Native American Literature Research Paper Topics Text

Native american novels and novelists exist in a complex historical and critical context. There are approximately 310 distinct native american cultures existing in the continental united states, using languages from seven different language families. Speaking of native americans or indians as though the members of various tribal societies hold a singular worldview comes from faulty and uninformed thinking. Native american novelists often identify themselves first according to their tribal affiliation, then according to their indigenous identity, and finally in terms of their american citizenship.

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Such categories, however, become further complicated by the question, what, exactly, is an indian? in terms of blood quantum, participation in tribal communities, and degrees of assimilation into western cultural ways, including conversion to christianity. Precontact estimates for american indian populations in north america are 15 million stiffarm and lane, 27. Government legislation against traditional cultural practices reduced native populations to 10 percent of their original numbers.

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Many native novelists recount the impact on their people of numerous laws passed against them by the u.s. Among the laws most frequently referred to in native fiction are the following: the indian removal act 1830 , the major crimes act 1885 , the general allotment act 1887 , the indian citizen act 1924 , the indian reorganization act 1934 , the indian claims commission act 1946 , the termination act 1953 , the relocation act 1956 , and the american indian religious freedom act 1978. Essentially, these laws forced various indian tribes to move from their immemorial tribal lands to indian territory oklahoma forced tribal governments to adhere to american legal ideologies allotted portions of communal lands to individual tribal members thus becoming taxable property left all other indian lands open for homesteading forced u.s. Citizenship onto members of indigenous nations and reorganized traditional tribal systems of government into councils patterned after corporate leadership. The history of native american novels is often divided between works written before and after n.

Bruner says that before 1970, the story told by anthropologists about american indians was that the present was disorganization, the past was glorious or barbaric noble or savage , and the future assimilation. After 1970, the story took on a sharp epistemological break, where the present was resistance, the past was exploitation, and the future was ethnic resurgence bruner, 18. While any attempt to reduce an entire body of works to simple thematic descriptions is fraught with flaws, bruner's descriptions are useful in describing the ways that academics have read native experiences, including native authors. Few novels by american indians were published before momaday's house made of dawn. Those novels that were published, though, have significant historical, thematic, and artistic merit. In 1854, john rollin ridge cherokee published the life and adventures of joaquin murietta, the celebrated california bandit.

Vickers says that although the novel describes the trials and revenge of a mixed blood mexican, the novel is actually a picaresque western adventure based on the resistance of california natives to the incursion of whites brought on by the gold rush. Ridge was among those on the trail of tears during the cherokee removal from their eastern homeland to oklahoma. Ridge's grandfather and father were both assassinated for their part in signing away their ancestral lands without permission of the tribe. Lavonne brown ruoff notes that this novel incorporates explanations of creek customs and is a fictional account of the events that led to the murder of sitting bull and the massacre at wounded knee, as well as a novel that pleads for women's rights and suffrage ruoff, 2. A potawatomi indian, simon pokagon was the last native novelist to publish during the 19th century he published queen of the woods in 1899. Ruoff describes this novel as a romance that laments the potawatomi's loss of their edenic past and warns about how alcohol can destroy indians and whites ruoff, 148.

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Early 20th century novels include cogewea: the half blood 1927 by mourning dove okanagon colville , brothers three 1935 by john milton oskison cherokee , and wah'kon tah: the osage and the white man's road 1932 and sundown 1934 by john joseph matthews osage. D'arcy mcnickle cree/metis/salish also published three novels prior to the era that kenneth lincoln has called the native american renaissance: the surrounded 1936 , runner in the sun: a story of indian maize 1954 , and wind from the enemy sky published after mcnickle's death in 1978. Of these early 20th century novels, three have received considerable attention and acclaim: mourning dove's cogewea, john joseph matthews's sundown, and mcnickle's the surrounded. Cogewea is a romantic/tragic tale of a mixed blood woman who is wooed by two men a mixed blood the foreman on the ranch where cogewea lives and a duplicitous, fortune hunting white man.