In the opening pages of Marilou Awiakta's "Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom," the author offers a metacommentary on her delightfully hybrid text, likening it to a "double-woven basket (Cherokee-style)." The image resonates on many levels with the author's tribal traditions and thus serves to foreshadow the text's wealth of material on…

American Indian women's autobiographies recount a specific type of life experience that has often been overlooked, one that is equally important in understanding the genre and to develop ways of reading these texts that balance the recovery and recognition of the Native voice and agency contained within them with the processes of creation and the…

Because editors generally clarify the collaborative process used to produce "as-told-to" autobiographies of Native American people in the introductory section, an understanding of the handling of the issues which usually appear in introductions can be helpful to understanding Native American bi-autobiographies. (CM)

In 1980, on behalf of the Gros Ventre people, George P. Horse Capture published "The Seven Visions of Bull Lodge, as Told by His Daughter, Garter Snake." "The Seven Visions" describes a lifetime of personal encounters with Powerful other-than-human Persons by the noted Gros Ventre warrior and ritual leader, Bull Lodge (ca.…

This essay demonstrates how American Indian autobiographical narratives work to construct a sense of American Indian subjectivity for competing communities--indigenous and white--by simultaneously promoting and protecting tribal knowledge. Both Black Hawk and Parker understood the power of print circulation in the dominant culture. One of the…

Explores aspects of "The Way to Rainy Mountain," through which Momaday incorporates Native American oral narrative modes into Euro-American written autobiography, and blends mythical, historical, and personal narratives of the Kiowa migration and Momaday's own journey from Montana to Oklahoma. Contains 36 references. (SV)

Seemingly chaotic to Western eyes, John Lame Deer's autobiography has a meaningful structure based on Lakota numerology and oral tradition. The book explores conflicts between White and Indian conceptions of identity and property, and sees itself as an instrument in the apocalyptic triumph of Indian spirituality over White greed. (SV)

The genocide of American Indians over the last five centuries is documented by the persecutors in myriad historical media: diaries, audiotapes, autobiographies, photographs, books, essays, and newspaper accounts. Many authors believe that their stories convey an objective reality but scholarship has illustrated that writers construct history more…

A discussion of the life and work of Yaqui poet Refugio Savala includes analysis of selected poems, "corridos," and original and traditional tales. The article includes a discussion of the style, content, tone, and background of his English language autobiography and explains the editing which occurred prior to its publication. (SB)

Canada's official residential school policy, functioning between 1879 and 1986, acted as a weapon in a calculated attack on indigenous cultures, seeking--through such now infamous procedures as familial separation, forced speaking of non-Native languages, and propagandist derogation of precontact modes of existence and Native spiritual systems--to…

Examines the writings of contemporary American Indian women with regard to Euro-American stereotypes and their own concepts of femininity and Indian identity. Relates these writings to the social history of American Indians, traditional beliefs, and the autobiographical experiences of early twentieth century Indian women. Contains 32 references.…