American Indian Culture and Research Journal

At one time I customarily introduced my Native American literature course with a quotation from The Autobiography of A Papago Woman. After singing a brief ceremonial song, Maria Chona, the subject, says, "The song is very short because we understand so much." Seeing such cultural ellipses manifested variously in Native American literature, I proceeded to teach as if the major attractions of such compositions were the challenge of decoding cultural allusions. Soon my course could have been more accurately styled "Literature as Ethnography and Ethnohistory" than by its actual title" American Indian Song, Story, Myth." At its worst this approach made the literature only folklore, the quaint representation of dead or moribund cultures. At its best the approach allowed my students instructive insights to Native American cultures. But as I taught I too learned. What I learned is the mainspring and thesis of this paper: A Native American literature course is best taught as a criticism of the literature. As demonstration of my thesis I will identify the units constituting such a course, treating as I do some major critical issues raised in this approach. It is through the lens of such topics, not only through that of ethnography/ethnohistory, that students best discover what characterizes Native American literature. By no means do I intend literary criticism to be the purpose of the course, but it is a significant enough purpose, I believe, to warrant major emphasis without neglecting other ends as well. Moreover, I do not dispute that some student audiences might require more ethnography/ethnohistory than I recommend. Nor do I deny that these are still a significant part of my course. And, finally, I am sensitive to the risk I run of seeming to advocate a perspective more consonant with the Anglo-American bias toward analysis classification than with the Native American's synthesizing world view.

"'Cowboys and Indians'! What are you going to teach, Zane Grey and Gary Cooper?" my incredulous colleague asked as we sat around a table, far from the small college where I worked. My friends had asked that question every time I had mentioned the new course. I smiled a practiced smile and began to justify "Cowboys and Indians." My friend sipped his sherry, listened attentively but seemed bemused like all the others before him. The genesis of "Cowboys and Indians" was unique. The Indian Studies Department formally requested the English Department to structure a course which treated Native American literature. This request was not as strange as it seems. Mount Senario College is a small liberal arts college in rural northwestern Wisconsin with a student population that is 24.5% Native American. The Indian Studies Department was understaffed and, more importantly, lacked faculty trained in literature. This invitation had the added advantage of allaying the unspoken anxiety that we, as Whites, were inherently presumptuous and bound to fail in attempting to teach such a course. But the English Department was hesitant to accept the invitation. After all, who among us had studied Native American literature in graduate school? We had read an occasional work by a Native American author, but who were the significant authors? Where were the critical texts to be found? How could the works be approached? Where to begin?

The Drumming Earth: Five Recent Anthologies of Contemporary American Indian Literature Peter G. Beidler A Nation Within: Contemporary Native American Writing. An issue edited by Ralph Salisbury. Pacific Quarterly Moana, vol. 8, no. 1. Hamilton, New Zealand: Outrigger Publishers, 1983. 106 pp. [Prices for back issues on request from publisher at Box 13-049, Hamilton, New Zealand or at 814 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.] Paper. A Gathering of Spirit. A special double-issue edited by Beth Brant (Degonwadonti). Issue 22/23 of Sinister Wisdom. Iowa City: Iowa City Women's Press, 1983. 221 pp. $6.50 Paper. [Rpt. 1984; Sinister Wisdom Books, Rockland, Maine. 240 pp. $7.95 Paper.] The Clouds Threw This Light: Contemporary Native American Poetry. Edited by Phillip Foss. Santa Fe, NM: Institute of American Indian Arts Press, 1983. 351 pp., $15.00 Paper. Songs From This Earth On Turtle's Back: Contemporary American Indian Poetry. Edited by Joseph Bruchac. Greenfield Center, NY: Greenfield Review Press, 1983.300 pp. $9.95 Paper. Earth Power Coming: Short Fiction in Native American Literature. Edited by Simon J. Ortiz. Tsaile, Arizona: Navajo Community College Press, 1983. 289 pp. $14.50 Cloth. $10.50 Paper. Literary anthologies serve two primary groups of readers. The first are non-academic readers: those who want some bit-reading for the bus between towns or for the last few minutes before the bedlight gets turned off at night. Such readers may be quite serious but may not be capable of much concentration at those in between-times. What they are looking for is something short, not too difficult, easily put down, and easily forgotten. Anthologies generally serve the need, and the five anthologies of contemporary American Indian literature discussed in this review should do as well as most for the bus-and-bed readers.