CHAPTER I

mTROD'UCTHON: JLWPPHNG THE VOICE

Throughout America, froin north to south. the dominant culture acknowledges Indlans as objects of study, but den~es them as subjects of history The Ind~ans have folklore. not culture. they practice superstitions, not relrgions, they speak dialects, not languages. they 111aAe crafts, not arts, [Eduardo Galeano. cited in Allen 1989 I )

"Minor~tles" are the creations of power politlcs they are cultural not numerical to their best Interests not Inferiors Colonla1 powers define the world accord~ng llghrs, t h e ~ rca~lonlcaljudgements of l~terature,humanity and clv~lization are writing, grounded In dominance, not in supeiror morality or knowledge Colon~ai therefore,
IS

an ~nstrument of the colonizing process, not objectlve dls~nterested

reportage In such circumstances, the history of the colonization and conquest of the Arner~casremalns a hegemonic monologue, incomplete, self-serving and suspect (Axtell 1992:3 10)

Native w r ~ t ~ n has g begun to emerge as a distinct genre In the twenty first century of the works of writers of varlous trlbal affiliat~ons all over North with the publicat~on Amerlca. The attltude of the matnstream culture towards Natives has always been, and
continues

to be, patronizmg, negat~ve and stereotypical Perceived as objects of history,

;he Nat~ves have functioned as the stereotyped otlier whose presence is ilecessaiy in the European's assertion of selfhood on the -4nlerlcan sol1 Ever slnce the contact, the Nat~ves have been perce~rred as objects of curiosities-pollt~cal,soclal and anthropologlcal as numerous white narratives test& As Galeano aptly polnts out, the dominant culture has always attempted to deny them as subjects of h~story

To be erased from History by the voice of the dominant culture, to be objectified through Hollywood stereotypes and whlte narrattves whlch foster negatlve representations - this has been the predicament of Nat~ves in North Amenca. The Image

of the Indian disseminated through wh~temovies, narratives and representations has always been objectified and hence ahistorical. Colonial writing has exercised semiotic control over the Natlve, who was a constant source of semiotic reproduction, as Terry Goldie a Native cr~tlcargues The Native man has been represented as 'prlmitive', 'savage', 'stupid', 'wagonburner', 'lazy' and 'drunk' whereas the Native woman is the 'squaw' or 'the exotic other', the presence that would lead the white man into the realms of exotic sensuality, into an
assertion

of his colonlal self If the Native man has been Native women

marginahzed, erased or othered in white narratives/histories and films, the Native woman has been doubly so As victims of patriarchy and internallzed
oppression,

have always existed outside history, or in its fissures as feminists would argue In the light of the above statements, ~twould be interesting to look at Native women's writing in North America and its emergence as writings of resistance

h this chapter, an attempt will be made to trace the trajectory of Natlve

writ:ng/voice from the told-to-the-person narratives to the told-to-the-page-narratives In providing a brief overview of the history of Native writing, the Chapter will also contextualize the contemporary Native women's texts selected for study The characteristlc features of Native writing as a genre in tune with the Nabve world view and spirituality and its deviations from Western generic patterns will also be discussed briefly. This will be followed by a description of the Native women's texts selected for study, the criteria involved in the selection of the texts and the relevance of the present study. A brief appraisal of the semiotic reproductions of the Natives in White narrativesimovies wiii aiso form part of the purview of this chapter. The resume of the ensuing chapters, the nature of critical intervention in those chapters and the scope of the study will be discussed before the conclusion of this chapter. From Told to-the-Person to Told-to-the-Page: Native Voice: A Trajectory The history of American literature began wlth the Native peoples who had, as anthropo1og:sts and historians would point out, migrated to North America over twentyeight thousand years ago and not with the advent of Europeans to the continent as

western hrstorians argue. N Scott Mornanday, a Klowa writer, remarks "Amencan llterature begins with the first human perception of the American landscape expressed and preserved in language" (Clted In Ruoff 1990 1 ) The earliest human perceptions of the Native were preserved through the Native Oral traditions of varlous tribes in different languages Ruoff points out that at the time of contact, the native peoples of North America were divlded into more than three hundred cultural groups and spoke two hundred different languages, plus many dlalects der~vedfrom seven basic language famllles By 1940: 149 of these languages were still In use and Native Americans pract~ced many rel~glons and customs (Ruoff 1990 1 ) The various r ~ t e s and custon~sof Native rellglons were preserved and transmltted through Oral tradit~onithroughstones The wrltten North American Native llterature began only In the early twentieth century Amerlcan Indian Oral Ilterat-iires were mostly transmltted orally from one generation to another. But some t r ~ b e s had managed to record thelr literatures A La Vonne Brown Ruoff in American Indian Titeratures: An Intmduction, R1b110,ora~i.c Review and S e l e c t e d ((1990) Identifies the presence of such recorded literature amongst the Ojibwa, Quiche Maya of Guatemala highlands and others The Ojibwa, for example, used pictographic symbols to preserve thelr M ~ d e (Grand Medicme) rituals on birchbark scrolls and other mater~als;other trlbes such as those on the Plalns and Northwest coasts, also kept pictographic accounts. One of the few tribes to record thelr literature In books was the Qulche Maya of the Guatemala highlands, who preserved the origln of their culture In a work called Popol Vuh or CovncilRook. Thelr scnbes continued to create books before the arrival of western Europeans who subsequently burned hundreds of

. .

hieroglyphic columns According to Dennls Tedlock, only four have survived,

three in Europe and one recently discovered in Guatemala (Popol Vz~h 23-27) (Ruoff 1990:11) The earliest instance of the collecQon of oral literatures of Natlve America begins

in Mesoamerica in the books of the Maya Fray Bernardino de Sahagun had Included
considerable Spanish translations of Native literature in his history of New Spain The

lnltlal collections of Natlve literature were sporadic and rather unsystematic. The systematic collect~on of the oral literature of what is now the United States, was as Ruoff polnts out, stimulated by the publ~cation of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's
(1 839), which focussed on Ojibway culture and literature. This resulted In the interest in

and subsequent pubilcat~onof life h~stones and autobiographies and generated further
anthropological and lingulstlc studles The ploneers In thls field were John Wesley

Powell and Frantz Boas. Powell and Boas are credited by scholars wlth havlng Initiated the ethno-llngulstlc approach. Most of the tribal narratives collected by the anthropologlsts and ethno-linguists from the tnbai members or sources were later translated, edlted and publ~shed Often these lnd~catethe editorial mediation of the collectors which was often based on Western parameters/paradigms Critlcs and scholars have ~dentified two types of Indian texts. told-to-the-personnarratlves, and the told-to-the- page narratives. What are commonly termed Indian
Autobiographies fall into the first category, so do the songs and stories collected by

antkropologlsts llke Frantz Boas, Dell Hymes, Dennis Tedlock, Karl Kroeber, Jasold V. Ramsey, Allen Dundis and others. Kathleen Mullen Sands in mlsslonarles and whte historians: The narrator - editor relationship has been the basis of collecting, preserving and publlshlng American Indian personal nariatives from the
(1983) outlines the

problems of whlte editorship m the Oral narratives collected by anthropologists,

beginning.

Disadvantages in the collaboration between Lndian and White are perhaps most evldent In eighteenth and nlneteenth century autobiographies, but they cannot be overlooked even in contemporary works, because of their comprehensive Influence on the narration of the life story Unfortunately, many earlier collected narratlves are badly marred by the bias of the collectors or by thelr lack of

information about the tribal cultures Many early collectors were missionaries
who purposely collected life stories from Christian Indlans who fit the

missionaries' notions of a "good Indian because they had glven up many tribal

traditions in favor of white practices. Other narratives, clearly warped by the

collector's obvious rornantlc stereotyping, depict Indians as "noble savages" . Still other stories, collected by deterministic historians, military men or antiquarians attracted to and interested in Indlan life, suffer from a lack of understanding of the Indian ways or a misguided notion that they were preserving portraits of what they assumed were vanlshlng Americans (Sands 1983 56-57) Sands further points out that the authenticity such of personal narratives and collect~ons 1s often questionable and that the editorla! practices often indlcate prejudices, rnlsrepresentat~onand lack of professtonallsm Sands seems to be foregroundlng the problematic of told-to-the person nanatlve resultant of the ambivalent nature of VativeWhite collaborations and editorship This 1s true in the case of Canada too, as Penny r Petrone obsen/esl in her booke Present (1 990) The pr~nted collection of Canadlan Oral Narratives began when the Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth century published in the Jesuit Kd&sms, the recorded oral traditions of the natives east of Georgian Bay. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's work A l g ~ Researches, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, served to further the interest aroused in Native narratives. In 1894, S~las Rand published the Legends of the Micmaa. Yet another pioneer 1n the field of collection of Oral literatures in Canada was Reverend Adrian. G. Morice. William Jones, an American Indian, between 1903 and 1905, translated into Engllsh Ojibway narratives that he had collected west and north of Lake in North America Superior for the Carnegie Foundation ~nNorth America in C
c

The well m e m g mterpretabon of non-natlve led to words and phrases bemg mstranslated, lost, subsktuted or dehberately distorted to fit some preconceived image or ethos of the times For mstance, the French msslonanes exaggerated the Christian plety of the natives, and the French soldier-iconoclast, Baron de La Hontan, conveyed an anbclencal blas Nmeteenth-centuq pioneers m Indram studies from Henry Roure-Schoolcraft to Sllas Rand reshaped the stones and songs they recorded to suit the senhmental and romanbc style popular m theu day. To the non-Indian rmnd Indlan tales are baiZmg m thelr intncacles, mconsistencles, and leaps of log~c,creatlng difficulkes and hstrahon in Q l n g to understand them For example, the Reverent Sllas Rand (1 8 10 - 89) a Baptist misslonary among the Mcmacs of Nova Scoba, for forty years collected recorded and translated narrahves, but m one of his lectures he &mussed them wlth the casual comment: "Now what sense or meaning there maybe at the bottom of all this nonsense, I leave to the speculabon of the otl~ers'(Pebone 1990. 6 - 11)

Many anthropologlsts were involved in collect~ng tribal songs, ceremonial and ritual dramas, while yet others bel~evedIn collecting llfe histories or autobiographical accounts In order to study the Native customs and practices. The autobiograph~cal accounts of native women are significant in this respect Late nmeteenth and early twentieth centuries saw an Increasing Interest and des~reIn recording life s t o r ~ e s ~ especially those of Native Women Grethchen Bataille remarks on the signlficance of Natlve Women's autobiographical accounts and their thematlc difference from those of their male counter parts Interestingly, the women whose llves were recorded durlng that perlod were not
princesses,

but the mothers and wives of tribesmen Their stories differ from that of food rather than of hunting

of thelr male contemporaries in that they tell, not of war exploits, but of the gathering of the herbs They speak of
preparing

buffalo They tell of raising chlldren rather than raclng horses. These differences reflect the d~vlslon of roles in the cultures More important than any other feature of these stories 1s the extent to which they reflect the relations between women and men wlthin a trlbe (Batallle 1983-87). Native writers like Paula Gunn Allen and others contend that the concept of an individual's life st~r~lautobiography was quite alien to many tnbes, which emphasized the communal rather than the individual Thls often perplexed white translators and ed~tors who often thought that many incidents belleved to be of signlficance by Native women as relevant to the understanding of their tribes were irrelevant in an mdividual's narration of her life story Nancy Lurie's rransPanon and recording Mountan Wolf Womax Slster of Crashtng Thunder The Autobro~raphy of a Wlnnebago I n d ~ a n (1 961) is cited In Bataille as a case in point where the narrator gave the translator the kind of vers~on the latter had wanted Elsie C. Parsons' Americanlndlan, a collection of twenty four vignettes composed by anthropologlsts based on their research, Truman
Amongst the promment Indian Autobiographies by men that were recorded are H&&~&G& (1932) by Black Elk (SIOUX), collected and translated by John G N e h ta d r, . !dk&Ha& (Sauk) m collaboration w~tli Antome Le Clawe and John B Palterson, a W1nneh~gaIn&a(l926) by Sam Blowsnake, collected by Paul Raedm and enh Whlte Bull (1 968) by Chef Joseph White Bull ed~ted by James H Howard.

Mlchaeison's and T h e N a r r a t l v e e y a SouthernMarla Chona's The Autob~ogr~h of y a Pat~azo Woman, recorded and published by Ruth Underhlll in 1936,

Elizabeth Colson's, Autobiograph~esof Three Pomo Women gathered in 1940s, but

published in 1974 - all these Indian Autobiographies Indicate the trajectory of presence

of the Native women as seives/subjects of thelr narratives In splte of the mutations, ~nterpolatlons, misrepresentations and other hazards of white editorship/mediation, these which, contrary stories provlde information about the roles of women in trlbal soc~eties, were hardly subsewlent or infenor' to popular whlte bel~efs, The translt~on from the told-to-the-person narrat~ves to told-to-the-page narratives (from life storles and stories of Indian-White collaborations to narratives directly written by the Natives themselves) marked a slgnlficant change in the process of the dlssem~natlonof Natlve voice The Lndlans, who at the turn of the twentieth century, educated in white schools, espectally those from the plains and far west, started writmg their own stories in Engllsh A La Vonne Brown Ruoff notes that the publication of wrltten Ind~an autobiographies preceded that of oral life histories The first autobiography to be published was A Son of the Forest (1 829) by Wllliam Apes, a Pequot Indian, who later become a Methodist convert. Apes's narrative charts his suffering as a child due to his alcoholic grand parents, his conversion to Christianity and his pertlous journey to salvation, fall from grace, and subsequent rededication to Christianity F u o f f 1990.53). George Copway, another Ch~ppewa convert to Method~sm, wrote Travels of Kah-ge-ga-mh bowh (1 8471, which was a blend of m * , htstory and personal experience and proved to be a model for subsequent autob~ographes by Indtans The most tnfluential and wldely read Indian autobiographer during the early twentieth century, In Ruoff's view, was Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) a Sioux Indian doctor who wrote Wlgwam Evenlngs (19091, Indlan Boyhood (1902) and From the Deep Woods to
"retchen Batllle remarks All these women's lives come to us through at least one mtermediary, often several These stones provide little specfic lnfomatlon about the role of Lndlan women, but carefid readlng suggest that theu role was neither subseivlent nor infenor These women emphas~ze the roles of both males and females, the famhal relaonships, the matenal culture, above all, a regret for the changes f?om the old ways (1983 91)

Civliizatlon (1 916) Ruoff remarks: "ln all his works, Eastman attempted to serve as a bridge between Ind~anand White cultures - to ~evealto his w h ~ t eaudience the worldviews, customs, literature and history of the Indlans so that non-Indian Americans might appreciate and emulate natlve American virtues" (Ruoff 1990 57) Luther Stand~ng Bear, A Sioux Indian, inspired by Eastman's autoblographies wrote M y e p (1928) and
experiences

L a n d (1953). Standlng Bear's

narratives deal wlth his

at Carlyle hdian School, his enunc~ation of Sloux beliefs, customs and llfe,

and criticism of whlte treatment of Indians Francis La Flesche (Omaha) a Plalns hdlan to become the first Indian anthropologist, wrote M autobiographies of t l e period Twentieth century also saw some excellent pleces of written literary

k Flve. l n d l a n l b d

the Omaha Trlbe (1 900), a work acknowledged by scholars and crltics as one of the finest

autoblographies. John Joseph Mathews' T a l k l n to theMoon (1 945); N Scott Momaday's Way ta the Rainy Mountain (1 969) which traces the author's Kiowa heritage and search for his tribal roots and The (1976) which makes use of the stream of consciousness narratwe and is a more conventional autobiography, Wllliam Least Heat Moon's

B l u e(1 982) and Gerald Vizenor's

Intenor Landscapes (1 990) are some

,

of the most promnent contemporary autoblographies.

Samson Occom, a Mohegan Indian, was the first author to publish in English. He was a Presbyterian missionary and his

an Indian (1 772) became the first Indian besr seiier Kuoff points out that the first novel
by an Indian author in the nineteenth century was John Rollln k d g e ' s (a Chrokee Indian's) Life and Adventures of Joaquin M u r i a (1854) &dge's mixed blood protagonist Murieta is depicted as a good man driven to crime after he 1s vlctirmzed by the white mlners The 1930's saw the emergence oftwo American Indian novelists whose works became immensely popular during their bmes - John Joseph Mathews and D'Arcy Mc-Nickle. Matthew's first book Wah'Kon-Tah (1932) is a fictional account that portrays the Osage tribe's determination to retain its traditional ways in the onslaught of white man's culture His next novel

DQW (1934) depicts the trajectory of a young

jazz-age Osage, the effects of reservation pohcy, land allotment and the Oklahoma oil boom on the Osage culture McNlckle's S-mamdd ((1 936) is acknowledged by critics as the most pollshed novel by an Ind~an writer The novel enunciates a mixed blood's search for his place and emphasizes the Importance of oral tradltlons In the cultural survival of the tribe His next two novels (1954) and Wind f
-

(1978) emphasize the clash between two cultures

Native and W h ~ t eand , the Native

peoples' attempts to retain thelr traditional ethos and ways of life The 1960s was a significant period in the American History It saw the rise of Indian Movements Black Power Movement and the genesis of Red Power and Amer~can often Significantly the Native fiction of the period reflected spirit of the age This per~od, termed the American Indian Renaissance, saw the works of the KiowaRueblo wrlter N Scott Momaday, which exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporary as well as the subsequent generation of writers Mornaday's House Made of Dawn (1 968). which charts the mixed blood protagonist's quest for a sense of place, community and self/identity rece~ved tremendous critical acclaim and even won the Pulitzer prize His other novels, Way to Rainy Mountain (1969) and The Ancient Child (1989), which reflected his tribal moorings and ethos, were also equally popular

The other prominent male authors who gained considerable recognit~onIn the 70's and 80's were James Welch, a Black feetIGros Ventros Wrlter and Gerald Vizenor,

an Objibway writer. The quest motif is employed by Welch (as Momaday does
Made of Dawn) in Winter in the Blood (I 974)

The Death

of Jim Loney ji979j deals

wlth the protagonist's attempt to organize his life, his past and relationships and in its plot structure bears a strong resemblance to Welch's earlier novel. His next work of fiction Fool's Crow (1 986) is a histor~cal novel which charts the impact of white settlement o n a Montana band of Black Feet in 1870, ~tgives a rnovlng account of the tr~bal life during The myths and ceremonies of Blackfeet Oral tradition punctuate Welch's the per~od. narrative on Black feet histov Gerald Vizenor is more acclaimed for h ~ non-fictional s works and his criticism on American Indian novels, -Chance: Post Modern

Discourse on Native American Indian Literature (1993). His non fictional works

The

Sky (1972) and

(1984) deal wrth the myths,

(h)stories and cultural ethos of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa His Bearheart (1978) and Griever: An American Monkey K ~ n g In Chlna (1987) (which won the 1986 F~ctioncollective IPlinois State Unlversrty Award and the 1987 American Book award for fiction) deal with the tnckstericulture hero motif 'hn fact,

trickster 1s a penradmg presence in all his creatlve and critlcal works

The contemporarry Native American male authors, who have managed to carve a niche for themselves in the scenarlo of Native literature in North Amer~ca,include Michael Dorris (A Yellow Raft on Blue Water (1987), Martln Cruz Smlth (N:ght Wlng (1977), Gorky Park (1981), StL?llion Gate (1986) Polar S t x (1989)), Thomas Klng (Medicine f i v e r (1 990) and Sherman Alexie )-( Many anthologists like Gerry Hobson, Cllfford E. Trafzer, Thomas King and others have come up with

anthologies of short fict~onby Natlve authors from different parts of Canada and
~merica.~ The trajectory of Native Women's voice in North America can be traced back, as pointed out earlier in this chapter, to the told-to-the-person narratives of the eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries Rayna Green maps the course of Native women's stories m her "Introduction" to the anthology of Native women's Poetry and F~ction: Whether it comes directly from the story teller's mouth and she writes it down or some one writes it for her, the story has to be told. Somet~mes she hears or dreams
something and makes a siory oilt u f ii. Tilat's the way ~t ofte~: happens Before

European wr~ting, there were voices to sing and speak, dances to make real the stories that the people told or to honor the retelling a new.. . And others might get the story as the women weave it into the rug They'd have to remember what their duties were towards the people because the rug told them every time they looked at it Whichever way it was the story got told, the way it gets told now The old ways of speaking aren't gone They've changed of course.. , there are new ways
The present survey of Nabve literature has concentrated mmly on ficbonal and prose narrabves by Native authors. For a detaled survey on Natrve poetry, see A La Vonne Brown Ruof+ 'American Indian L~teratures: A n Introductron, Brblrographrc Review andselected Bibirography ( 1 9 9 0 )

to remember.. . . They kept them even when no one asked to hear them - even when the w h t e eyes came and asked only the men what they knew

. Thus the

women have always kept the stories, in clay or reeds, In wool or cotton, in grass or paint, or words to songs. Somewhere they began to keep them in ink and paper (and eventually in electronic impulses transferred to paper from magnetic tape) (Green 1984.3-4) The-told-to-the page narratives or stones told dlrectiy through ink and paper saw Native Women attempting to take the process and responsibility of d~ssemination of their stories, themselves Sarah Wlnnemucca Hopkins' L:fe among the Piutes. Thelr Wrongs and Claims (1 883), was a remarkable pioneering attempt in this field, desplte the white
editorship of Mrs. Horace Mann. Hopkins' narrative, an maginative personal and tribal

the Native - White relations durlng the period 1844 - 1883 Another history, chron~cles significant autoblographical work during the nineteenth century was Zltkala-Sa's (Gertrude Bonln) collection of essays, American I n h Stories (1921). She was a Sioux woman who took an active role in the society of American Indians, and the National Council for American Indlans (which she founded) and a zealous advocate of Indian rights. Emily Paullne Johnson, a Canadlan Mohawk writer, who had won critical accolades for her poetry and performance of her poetry in Canada, United States and England was one of the fust Indian women to publish her short fict~on. ~ocassin Maker (1913), a collection of short stories about Ind~an and non-Indian women m Canada focusses on the problems of mixed blood women, their relationships with white men and their search for identity and was a trend-setter for the !ater fictions, based on the same theme. The Shag(1913) is a collection of stories for boys Johnson's works, as Ruoff polnts out In her book on American Indian literatures, serve as a transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

ehT-

(1927)

authored

by

Mourning

Dove

(HumishumdChrlstme Quintasket Colville) is generally heralded by Native scholars and crihcs as the first novel by an American Indian woman. The novel harps on the identity problem of the mixed blood woman protagonist and the importance of oral tradition in

the Native woman's life. It incorporates Okanagan history, oral stories, spiritua! pracuces and contemporary realit~es.~ Maria Campbell, a Canadian Metis writer, publ~shedher autobiography Hal&

Ehed (1 973), perceived generally as the decade's most acclaimed Natlve autoblography
Campbell poignantly traces her childhood in a close-knit Metls community, her attempt to save her siblings from being taken away by the welfare people after her mother's death, her failure to do so and subsequent plunge into the darkness of alcohol, drugs and prostitutlon from which she manages to come out with the help of her fr~ends, her own remarkable will power and the hovering splrit of her grandmother Cheechum, to find her true identlty as a Metis woman. Campbell's autoblography seems to have Influenced Natlve writers like Beatrlce Culleton, Lee Maracle and others Leslie Silko's Ceremony (1 977) is often perceived as a land mark work as far as Native women writing in North America is concerned. Silko is a Laguna Pueblo writer, who weaves the myths and legends of Pueblo Oral tradition into her narrative of Tayo's (World War II Veteran's) quest for his communal identity Tayo, the half-breed protagonist, experiences fragmentation of self due to h s experiences m the war, h s sense of liminality due to hls mixed parentage; and his healing involves his participation in rituals and ceremonies durlng which he encounters various emanations of the Feminine principlenaguna Creatrix In his life, who help him remember the stories, complete his ceremony and eventually return to hls Pueblo community Silko's Storytellex (198 1) also deals with Laguna Pueblo themes It includes several short stories, poetry autoblographical commentary. Her most recent novel 1s entitled Almanac of the Dead

Paula Gunn Allen, another Pueblo writer, too, employs the Laguna creation stories and myths in her fiction Allen makes use of the rltual quest (like Momaday Welch,, Silko and others), from a feminine perspective In her novel The Woman Who
Paula Gunn Allen explicates how the novel is class~c of its types: It IS an Indian novel, that IS, it 1s a long sto~y, composed of a number of short stones. It IS also part of the Chlpmunk cycle (Cogewea means "clupmunk") url~lch 1s m turn part of the Old Woman

(1 9831, w h ~ c h traces the half-breed protagonist Ephanie Atenacior's

journey towards her Pueblo communal selflnarrative after experiencing fragmentaQon of self and limnnal~ty. Allen's collections of poems Shadow C o w (1982) Y&L& (1987), and Skins and Bones (1988) demonstrate her intensity and ab~lity to communicate the power of words Allen's works on Native American Literature ~nclude
a n d C o u r s e I b g m (1 983);

b9891, The Sacred HOOD. Recoverine the Feminine In Amerlcan Indlan Grand d a u ~ (1

Traditions (1986) and Grand mothers of the L~ght. A Mediclne Woman's Source Book
(1 9 9 1 ) ~ Lou~se Erdr~ch, an Ojibwa (Chippewa), is another prolific writer who has won critlcal acclaim for her tetralogy J.ove Medmne (1984), which won the Critics Circle Award, Beet Queen (1 986), Tracks (1 988) and The A~ngo Palace (1 995) which deal with the llfe of people in and around the Trutle Mountain Chlppewa resen7atlon in North Dakota, "weave an intricate web of relationships among the members of individual farmlies and family groups of Indians, mixed bloods and whites" (Ruoff 1990:85). Ruoff points out that the novels were published in reverse order oftheir internal chronology and use multiple narrators who tell parts of the story, structured in episodes set in particular years or months. Tracks, published after the other two novels, however, 1s the earliest m terms of plot and internal chronology and deals with the Chippewa life during 1912 1924 in the aftermath of the Allotment .4ct It deals wlth the protagonist Fleur Pillager's attempts to hold on to her allotted tract of land despite hostile weather conditions and government polic~es Tracks has a b i p o l ~ irnarzitiva, vzi:l: :he carratisre voice being split between the two narrators, Nanapush and Pauline The Beet Oueen covers the period
1932 - 1972 and is set in the off-reservation town of Argus, when the area around Argus

changed from wheat to sugar - beet farming Most of the characters in this novel are nonIndlans. Love Medicine, the first novel to be published and w h c h covers the perlod 1934
- 1983, humorously portrays the famllies of Nector Kaspaw, Lulu and Marie Lazare, who

Cycle In this regard it 1s not so much a novel as a contmuahon m told-to-the -pagelrecorded form of an honoured tradibon (Allen 1989 20) In fact, Allen's cr~bcal works cltted above contnbute significantly to framework some of the chapters m the present study, especially Chapter I1 and Chapter V

make their appearance ~nTracks too.

(1 9953 traces the trajectory of the

descendants of the two clans - Nanapush,Piilager on the one hand, and MaspawJLazare on the other In a series of interconnectlng stones which explores continuity and connection in relationships between the characters. Thrs novel is the last one In Erdrich's tetralogy and covers the period from 1972 to the present Erdrich has published two collections of poems (1984) and Baptxim of D
w (1989) She has also publ~shed a book

entitled Blue Jay's Dance: A B~rthYea: (1996) and T jointly authored with her husband collaborator Michael Dorris

e (1995)

Beatrice Culleton's Aprll Raintrea (1984) jinltially publ~shedas In Search of April Ramtree in 1982) probably is a work, which highlights the pathos of Metls life ln Canada. Based on the author's experiences of foster homes, alcoholism, poverty and death of siblings, the novel maps the story of two Metls sisters, April and Cheryl and the~r poignant search for identlty Culleton charts the systemic oppression resulta~it of colonialism and racism and the havoc created by these in Metis llves Culleton wrote a novel for children, after her first book, entitledf -

t h e W h t e B h n (1 985), a n

animal autobiography which, in the person of the white bison, narrates with much historical detail, about the discrimination of the buffalo on the Plalns Jeanettee Armstrong's, (an Okanagan Indian wnters) novel Slash (1 985), another significant work as far as Native writmg in Canada is concerned, deals with the Native politics and Native - White relations during 1960s and 70s In Canada. Armstrong's novel maps the protagonist Slash Kelashket's search for his cornmurzi se!f through phases of alcoholism, drug addiction, Imprisonment, violence, political activism and ultimately to his realization that solution to the Indlan problems lles In the tradihonal medicine ways of the Okanagan people and his recognition of his androgynous trlbal self & & is a historical fiction situated In the project of Native resistance in Canada

Lee Maracle's

I (1988), a

collection of autoblographlcal essays,

articulates the systemic oppression resultant of colonialism on the Metis, especially women, in Canada. Maracle's autoblographlcal narrative is vastly different from Maria

Campbell's

, in that it is a conglomerat~onof voices w h c h merge into the

communal voice of the author. Maracle's autobiography whlch is more theoretical and

fictional as the author herself puts ~ temphasizes , the need for revlslonary history from the
Natlve perspective. In chart~ng the trajectory of Metissage in Canada, Maracie's book also enunciates the need for decolonizationinarrative Maracle had published another work ent~tled before rhe publication of 1 Am w ~ l a n

The other significant North American works by Natrve women that have won considerable recognition Include Linda Hogan's (Chlckassaw) Mean (1 990) which describes the effects of the oil boom of the 1920s on an Oklahoma Indlan community and That Horse (1985) a collection of Short stories, Janet Campbeil Hale's (a Coeur d'AleneKootena1 Indian) The .J&p
of Cecelia Captilre (19851, Owl's Son2 (1974),

Blood Llnes. Odyssey of a Nat~ve Daughw (1994); Ruby Sllpperjack's (Metis, Canadian) &nor the S u ~ ( 1 9 8 7and ) Sllent Words (1 992), Joan Crate's (Metis Canadian) Breathin? water (1 990), Beth Brants' (Metis, Canadian) Mohawk Trail (1 985) and so on. The considerable amount of Native women's wnhng that has been emerging m the recent times indicates the fact that the Natlve women have taken the responsib~lity of representing themselves through their narratives, freeing themselves from the sem~otic control imposed by the colonizers.
Native Writing: Aesthetics, World View, Narrative Patterns :

In the grevlous sectioz, an attempt has been made to chart the course of Native
voice especially women's voice from told-to-the person narratives to told-to-the-page narratives. It would be highly worthwhile now to look at the major themes, charactenstic traits, and narrative patterns In Native works which do not conform to the Western notlons of genre and often employ narrative forms which violate the conventional Western generlc patterns Paula Gunn Allen in her "Introduction" to the anthology of Natlve Women writing, Spider Woman's C~randd a u ~ (1989) h elucidates the differences between

Native and Western aesthetics whlch occur due to the differences in the world views of the two cultures. Allen mentlons that the Katives do not belleve in genres prescribed m/by the western tradition. Natrve Stones are "cyclical" and often mix poetry and prose in thelr narrative structure. The European tradition, on the other hand, believes m the purity of genres Inter-mlxmg of genres llke the ~ntermlngiing of races, classes or genders is vehemently discouraged by the crltics and scholars who rlgidly insist on generlc ciassificat~onThe European traditron also disdains mixing levels of diction, tends to be purlst in ~ t s approach and often attempts to classify wrlting according to the norms formulated by Arlstotle The European values of indlvldual~sm permeate then notlons of the protagonist ("a single individual who wreaks his will upon one or more hapless groups") and piot structure (wh~chreflect the conflict, crisls and resolution in the
protagonists' llfe)

Allen maps the Natwe tradition which 1s contrapuntally opposed to the Western one in its world vlew, aesthetics, plot structures, themes and 1n its holistic outlook: Novels are long stories that weave a number of elements into a coherent whole and in thew combining, make significance of human and non human llfe .. Traditional Native novels are identified as "cycles" referring to a number of stories that cluster around a more or less central theme and often feature particular characters and events7
..

Indian ethos is neither

individualistic

nor confllct

centred, and the unifying structures that make the oral traditional coherent ase less a matter of character, time and sethng than the coherence of common

understanding derivsd from the r:k2! trzdition that members af a tribal untt share
(Allen 1983 4 - 6 ) The Native narrattves incorporate elements of ritual and ceremonial traditions of particular tnbes where the communal experience of the tribe rather than individual experiences is foregrounded. In fact, individualism is often portrayed as a negatrve trait

Allen c~tes the Yellow Woman stones and other stones of Keres Pueblo as examples for trad~uonal Nabve narrat.wes or "cycles"

Native narratives reflect the tribal worldview which 1s bzsed on k~nshipties between human beings as weli as between human and non-human worlds All beings 1n thls unlverse are perceived as v~tal, intellrgent and self-aware and the Natlve aesthet~c position involves honoring the propriety and kinshlp tles In t h ~ s cycllcal unlverse Allen eiuc~dates this Right relationship, or right kinship 1s hndamental to Native aesthetics Right relationship is dictated by custom within a given trlbal or cultural group but everywhere it is characterized by cons~derationsof proportion, harmony balance and communality
. .

Tribal a r t of all kinds embodies the prlnclple of k~nship For Indians,

render~ngthe beaut~fulin terms of connectedness of elemenB in harmonious, balanced, respectful proponion of each and any to all-m-All relationships are based on commonalties of consciousness, reflected in thought and behawor, blood is only a reflection of that central definlhve bondS .Indian aesthebcs are spiritual at base - harmony, balance, relationshtp and dignity are its inform~ng pr~nciples (Allen 1983 9 - 10) The themes that frequently occur in Native women's stories Include cultural and political enslavement resultant of colonialism, m its var~ousforms

- jails,

boardlng

schools, reservation experiences, abduction, war and so on. Allen identifies the underlying theme in most of the stories, as forced separation, signifying the loss of'self and loss of personal meaning "Separation as loss (rather than a saturation and liberation)
IS

a theme found all over Native America m both pre-contact and modern forms, and is

particularly central to Native women's stories in both their told to-the people and told-tothe page modes" (Allen 1583 : 8).

All the texts selected for analysis in the present study deal with the theme of separation and loss of self/ldentlty in one way or the other. The texts selected include Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony (1 977), Paula Gunn Allen's The Woman Who Owned

t h e(1583), Louise Erdrich's Tracks (1588), (Native American), Jeanette

Tribal h s h p conslsts not only ofhuman be~ngs but also the supematurals, splrlt people, anlmal people of all varieties, the thunders, snows, rams, rivers, lakes, hills, mouiltains, fire, water and plants (Allen 1983:lO)

Armstrong's

(1 985) and Beatrice Culleton's

(1 9851, Lee maracle's I

Am Woman (1988) (Native Canadian) The texts seiected represent a cross section of
contemporary Native women's fiction In Umted States and Canada and echo the historicallnarrative concerns of Native Women 1n North America Although most of the North American tribes do not recognize boundaries or appellations of natlonal~ty imposed by the colonizer/mainstream culture, for the sake of convenience in textual analysis (since the texts reflect the spec~fic colonial mrl~eu in whlch they were created), I have tried to club the Natlve American texts together on the one hand, and the Natlve Canadlan texts on the other The Tribal affiliations of the authors as well as the recogn~tion accorded by varlous Native crltics and scholars for the texts have also been account In the process of select~on of material for the present study Leslle taken ~ n t o Silko and Paula Gunn Allen are Laguna Pueblo miters and they employ the Laguna Oral tradition in their fict~onLoulse Erdrich is a Turtle Mountam Chippewa who employs the culture hero/tnckster motif in her text. All the Natlve American texts employ myths and legends from the respective Oral traditions as the Grand narrative for the contemporary stories In the Native Canadian texts, on the other hand, there 1s no overt reference to any specific oral tradition Lee Maracle and Beatrice Culleton are Metls and Jeanette Armstrong is an Okanagan full blood Caeamny and

Shadow are fictions, which make use of the quest motlf. So do

Am Woman is an auto biographical work.

and Slash

which employ the first person confessional mode. Tracks has a bi-polar narrative and I

hi the preseiit shdy, the eaphasis is on the construction of history through fictioti
in the post modern mlieu Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of 'polyphony' is employed to decode the expressed!suppressed historical concerns of Native writers - Silko, Allen, Erdrich, Culleton, Armstrong and Maracle. Polyphony here refers to the polarized!polemic~zed volces in their texts 1.e , the h~storicallnarrativeconcerns in thelr ficbon The varlous voices in the text - traditionalist, asslmilation~st/white,and the textual polemics and Native woman's voice will be analyzed in detall in the four core chapters The study is divided rnto six chapters In the manner of traditional oral narratives where the four partslchapters represent the four cardinal directions and the introduction

and conclusion represent the directions above and below. The chapterizat~on IS done m a cyclical manner with narrative threads weaving az~d interweaving, intended to suggest the believe in. In the four core chapters, there is cyclical vlew of the universe that Nat~ves bound to be a disparity in the analysis of texts, more space will be devoted to the Arnerlcan texts due to t h e ~ structurai/thernatrc r denslty. The theoretlcal framework for the present study Includes the works of Paula Gunn Allen, Arnold Krupat, Lee Maracle, Julia V Emberley and other critics and scholars on Natlve studies The overall skeleton as far as the presenr study goes is provlded by the concepts of Mikhail Bakhtln Bakhtlnian framework is used In identifying the vanous voices in the text and in the chaptenzatlon. The four core chapters have different theoretlcal frames The second chapter employs the works of Natlve crttics like Paula Gunn Allen, Rayna Green, William Bevls and others. The third chapter relies on the colonial critlcs Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha and colonial narratives of Lord Gray, the
Missionary narratives, government policies/documents and so on. The fourth chapter

whlch identifies the polemlcs and construction of history makes use of the theories of Bakthin, Hayden White, Julia V. Emberley, Barbara Godard, Linda Hutecheon and others In its re-enunciai%on of the problematic of history in the post modem milieu. The post colonial theories enunciated by Aschroft, Gareth and T~ffinin thelr works, H o r n Bhabha's concepts of interstitial space and hybr~dity, Paula Gunn Allen's term cosmogyny, Bakhtinian concept of mediaQon and Arnold Krupat's nobon of the Synecdochrc self punctuate the processes and problematic of construction of
identity(ies)/narratives by Native Txlomen in the fifth chapzer. The critical insights from

the works of Trinh T. mnh-ha, Julia Emberley, and others will be employed in a significant manner in enunciating the concerns of identity and representation in thls chapter In selecting the theoretical framework, utmost care has been taken not to impose WhiteEuropean theories whlch wtll affect violence .on the Native texts, their concerns or worldviews. In the next few lines, a brief appraisal of the semrotlc reproductions of the Natlve tn white narratives and movies will be provided in order to facilitate a better understanding of the concerns put forth at the beginning of this chapter

Mainstream Perspectives on Native WOUler': The mainstream culture, ever since contact, has constructed Native to suit its own ends The popular Westerns
-

novels and movies, often perpetrate the dictum 'The only

Good Indian is a Dead Indian', a vlew corroborated by the early settler's narratives. The Natives have been the vlctlms of fantasies of w ~ s hfulfillment for the settler often reflected in their representations as the vanishing race found in the works of popular Western wrlters like Louis L' Amour, Zane Grey and others and even in books by classical American miters 11keJames Fennimore Cooper Popular American movies like The Riders of the Lost Arc, A Man Called Horse, The Last of the Moh~canrs disseminate the image of the van~shing Native, or the savage exotic other Natives have functioned as a source of fantasy for many North Arnerlcan writers like Henry Wadsworth Longfeilow ("Song of Hiawatha"), Mark Twam, Walt Whtman, Margaret Atwood, Dougless Barbar, Leonard Cohen, Marian Engel, Robert Kroetsch, Margaret Laurence, Timothy Findley, David Williams and many others. Margery Fee explains the complicated thought process behind such representations of Natives in white narratives.

A complicated process, simultaneously a confession and a denial of guilt - an

identification and a usurpation - ensue when white writers choose Native people as literary material The moral unease that marks many contemporary texts is illustrated by Andrew Susnakl's comment on this difficulty. Susnaki feels "a vaguely divided.. . guilt for what happened to the h d i a n ... m d guilt (also) because to feel this guilt is a betrayal of what you ethmcally are - the son of a homesteader and his wife, who must be righfilly honored in one's own mythology" (Fee 1987:15) Terry Goldie has identified two major stereotypes in h ~ analysis s of the image of indigene in whlte narrattves
-

Fear and temptaaon - the male native as the ferocious warrior and

the native woman as the representative of earthly sensuality that would lead the white man to realms of sensual ecstasy and both these images are perceived as necessary m the settlers attempts to go native.

Karl May's stories have managed to create a rornantlc stereotype of the Lndlan as 'Noble Savage' particuiariy in Germany The ever In creasang German scholarship In Native Studies indicate an unconscious deslre/~dent~fication wlth the romantlc stereotype has thus fiinctioned in one way or other as a fetish in White narratives probably N a t ~ v e Margar~e Fee eiucldates the fbnctional importance of Native characters In white fictions Typ~cally, a whlte speaker or main character 1s confused and Impelled by a strong l, or natlonai The desire to know about the pasr personal, f a m ~ l ~ a nat~ve. with an object, Image, plant. anlmal confusion is resoit-ed through the relat~onship or peison associated with Nat1r.e people Occasionally, the relat~onshipIS with a real native person The resolut~on is often a quasl-mystical vlsion oS or ~dent~fication wlth, Natives. although occasionally ~t simply takes the form of

psychological or creatlve break through Initially, the subject is approached

rationally, even forensically, but the conclusion is poetic, emotional often and rather mystical The movement from observer to participant, outslder to inslder, Immigrant to "native", h~stortan to mythmaker is often commented on

specifically

Th~s pattern may be so ubiquitous because it allows for the

fulfilment of several ideological functions simultaneously Flrst, it focuses on the Identity quest of the bourgeois mdividual so crucial to western literature. It allows for the white "literary land claim," analogous to the historical terntorlal take
-

over usually implicit or expliclt in the text And it allows for a therapeutic meditation on the evil of technology and the good of a life close to nature, the aghiiist iiia foriner (Fee 1987 16 - 17) latter offering a tenlporaq ln~locuiation This 1s true in the case of all the authors mentioned in thls sectlon earher, right &om Cooper's Leather Stockin_oT a l a to the contemporary white novels with Indian themesg

A La Vonne Brown Ruoff furnishes rhe details of the works that deal wrih the Image of Indian in his Blbl~ographic Review on Native Wrihng. Due to constraints of space, the present mapplng of the theme 1s rather sketchy and provides only ce~tan common patterns In works by \vlllte autllors

Narrative Threads: A Resume The previous sectlon has briefly outlined the mainstream perceptions on the nanatlves The Xatives have, as pointed out by Galeno, been Natives that recur In w h ~ t e always regarded as objects of history I n the present study, an attempt is berng made to concerns of Native women inlthrough their fictions analyze the h~storical/narrative The trajectory of Natlve volce from told-to-the-person to told-to-the-page narratives, the characteristics features of Natlve wrrtlng as a genre, the description of the texts selected for study, the crlteria for selection of the texts and a brief appraisal of the semiotlc reproduct~ons of the Natlves have formed the purview of Chapter I,
v n the Voice

Chapter 11. Vorce of T r d ~ t l o n :Grandmothers'iGrandfather's Lineage analyzes tradit~onas a presence in the Nat~veWomen's texts. It elucidates the importance of Native Oral tradition/religion as the grand narrative for contemporary Native Women's stories; the relevance of myths, legends and lores in structuring their world view and the presence of grandmotherigrandfather as the source of stories, in transmitting history as memory. The chapter which employs the Oral tradition approach will enunciate how the voice of tradition or traditionalism as a Native perspectrve polermcizes issues like (hi)story telling while positing Orality as remembered hstory The chapter will emphasize the presence of Grand motheritradition m all the texts and chart the and Canadian Native iex?s. differences between the Amer~can Chapter JII: The WhitdAsslrmairtlonist Volce. The Civilizing Asgumegt traces the trajectory of colonial discourse, its presence as whiteiassimilationist voice In Native texts under study The white world view; the genesis of the civilizing argument through missionary narratives and government documents, the colonizer's attempts to negate/erase Native culturesiidentities through semiotlc control by way of foster colonial binaries and the stereotypification and w h t e education system w h ~ c h presence of civilizing argument as assrmilationist voices m the texts will form the

purvlew of this chapter The chapter employs the theor~esof Frantz Fanon and Homi Bhabha to eiucidate the ambivalence of the coion~ai narrat~ves/d~scourse Chapter I V Polemics of 'i70ices. Historicai,Xarrztwe Tones w~!l map the
by Native Women ~nlthrough processes of construction of revis~onary/aiternateh~storles

thelr stones The chapter while elucidating the probiematic of historical constructlon in the post modern mll~eu w ~ l h~ghlrght l the polemics In the historical and narrative tones in the texts, the processes of mediation/negotiation/translation and the trajectory of a femlnlne altematelrev~sionary hlstory and its inscription as her stories after a brief eluc~dation of the similar~ties In of historical and fict~onal narratives Chapter V: I&&fy V o ~ c eT n t e r s t l t l a i and Nat~veVl7omen's

Stories will dlscuss the textslstorles from a post colonlal theoretlcal terraln, keeplng in view then hybrldity in occupying an lnterstltlal space, the role of story telling in effecting decolonizat~on;the process of medlatlon, the presence of what Arnold Krupat Calls "Synecdochic Self' in both American and Canadian texts and the location of the Natlve woman writer's volce 1 x 1 the collective women's voice. The Chapter whlch deals w ~ t h the process of identity/voice constructlon in a speclfic female context will conclude with a reiteration of the role of writing in controlling the Image making process and the power of wordslnarrative in effecting decolonlzation Chapter VI:
o 1J0. Weavlnv Summln. -

Voice, which employs the analogy of

weaving, wlll thread the various voices In the texts The chapter whi!e prwldlny Ireview of the previous chapters will stress the emergence of Native women untlng as a genre, the cyclical worldview whlch characterizes Native narratives and the rationale behind the present study. Further areas in Native Wr~tings that requlre-ln-depth lnterrogatlon and the nature of interventions required In these areas tv~ll also be briefly outlined