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. In addition, in 1978, in a special Welch issue ofthe American Indian Quarterly, Peter C. Beidler surveyed the opinions of early reviewers of the novel and reported they "tended to feel that the novel was a negative expression, an exploration of an American Indian wasteland from which no traveller could return."Z Other interpretations ofWinter in the Blood focused on structuring devices such as surrealism and distance. Possibly due to its modernist form, Winter in the Blood received much more critical attention than have Welch's later novels. Another important reason for this reception, however, was that the book corresponded closely to the American myth of the "Vanishing Indian." The unnamed narrator, mired in the most basic considerations ofsurvival, is much easier to eulogize than the potent warriors ofyesteryear. From this CAPTURED IN THE MIDDLE vantage point of relative safety critics have focused on imagery, language , and tone, with but a few addressing the actual lived experiences ofAmerican Indian people.3 During an interview with William Bevis, Welch has acknowledged exploration of history, sociology, and politics, stating, "Their [plains Indians ] relationship to whites is still one ofdistrust. I've seen itall my life. You know I'm not iust guessing-this is observation." Further cultural observation can be found throughout the interview, such as in the context ofWinter in the Blood and The Death oflim Loney, ofwhich Welch states, "I've chosen to write about these two guys who sort of have selflimiting worlds, who don't try very hard to rise above what they are, because they interest me."4 The Indian Lawyer shifts even more noticeably away from modernism and toward natural realism than did The Death oflim Loney, while at the same time redescribing the ethnic identity ofprotagonist Sylvester Yellow Calf. The transformation ofYeJlow Calf from Vanishing Indian to assertive other is best understood in the context ofWelch's larger body ofwork and evolving critical standards. Arnold Krupat has...