One of the observations made by Third World literary decolonization theoreticians like Homi K. Bhabha (Sussex), Timothy Brennan (Purdue) and perhaps a dozen other scholars even lesser known in the United States is that there are particular modern writers whose origins are not Euro-American (such as Salman Rushdie, Vargas Llosa, perhaps Isabelle Allende and VS Naipaul and, if you are to believe the Asian-American critic and novelist Frank Chin, even Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston) who have moved away from the expected nationalistic affiliations towards an acquired'cosmopolitanism', and, in the process of doing so, it is argued, they have contributed to the confusion about cultural authority in the Third World literary voice. In publication, little of analytical importance has been said about this' confusion in cultural authority'as it concerns the American Indian fiction writer, though in off-the-record discourse among scholars, it is a critical interest. This paper will begin by addressing what that observation means in terms of Contemporary American Indian Literatures and will move toward a broader analysis of'nationalism'in American Indian Fiction. Explored within the contexts of Third World literary criticism will be the work of fiction writers who claim to be American lndians, those who are enrolled members of existing tribal nations, those who live in the United States and write in English.