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Reviewed by:
  • New Indians, Old Wars
  • Jennifer Denetdale (bio)
New Indians, Old Wars, by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. University of Illinois Press, 2007

As many times as I have read the works of Elizabeth Cook Lynn, I never fail to appreciate her candor and determination to foster a critical Native American study that centers on tribal-specific philosophies and epistemologies. As Cook-Lynn sees it, Native scholars who were instrumental in establishing Native studies during the era of Red Power had hoped for the development of an Indigenous intelligentsia that would promote and defend respective tribal nations' sovereign status. New Indians, Old Wars illuminates the present state of American Indian studies, which is fragmented by the domination of theories and methodologies developed in disciplines such as anthropology, history, English, and political science; by the failure of universities to take AIS seriously so that programs remain marginalized; and by the prevalence of Western interpretative frameworks that promote American values such as the celebration of multiculturalism and the heroizing of colonialism as the essence of American democracy and freedom. As it stands, most AIS programs have simply created programs that rely upon approaches and issues developed in standing disciplines, "pouring old wine into new bottles," thereby perpetuating frameworks that cannot begin to address the critical need to develop pedagogy and curriculum that interrogates the erosion and ongoing undermining of Native sovereignty through generations of legal maneuvers, religious impositions, and Indian federal policies. We need to teach our students to accept responsibility in rebuilding our respective nations.

Professor Cook-Lynn sustains her critiques of the pervasiveness of American colonialism to shape Native life through anti-Indianism, a concept she presents and develops in Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeya's Earth and Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice. "Anti-Indianism" is about revealing the social, economic, religious, and political structures of the United States that erase the current state of Native America, which is one of ongoing impoverishment and dependency on the U.S. government. Anti-Indianism is the failure to acknowledge Native nations as sovereigns, the history of crimes and injustices against the Indigenous peoples of this continent, and how denials of the ongoing oppressions of Native peoples get disseminated in multiple levels into the fabric of American society. As Cook-Lynn notes, Native peoples must not define their status within the framework of multiculturalism where they seek equality with other U.S. citizens; rather, Native peoples must become critically conscious of the historical realities of their own lives and continue the struggles of their ancestors who recognized themselves as distinctive cultural and [End Page 105] political entities, many of whom gave their lives for our most valuable possessions—our lands and ways of life.

Discussing topics that seemingly have little in common and most likely would be studied in various fields such as history, literary studies, and political science, Cook-Lynn nevertheless brings them together under American Indian studies. Examining Native literary studies, Cook Lynn finds that most tribal authors still pander to American literary traditions and styles, to the detriment of Native peoples because, for the most part, Native works still fail to illuminate a tribal consciousness and to up-hold tribal sovereignty. She does, however, laud the Mesquakie writer, Ray Young Bear, for his tribal-centered writings that primarily show how Native peoples have persisted against incredibly oppressive conditions wrought through history and do so by relying upon their own philosophies, stories, and ceremonies. Such works as by Young Bear reject the functions of literature and literary studies as articulated by several generations of American literary figures. As Cook-Lynn asserts, to write is a sacred responsibility; to write is to claim political authority. It "is preparing the ground before the wacipi begins."

At the core of New Indians, Old Wars is the awareness that the issues our ancestors have faced are the same ones that we face as Native peoples. American literary traditions have perpetuated violence toward Native peoples, enforced the willful ignorance of the dispossession and disenfranchisement of the Indigenous people, and excuses generations of genocidal policies rained upon Native peoples, thereby keeping intact the structures of injustices...

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