Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Indigenous Peoples of the Americas

An anthology of writings from the seventeenth century to the present designed to show the beginnings and development in Canada of an Indian literary tradition in English.

The five complete and unabridged works collected here are parts of a long and passionate testimony about American Indian culture as related by Indians themselves. Deep emotions and life-shaking crises converge in these pages concerning identity, family, community, caste, gender, nature, the future, the past, solitude, duty, trust, betrayal, leadership, war, and apocalypse. Each work is also regarded as a classic of Native literature and has much to teach.

The Life of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (1847) by George Copway, a Canadian Ojibwe writer and lecturer, describes his...

This volume presents ancient Mexican myths and sacred hymns, lyric poetry, rituals, drama, and various forms of prose, accompanied by informed criticism and comment. The selections come from the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Mixtecs and Zapotecs of Oaxaca, the Tarascans of Michoacan, the Otomis of central Mexico, and others. They have come down to us from inscriptions on stone, the codices, and accounts written, after the coming of Europeans, of oral traditions.

It is Miguel Leon-Portilla s intention "to bring to contemporary readers an understanding of the marvelous world of symbolism...

Focusing on published works by novelists N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, D'Arcy McNickle, Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, and other Native American authors, the critical essays in this collection examine translation and representation in tribal literatures, comic and tragic world views, and trickster discourse.

In the dawn of November 29, 1864, a Colorado militia unit attacked a peaceful encampment of Cheyennes by Sand Creek in southeast Colorado Territory and murdered almost two hundred men, women, and children. In The Massacre at Sand Creek, Bruce Cutler retells, in a powerful narrative, the events surrounding this atrocity. We hear the voices of the white participants, such as Colonel John Chivington, who planned and led the surprise attack, and Captain Silas Soule, the only officer who refused to attack. We are also given the voices of the Cheyennes - voices that historical documents do not...

By using verse form and visual clues indicating pauses, intonations, and gestures, anthropologist Rodney Frey permits readers to hear the oral literature of narrators from the Coeur d'Alene, Crow, Klikitat, Kootenai, Nez Perce, Sanpoil, and Wasco people today in Washington, northern Idaho, and Montana. He places each of the twenty-three narratives in its larger cultural, literary, and expressive context, making this anthology an important resource both for American Indian people and for non-Native scholars and general readers. A glossary and a lesson-plan appendix facilitate the book's use...

"Totkv Mocvse/New Fire" presents the work of Earnest Gouge, an important early Creek (Muskogee) author, and makes available for the first time-in Creel and English--the myths and legends of a major American Indian tribe.

In 1915, Earnest Gouge was encouraged by ethnographer John Reed Swanton to record Creek legends and myths. Gouge's manuscript lay in the National Anthropological Archives for eighty-five years until two Creek-speaking sisters, Margaret McKane Mauldin and Juanita McGirt, and linguist Jack B. Martin, began translating and editing the document. In "Totkv Mocvse/New Fire,...

Laguna Pueblo author Leslie Marmon Silko was raised in a culture with a strong oral tradition. She also grew up in a household where books were cherished and reading at the dinner table was not deemed rude, but instead was encouraged. In his examination of Silko's award-winning literature, Brewster E. Fitz explores the complex dynamic between the spoken story and the written word, revealing how it carries over from Silko's upbringing and plays out in her writings.

Native American tricksters can be buffoons, transformers, social critics, teachers, and mediators between human beings, nature, and the gods. A vibrant part of American Indian tradition, the trickster has shown a remarkable ability to adapt into the twenty-first century. In "Living Sideways," Franchot Ballinger provides the first full-length study of the diverse roles and dimensions of North American Indian tricksters. While honoring their diversity and complexity, he challenges stereotypical Euro-American treatments of tricksters.

Drawing from the most influential scholarship on Native...