polyphony and rabelais

8/13/2019 polyphony and rabelais

1/23

CH PTERmTROD UCTHON: JLWPPHNG THE VOICE

Throughout America, froin north to south. the dominant culture acknowledgesIndlans as objects of study, but den~eshem as subjects of history The In d~ an shave folklore. not culture. they practice superstitions, not relrgions, they speakdialects, not languages. they 111aAe crafts, not arts, [Eduardo Galeano. cited inAllen 1989 I

Minor~t les are the creations of power politlcs they are cultural not numericalInferiors Colonla1 powers define the world accord~n g o their best Interests notllghrs, t h e ~ r a~lonlcal udgements of l~terature,humanity and clv~lizationaregrounded In dominance, not n supeiror morality or knowledge Co lo n~ ai riting,therefore, IS an ~nstrumen t f the colonizing process, not objectlve dls~nteres tedreportage In such circumstances, the history of the colonization and conquest ofthe Arner~cas emalns a hegemonic monologue, incomplete, self-serving andsuspect (Axtell 1992:3 10)

Native wr ~ t ~ n gas begun to emerge as a distinct genre In the twenty first centurywith the p ubli ca t~on f the works of writers of varlous trlbal af fil iat~ons ll over NorthAmerlca. The attltude of the matnstream culture towards Natives has always been, andcontinues to be, patronizmg, nega t~ ve nd stereotypical Perceived as objects of history,;he Na t~ ve s ave functioned as the stereotyped otlier whose presence is ilecessaiy in theEuropean's ssertion of selfhood on the -4nlerlcan sol1 Ever sl nce the contact, theNa t~ves ave been perce~rred s objects of curiosities-pollt~cal, oclal and anthropologlcalas numerous white narratives test& s Galeano aptly polnts out, the dominant culturehas always attempted to deny them as subjects of h~story

To be erased from History by the voice of the dominant culture, to be objectifiedthrough Hollywood stereotypes and whlte narrattves whlch foster negatlverepresentations his has been the predicament of Nat~vesn North Amenca. The Image


2/23

of the Indian disseminated through wh~temovies, narratives and representations hasalways been objectified and hence ahistorical. Colonial writing has exercised semioticcontrol over the Natlve, who was a constant source of semiotic reproduction, as TerryGoldie a Native cr~tlc rgues Th e Native man has been represented as prlmitive ,savage , stupid , wagonburner , lazy and drunk whereas the Native woman is thesquaw 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 beenmarginahzed, erased or othered in white narratives/histories and films, the Native womanhas been doubly so s victims of patriarchy and internallzed oppression Native womenhave always existed outside history, or in its fissures as feminists would argue In thelight of the above statements, ~twould be interesting to look at Native women s writing inNorth America and its emergence as writings of resistance

this chapter, an attempt will be made to trace the trajectory of Natlvewrit:ng/voice from the told-to-the-person narratives to the told-to-the-page-narratives Inproviding a brief overview of the history of Native writing, the Chapter will alsocontextualize the contemporary Native women s texts selected for study Thecharacteristlc features of Native writing as a genre in tune with the Nabve world viewand spirituality and its deviations from Western generic patterns will also be discussedbriefly. This will be followed by a description of the Native women s texts selected forstudy, the criteria involved in the selection of the texts and the relevance of the presentstudy. A brief appraisal of the semiotic reproductions of the Natives in Whitenarrativesimovies wiii aiso form part of the purview of this chapter. Th e resume of theensuing chapters, the nature of critical intervention in those chapters and the scope of thestudy will be discussed before the conclusion of this chapter.

Fro m Told to-the-Person to Told-to-the-Page: Native Voice: Traje ctory

The history of American literature began wlth the Native peoples who had, asanthropo1og:sts and historians would point out, migrated to North America over twenty-eight thousand years ago and not with the advent of Europeans to the continent as


3/23

western hrstorians argue. N Scott Mornanday, a Klowa writer, remarks Amencanllterature begins with the first human perception of the American landscape expressedand preserved in language (Clted In Ruoff 1990 1 The earliest human perceptions ofthe Native were preserved through the Native Oral traditions of varlous tribes in differentlanguages Ruoff points out that at the time of contact, the native peoples of NorthAmerica were divlded into more than three hundred cultural groups and spoke twohundred different languages, plus many dlalects der~ved rom seven basic languagefamllles By 1940: 149 of these languages were still In use and Native Americanspract~cedmany rel~glons nd customs (Ruoff 1990 1 The various r~ te s nd custon~s fNative rellglons were preserved and transmltted through Oral tradit~onithrough tonesThe wrltten North American Native llterature began only In the early twentieth century

Amerlcan Indian Oral Ilterat-iires were mostly transmltted orally from onegeneration to another. Bu t some t r~bes ad managed to record thelr literatures A LaVonne Brown Ruoff in American Indian Titeratures: An Intmduction, R1b110,ora~i.cReview and S e l e c t e d (1990) Identifies the presence of such recordedliterature amongst the Ojibwa, Quiche Maya of Guatemala highlands and others

Th e Ojibwa, for example, used pictographic symbols to preserve thelr M ~ d e(Grand Medicme) rituals on birchbark scrolls and other mater~als;other trlbessuch 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 ofthe Guatemala highlands, who preserved the origln of their culture In a workcalled Popol Vuh or CovncilRook. Thelr scnbes continued to create books beforethe arrival of western Europeans who subsequently burned hundreds ofhieroglyphic columns According to Dennls Tedlock, only four have survived,three in Europe and one recently discovered in Guatemala Popol Vz~h 3-27)(Ruoff 1990:11)

The earliest instance of the collecQon of oral literatures of Natlve America beginsin Mesoamerica in the books of the Maya Fray Bernardino de Sahagun had Includedconsiderable Spanish translations of Native literature in his history of New Spain The


4/23

lnltlal collections of Natlve literature were sporadic and rather unsystematic. Thesystematic collect~on f the oral literature of what is now the United States, was as Ruoffpolnts out, stimulated by the publ~cation f Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's1839), which focussed on Ojibway culture and literature. This resulted In the interest in

and subsequent pubilcat~on f life h~s tone s nd autobiographies and generated furtheranthropological and lingulstlc studles The ploneers In thls field were John WesleyPowell and Frantz Boas. Powell and Boas are credited by scholars wlth havlng Initiatedthe ethno-llngulstlc approach. Most of the tribal narratives collected by theanthropologlsts and ethno-linguists from the tnbai members or sources were latertranslated, edlted and publ~shed Often these lnd~cate he editorial mediation of thecollectors which was often based on Western parameters/paradigms

Critlcs and scholars have ~dentified wo types of Indian texts. told-to-the-person-narratlves, and the told-to-the- page narratives. What are commonly termed IndianAutobiographies fall into the first category, so do the songs and stories collected byantkropologlsts llke Frantz Boas, Dell Hymes, Dennis Tedlock, Karl Kroeber, Jasold V.Ramsey, Allen Dundis and others.

Kathleen Mullen Sands in (1983) outlines theproblems of whlte editorship m the Oral narratives collected by anthropologists,mlsslonarles and whte historians:

The narrator editor relationship has been the basis of collecting, preserving andpubllshlng American Indian personal nariatives from the beginning.Disadvantages in the collaboration between Lndian and White are perhaps mostevldent In eighteenth and nlneteenth century autobiographies, but they cannot beoverlooked even in contemporary works, because of their comprehensiveInfluence on the narration of the life story Unfortunately, many earlier collectednarratlves are badly marred by the bias of the collectors or by thelr lack ofinformation about the tribal cultures Many early collectors were missionarieswho purposely collected life stories from Christian Indlans who fit themissionaries' notions of a good Indian because they had glven up many tribal


5/23

traditions in favor of white practices. Other narratives, clearly warped y thecollector's obvious rornantlc stereotyping, depict Indians as "noble savages"Still other stories, collected by deterministic historians, military men orantiquarians attracted to and interested in Indlan life, suffer from a lack ofunderstanding of the Indian ways or a misguided notion that they were preservingportraits of what they assumed were vanlshlng Americans (Sands 1983 5 6 - 5 7

Sands further points out that the authenticity such of personal narratives and collect~ons soften questionable and that the editorla practices often indlcate prejudices,rnlsrepresentat~onand lack of professtonallsm Sands seems to be foregroundlng theproblematic of told-to-the person nanatlve resultant of the ambivalent nature of Vative-White collaborations and e itorship This 1s true in the case of Canada too, as PennyPetrone obsen/esl in her book - in C cPresent (1990

The pr~ntedcollection of Canadlan Oral Narratives began when the Jesuitmissionaries in seventeenth century published in the Jesuit Kd&sms, the recorded oraltraditions 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 inNative narratives. In 1894, S~lasRand published the Legends of the Micmaa. Yetanother pioneer 1n the field of collection of Oral literatures in Canada was ReverendAdrian. 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 inNorth America Superior for the Carnegie Foundation ~nNorth America

The well m e m g mterpretabon of non-natlve led to words and phrases bemg mstranslated, lost,subsktuted or dehberatelydistorted to fit some preconceived image or ethos of the times For mstance, theFrench msslonanes exaggerated the Christian plety of the natives, and the French soldier-iconoclast, Baronde La Hontan, conveyed an anbclencal blas Nmeteenth-centuq pion rs m Indram studies from HenryRoure-Schoolcraft to Sllas Rand reshaped the stones and songs they recorded to suit the senhmental andromanbc style popular m theu day. To the non-Indian rmnd Indlan tales are baiZmg m thelr intncacles,mconsistencles, and leaps of log~c, reatlng difficulkes and hstrahon in Qlng to understand them Forexample, the Reverent Sllas Rand 1 810 89) a Baptist misslonary among the Mcmacs of Nova Scoba, forforty years collected recorded and translated narrahves, but m one of his lectures he &mussed them wlththe casual comment: "Now what sense or meaning there maybe at the bottom of all this nonsense, I leave tothe speculabon of the otl~ers' Pebone 1990. 6 11)


6/23

Many anthropologlsts were involved in collect~ng ribal songs, ceremonial andritual dramas, while yet others bel~eved n collecting llfe histories or autobiographicalaccounts In order to study the Native customs and practices. The autobiograph~calaccounts of native women are significant in this respect Late nmeteenth and earlytwentieth centuries saw an Increasing Interest and des~re n recording life s t o r ~ e s ~especially those of Native Women Grethchen Bataille remarks on the signlficance ofNatlve Women's autobiographical accounts and their thematlc difference from those oftheir male counter parts

Interestingly, the women whose llves were recorded durlng that perlod were notprincesses but the mothers and wives of tribesmen Their stories differ from thatof thelr male contemporaries in that they tell, not of war exploits, but of thegathering of the herbs They speak of preparing of food rather than of huntingbuffalo They tell of raising chlldren rather than raclng horses. These differencesreflect the d~v lsl on f roles in the cultures More important than any other featureof these stories 1s the extent to which they reflect the relations between womenand men wlthin a trlbe (Batallle 1983-87).

Native writers like Paula Gunn Allen and others contend that the concept of anindividual's life st ~r~lau to biog raphyas quite alien to many tnbes, which emphasizedthe communal rather than the individual Thls often perplexed white translators nded~torswho often thought that many incidents belleved to be of signlficance by Nativewomen as relevant to the understanding of their tribes were irrelevant in an mdividual'snarration of her life story Nancy Lurie's rransPanon and recording Mountan WolfWo max Slster of Crashtng Thunder The Autobro~raphy f a Wlnnebago Ind~an1 961)is cited In Bataille as a case in point where the narrator gave the translator the kind ofve rs ~o n he latter had wanted Elsie C. Parsons' Americanlndlan collection oftwenty four vignettes composed by anthropologlsts based on their research, Truman

Amongst the promment Indian Autobiographies bymen that were recorded are H ~ G 1932by Black Elk (SIOUX),ollected and translated by John G Nehad , .dk&Ha& (Sauk) m collaborationw~tli ntome Le Clawe and John Palterson,a W1nneh~gaIn a(l926) by Sam Blowsnake, collected by Paul Raedm andenh Whlte ull 1 968 by Chef Joseph White Bull ed~tedyJames H Howard.


7/23

Mlchaeison'sand T h e N a r r a t l v e e y a ouhen Marla Chona's The

A u t o b ~ o g r ~ h yf Pat~azoWoman, recorded and published by Ruth Underhlll in 1936,Elizabeth Colson's, Autobiograph~esof Three Pomo Women gathered in 1940s, butpublished in 1974 all these Indian Autobiographies Indicate the trajectory of presenceof the Native women as seives/subjects of thelr narratives In splte of the mutations,~nterpolatlons,misrepresentations and other hazards of white editorship/mediation, thesestories provlde information about the roles of women in trlbal soc~eties,which, contraryto popular whlte bel~efs,were hardly subsewlent or infenor'

The translt~onrom the told-to-the-person narrat~veso told-to-the-page narratives(from life storles and stories of Indian-White collaborations to n rr tives directly writtenby the Natives themselves) marked a slgnlficant change in the process of thedlssem~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 writmgtheir own stories in Engllsh A La Vonne Brown Ruoff notes that the publication ofwrltten In d~ anutobiographies preceded that of oral life histories The first autobiographyto be published was A Son of the Forest 1 829) by Wllliam Apes, a Pequot Indian, wholater become a Methodist convert. Apes's narrative charts his suffering as a child due tohis alcoholic grand parents, his conversion to Christianity and his pertlous journey tosalvation, fall from grace, and subsequent rededication to Christianity Fuoff 1990 .53 .George Copway, another Ch~ppewa onvert to Method~sm,wroteTravels of Kah-ge-ga-mh bowh (18471, which was a blend of m* htstory and personalexperience and proved to be a model for subsequent autob~ographes y Indtans Themost tnfluential and wldely read Indian autobiographer during the early twentiethcentury, In Ruoff's view, was Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) a Sioux Indian doctor whowrote Wlgwam Evenlngs (19091, Indlan Boyhood (1902) and From the Deep Woods to

retchen Batllle remarksAll these women's lives come to us through at least one mtermediary, often several These stonesprovide little specfic lnfomatlon about the role of Lndlan women, but carefid readlng suggest thattheu role was neither subseivlent nor infenor These women emphas~zehe roles of both malesand females, the famhal relaonships, the matenal culture, above all, a regret for the changesf?om the old ways (1983 91)


8/23

Civliizatlon 1 916) Ruoff remarks: ln all his works, Eastman attempted to serve as abridge between Ind~anand White cultures to ~ev eal o his wh~te udience theworldviews, customs, literature and history of the Indlans so that non-Indian Americansmight appreciate and emulate natlve American virtues (Ruoff 1990 57) Luther Stan d~ ngBear, A Sioux Indian, inspired by Eastman's autoblographies wrote M y p(1928) and and1953). Standlng Bear's narratives deal wlth hisexperien es at Carlyle hd ian School, his enunc~ation f Sloux beliefs, customs and llfe,and riti ism of whlte treatment of Indians Francis La Flesche (Omaha) a Plalns hd lanto become the first Indian anthropologist, wrote M d k lve. l n d l n l dthe Omaha Trlbe 1 900), a work acknowledged by scholars and crltics as one of the finestautobiographies of t l e period

Twentieth century also saw some excellent pleces of written literaryautoblographies. John Joseph Mathews' Ta lk ln to theMoon (1 945); Scott Momaday'sWay t the Rainy Mountain (1 969) which traces the author's Kiowa heritage and searchfor his tribal roots and he 1976) which makes use of the stream ofconsciousness narratwe and is a more conventional autobiography, Wllliam Least HeatMoon's lue 1982) and Gerald Vizenor's Intenor Landscapes (1990) are someof the most promnent contemporary autoblographies.

Samson Occom, a Mohegan Indian, was the first author to publish in English. Hewas a Presbyterian missionary and hisn 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 kdge's (a ChrokeeIndian's) Life and Adventures of Joaquin M u r i a (1854) &dge's mixed bloodprotagonist Murieta is depicted as a good man driven to crime after he 1s vlctirmzed bythe white mlners The 1930's saw the emergence oftwo American Indian novelists whoseworks became immensely popular during their bmes - John Joseph Mathews and D'ArcyMc-Nickle. Matthew's first book Wah Kon-Tah (1932) is a fictional account thatportrays the Osage tribe's determination to retain its traditional ways in the onslaught ofwhite man's culture His next novel DQW (1934) depicts the trajectory of a young


9/23

jazz-age Osage, the effects of reservation pohcy, land allotment and the Oklahoma oilboom on the Osage culture McNlckle s S mamdd 1 936) is acknowledged by critics asthe most pollshed novel by an In d~ an riter The novel enunci tes a mixed blood s searchfor his place and emphasizes the Importance of oral tradltlons In the cultural survival ofthe tribe His next two novels (1954) and Wind f i w(1978) emphasize the clash between two cultures Native and W h ~ te , nd the Nativepeoples attempts to retain thelr traditional ethos and ways of life

The 1960s was a significant period in the American History It saw the rise ofBlack Power Movement and the genesis of Red Power and Amer~c anndian MovementsSignificantly the Native fiction of the period reflected spirit of the age This per~ od, ftentermed the American Indian Renaissance, saw the works of the KiowaRueblo wrlterScott Momaday, which exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporary as well asthe subsequent generation of writers Mornaday s House Made of Dawn (1 968). whichcharts the mixed blood protagonist s quest for a sense of place, community andself/identity rec e~ve d remendous critical acclaim and even won the Pulitzer prize Hisother novels, Way to Rainy Mountain (1969) and The Ancient Child (1989), whichreflected his tribal moorings and ethos, were also equally popular

The other prominent male authors who gained considerable recognit~ on n the70 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 doesMade of Dawn) in Winter in the Blood I 974) heDeath of Jim Loney ji979j dealswlth the protagonist s attempt to organize his life, his past and relationships and in its plotstructure bears a strong resemblance to Welch s earlier novel. His next work of fictionFool s Crow (1986) is a histor~ca l ovel which charts the impact of white settlement on aMontana band of Black Feet in 1870, ~tgives a rnovlng account of the tr ~ba life duringthe per~od.The myths and ceremonies of Blackfeet Oral tradition punctuate Welch snarrative on Black feet hi st ov Gerald Vizenor is more acclaimed for h ~ son-fictionalworks and his criticism on American Indian novels, -Chance: Post ModernDiscourse on Native American Indian Literature (1993). His non fictional works he


10/23

Sky (1972) and (1984) deal wrth the myths,(h)stories and cultural ethos of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa His

Bearheart (1978) and Griever: n American Monkey ~ n gn Chlna (1987)(which won the 1986 F~ction ollective IPlinois State Unlversrty Award and the 1987American 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 aniche for themselves in the scenarlo of Native literature in North Amer~ca, ncludeMichael 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 iv er (1990) and Sherman Alexie Many anthologists likeGerry Hobson, Cllfford E. Trafzer, Thomas King and others have come up withanthologies of short fict~onby Natlve authors from different parts of Canada and~ m e r i c a . ~

The trajectory of Native Women's voice in North America can be traced back, aspointed out earlier in this chapter, to the told-to-the-person narratives of the eighteenthand late nineteenth centuries Rayna Green maps the course of Native women's stories mher Introduction to the anthology of Native women's Poetry and F~ct ion:

Whether it comes directly from the story teller's mouth and she writes it down orsome one writes it for her, the story has to be told. Somet~meshe hears or dreamssomething and makes a siory oilt u f ii. Tilat's the way ~t of te~: appens BeforeEuropean wr~ting,here were voices to sing and speak, dances to make real thestories that the people told or to honor the retelling a new.. And others might getthe story as the women weave it into the rug They'd have to remember what theirduties were towards the people because the rug told them every time they lookedat it Whichever way it was the story got told, the way it gets told now The oldways of speaking aren't gone They've changed of course.. there are new ways

The present survey of Nabve literature has concentratedmmly on ficbonal and prose narrabves byNative authors. For a detaled survey on Natrve poetry, see A La Vonne BrownRuof American IndianL~teratures: n Introductron, Brblrographrc Review andselec ted Bibirography 19 9 0 )


11/23

to remember.. They kept them even when no one asked to hear them evenwhen the whte eyes came and asked only the men what they knew . Thus thewomen have always kept the stories, in clay or reeds, In wool or cotton, in grassor 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 sawNative Women attempting to take the process and responsibility of d~ssemination f theirstories, themselves Sarah Wlnnemucca Hopkins' L:fe among the Piutes. Thelr Wrongsand Claims (1 883), was a remarkable pioneering attempt in this field, desplte the whiteeditorship of Mrs. Horace Mann. Hopkins' narrative, an maginative personal and tribalhistory, chron~cleshe Native White relations durlng the period 1844 1883 Anothersignificant autoblographical work during the nineteenth century was Zltkala-Sa's(Gertrude Bonln) collection of essays, American I n h tories (1921). She was a Siouxwoman who took an active role in the society of American Indians, and the NationalCouncil for American Indlans (which she founded) and a zealous advocate of Indianrights. Emily Paullne Johnson, a Canadlan Mohawk writer, who had won criticalaccolades for her poetry and performance of her poetry in Canada, United States andEngland was one of the fust Indian women to publish her short fict~on. o c a s s i n aker(1913), a collection of short stories about Ind~an nd non-Indian women m Canadafocusses on the problems of mixed blood women, their relationships with white men andtheir search for identity and was a trend-setter for the ater fictions based on the sametheme. The Shag- (1913) is a collection of stories for boys Johnson's works, asRuoff polnts out In her book on American Indian literatures, serve as a transition betweenthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

(1927) authored by Mourning Dove(HumishumdChrlstme Quintasket Colville) is generally heralded by Native scholars andcrihcs as the first novel by an American Indian woman. The novel harps on the identityproblem of the mixed blood woman protagonist and the importance of oral tradition in


12/23

the Native woman's life. It incorporates Okanagan history, oral stories, spiritua pracucesand contemporary re al it ~e s. ~

Maria Campbell, a Canadian Metis writer, publ~shedher autobiography Hal&Ehed (1973), perceived generally as the decade's most acclaimed Natlve autoblographyCampbell poignantly traces her childhood in a close-knit Metls community, her attemptto save her siblings from being taken away by the welfare people after her mother'sdeath, her failure to do so and subsequent plunge into the darkness of alcohol, drugs andprostitutlon from which she manages to come out with the help of her fr~en ds , er ownremarkable will power and the hovering splrit of her grandmother Cheechum, to find hertrue identlty as a Metis woman. Campbell's autoblography seems to have InfluencedNatlve writers like Beatrlce Culleton, Lee Maracle and others

Leslie Silko's Ceremony (1977) is often perceived as a land mark work as far asNative 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 Veteran's) quest for his communal identity Tayo, the half-breedprotagonist, experiences fragmentation of self due to h s experiences m the war, h s senseof liminality due to hls mixed parentage; and his healing involves his participation inrituals and ceremonies durlng which he encounters various emanations of the Feminineprinciplenaguna Creatrix In his life, who help him remember the stories, complete hisceremony and eventually return to hls Pueblo community Silko's Storytellex (198 1) alsodeals with Laguna Pueblo themes It includes several short stories, poetryautoblographical commentary. Her most recent novel 1s entitled Almanac of the Dead

Paula Gunn Allen, another Pueblo writer, too, employs the Laguna creationstories and myths in her fiction Allen makes use of the rltual quest (like MomadayWelch,, Silko and others), from a feminine perspective In her novel The Woman Who

Paula Gunn Allen explicates how the novel is class~c f its types:t IS an Indian novel, that IS it 1s a long s to~y, omposed of a number of short stones. t IS also part

of the Chlpmunk cycle (Cogewea means "clupmunk") url~lch sm t u rn p rt of the Old Woman


13/23

(1 9831, w h ~ c hraces the half-breed protagonist Ephanie Atenacior'sjourney towards her Pueblo communal selflnarrative after experiencing fragmentaQon ofself 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~lityo communicate thepower 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);Grand d a u ~ b19891, The Sacred HOOD. ecoverine the Feminine In Amerlcan IndlanTraditions (1986) and Grand mothers of the L~ght . Mediclne Woman's Source Book(1 99 1) ~

Lou~se rd r~ch, n Ojibwa (Chippewa), is another prolific writer who has woncritlcal acclaim for her tetralogy J.ove Medmne (1984), which won the Critics CircleAward, Beet Queen (1 986), racks 1 988) and The A~ ngo alace (1995) which deal withthe llfe of people in and around the Trutle Mountain Chlppewa resen7atlon in NorthDakota, weave an intricate web of relationships among the members of individualfarmlies and family groups of Indians, mixed bloods and whites (Ruoff 1990:85). Ruoffpoints out that the novels were published in reverse order oftheir internal chronology anduse multiple narrators who tell parts of the story, structured in episodes set in particularyears or months. Tracks, published after the other two novels, however, 1s the earliest mterms of plot and internal chronology and deals with the Chippewa life during 19121924 in the aftermath of the Allotment .4ct It deals wlth the protagonist Fleur Pillager'sattempts to hold on to her allotted tract of land despite hostile weather conditions andgovernment polic~esTracks has a b i p o l ~rnarzitiva, vzi:l: he carratisre voice being splitbetween the two narrators, Nanapush and Pauline The Beet Oueen covers the period1932 1972 and is set in the off-reservation town of Argus, when the area around Arguschanged from wheat to sugar beet farming Most of the characters in this novel are non-Indlans. 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 contmuahonm told-to-the -pagelrecorded formof an honoured tradibon (Allen 1989 20)In fact, Allen's cr~bcalworks cltted above contnbute significantly to framework some of the chapters mthe present study, especially Chapter I1 and Chapter


14/23

make their appearance ~nTracks too. (19953 traces the trajectory of thedescendants of the two clans Nanapush,Piilager on the one hand, and MaspawJLazare onthe other In a series of interconnectlng stones which explores continuity and connectionin relationships between the characters. Thrs novel is the last one In Erdrich's tetralogyand covers the period from 1972 to the present Erdrich has published two collections ofpoems (1984) and aptxim of D w 1989) She has also publ~shed bookentitled Blue Jay's Dance: A B~rthYea: (1996) and T h e 1995)jointly authored with her husband collaborator Michael Dorris

Beatrice Culleton's Aprll Raintrea (1984) jinltially publ ~shed s In Search ofApril Ramtree in 1982) probably is a work, which highlights the pathos of Metls life lnCanada. Based on the author's experiences of foster homes, alcoholism, poverty anddeath of siblings, the novel maps the story of two Metls sisters April and Cheryl andt h e~ r oignant search for identlty Culleton charts the systemic oppression resulta~it fcolonialism and racism and the havoc created by these in Metis llves Culleton wrote anovel for children, after her first book, entitled - th W h t e B h n 1 985), ananimal autobiography which, in the person of the white bison, narrates with muchhistorical detail, about the discrimination of the buffalo on the Plalns

Jeanettee Armstrong's, (an Okanagan Indian wnters) novel lash 1 985), anothersignificant work as far as Native writmg in Canada is concerned, deals with the Nativepolitics and Native White relations during 1960s and 70s In Canada. Armstrong's novelmaps the protagonist Slash Kelashket's search for his cornmurzi se f through phases ofalcoholism, drug addiction, Imprisonment, violence, political activism and ultimately tohis realization that solution to the Indlan problems lles In the tradihonal medicine ways ofthe Okanagan people and his recognition of his androgynous trlbal self is ahistorical fiction situated In the project of Native resistance in Canada

Lee Maracle's 1988), a collection of autoblographlcal essays,articulates the systemic oppression resultant of colonialism on the Metis, especiallywomen, in Canada. Maracle's autoblographlcal narrative is vastly different from Maria


15/23

Campbell's n that it is a conglomerat~onof voices whch merge into thecommunal voice of the author. Maracle's autobiography whlch is more theoretical andfictional as the author herself puts ~ t ,mphasizes the need for revlslonary history from theNatlve perspective. n chart~nghe trajectory of Metissage in Canada, Maracie's bookalso enunciates the need for decolonizationinarrative Maracle had published anotherwork ent~tled before rhe publication of Am w ~ l a n

The other significant North American works by Natrve women that have wonconsiderable recognition Include Linda Hogan's (Chlckassaw) ean 1 990) whichdescribes the effects of the oil boom of the 1920s on an Oklahoma Indlan community andThat Horse (1985) a collection of Short stories, Janet Campbeil Hale's (a Coeurd'AleneKootena1 Indian) The .J&p of Cecelia Captilre (19851, Owl's Son2 (1974),Blood Llnes. Odyssey of a Nat~veDaughw (1994); Ruby Sllpperjack's (Metis,Canadian) &nor the S u ~ ( 1 9 8 7 )nd Sllent Words 1992), Joan Crate's (Metis Canadian)Breathin? water (1990), Beth Brants' (Metis, Canadian) Mohawk Trail (1985) and so on.The considerable amount of Native women's wnhng that has been emerging m the recenttimes indicates the fact that the Natlve women have taken the responsib~lity ofrepresenting themselves through their narratives, freeing themselves from the sem~oticcontrol imposed by the colonizers.

Native Writing: Aesthetics World View Narrative Patterns :

n the grevlous sectioz, an attempt has been made to chart the course of Nativevoice especially women's voice from told-to-the person narratives to told-to-the-pagenarratives. It would be highly worthwhile now to look at the major themes, charactenstictraits, and narrative patterns In Native works which do not conform to the Westernnotlons of genre and often employ narrative forms which violate the conventionalWestern generlc patterns

Paula Gunn Allen in her Introduction to the anthology of Natlve Womenwriting, Spider Woman's C~randd a u ~ h1989) elucidates the differences between


16/23

Native and Western aesthetics whlch occur due to the differences in the world views ofthe two cultures. Allen mentlons that the Katives do not belleve in genres prescribedm/by the western tradition. Natrve Stones are cyclical and often mix poetry and prosein thelr n rr tive structure. The European tradition, on the other hand, believes m thepurity of genres Inter-mlxmg of genres llke the ~ntermlngiing f races, classes or gendersis vehemently discouraged by the crltics and scholars who rlgidly insist on generlcciassificat~onThe European traditron also disdains mixing levels of diction, tends to bepurlst in ~ t s pproach and often attempts to classify wrlting according to the normsformulated by Arlstotle The European values of indlvldual~sm ermeate the n notlons ofthe protagonist ( a single individual who wreaks his will upon one or more haplessgroups ) and piot structure (wh~ch eflect the conflict, crisls and resolution in theprotagonists' llfe)

Allen maps the Natwe tradition which 1s contrapuntally opposed to the Westernone 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 wholeand in thew combining, make significance of human and non human llfeTraditional Native novels are identified as cycles referring to a number ofstories that cluster around a more or less central theme and often feature particularcharacters and events7 Indian ethos is neither individu listic nor confllctcentred, and the unifying structures that make the oral traditional coherent ase lessa matter of character, time and sethng than the coherence of commonunderstanding 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 ofparticular tnbes where the communal experience of the tribe rather than individualexperiences is foregrounded. In fact, individualism is often portrayed as a negatrve trait

Allen c~t eshe Yellow Woman stones and other stones of Keres Pueblo as examples for trad~uonalNabvenarrat.wes or cycles


17/23

Native narratives reflect the tribal worldview which 1s bzsed on k~nsh ip iesbetween human beings s weli as between human and non-human worlds All beings 1nthls unlverse are perceived as v~tal,ntellrgent and self-aware and the Natlve aesthet~cposition involves honoring the propriety and kinshlp tles In t h ~ sycllcal unlverse Alleneiuc~dateshis

Right relationship, or right kinship 1s hndamental to Native aesthetics Rightrelationship is dictated by custom within a given trlbal or cultural group buteverywhere it is characterized by cons~derationsof proportion harmony balanceand communality Tribal rt of all kinds embodies the prlnclple of k~nshiprender~ng he beaut~ful n terms of connectedness of elemenB in harmonious,balanced, respectful proponion of each and any to all-m-All For Indians,relationships are based on commonalties of consciousness, reflected in thoughtand behawor, blood is only a reflection of that central definlhve bondS .Indianaesthebcs are spiritual at base harmony, balance, relationshtp and dignity are itsinform~ng r~nciples Allen 1983 9 10)

The themes that frequently occur in Native women's stories Include cultural andpolitical enslavement resultant of colonialism, m its va r~ ous orms ails, boardlngschools, reservation experiences, abduction, war and so on. Allen identifies theunderlying theme in most of the stories, as forced separation, signifying the loss of'selfand 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 isparticularly central to Native women's stories in both their told to-the people and told-to-the page modes (Allen 1583 8).

All the texts selected for analysis in the present study deal with the theme ofseparation and loss of self/ldentlty in one way or the other. The texts selected includeLeslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony (1977), Paula Gunn Allen's The Woman Who Ownedth 1583), Louise Erdrich's Tracks (1588), (Native American), Jeanette

Tribal h s h p conslsts not only ofhuman be~ngs ut lso the supematurals, splrlt people, anlmal peopleof all varieties, the thunders, snows, rams, rivers, lakes,hills, mouiltains, fire, water and plants (Allen1983:lO)


18/23

Armstrong's (1985) and Beatrice Culleton's (19851, Lee maracle's Im Woman (1988) (Native Canadian) The texts seiected represent a cross section of

contemporary Native women's fiction In Umted States and Canada and echo thehistoricallnarrative concerns of Native Women 1n North America Although most of theNorth American tribes do not recognize boundaries or appellations of natlonal~tymposedby the colonizer/mainstream culture, for the sake of convenience in textual analysis(since the texts reflect the spec~f ic olonial mr l~eun whlch they were created), I havetried to club the Natlve American texts together on the one hand, and the NatlveCanadlan texts on the other The Tribal affiliations of the authors as well as therecogn~tion ccorded by varlous Native crltics and scholars for the texts have also beentaken ~ n t o ccount In the process of selec t~on f material for the present study LeslleSilko and Paula Gunn Allen are Laguna Pueblo miters and they employ the Laguna Oraltradition in their fict~onLoulse Erdrich is a Turtle Mountam Chippewa who employs theculture hero/tnckster motif in her text. All the Natlve American texts employ myths andlegends from the respective Oral traditions as the Grand n rr tive for the contemporarystories In the Native Canadian texts, on the other hand, there 1s no overt reference to anyspecific oral tradition Lee Maracle and Beatrice Culleton are Metls and JeanetteArmstrong is an Okanagan full blood aeamny andhadow are fictions, which make use of the quest motlf. So do and lash

which employ the first person confessional mode. Tracks has a bi-polar narrative and IAm Woman is an auto biographical work.

i the preseiit s hdy, the eaphasis is on the construction of history through fictiotiin the post modern mlieu Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of 'polyphony' is employed todecode the expressed suppressed historical concerns of Native writers Silko, Allen,Erdrich, Culleton, Armstrong and Maracle. Polyphony here refers to thepolarized polemic~zed volces in their texts 1.e the h~storicallnarrativeconcerns in thelrficbon The varlous voices in the text traditionalist, asslmilation~st/white,and thetextual polemics and Native woman's voice will be analyzed in detall n the four corechapters The study is divided rnto six chapters In the manner of traditional oral narrativeswhere the four partslchapters represent the four cardinal directions and the introduction


19/23

and conclusion represent the directions above and below. The chapterizat~onS done m acyclical manner with narrative threads weaving az~dnterweaving, intended to suggest thecyclical vlew of the universe that Na t~ves elieve in. In the four core chapters, there isbound to be a disparity in the analysis of texts, more space will be devoted to theArnerlcan texts due to the~rtructurai/thernatrc denslty.

The theoretlcal framework for the present study Includes the works of Paula GunnAllen, Arnold Krupat, Lee Maracle, Julia V Emberley and other critics and scholars onNatlve studies The overall skeleton as far as the presenr study goes is provlded by theconcepts of Mikhail Bakhtln Bakhtlnian framework is used In identifying the vanousvoices in the text and in the chaptenzatlon. The four core chapters have differenttheoretlcal frames The second chapter employs the works of Natlve crttics like PaulaGunn Allen, Rayna Green, William Bevls and others. The third chapter relies on thecolonial critlcs Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha and colonial narratives of Lord Gray, theMissionary narratives government policies/documents and so on. The fourth chapterwhlch identifies the polemlcs and construction of history makes use of the theories ofBakthin, Hayden White, Julia V. Emberley, Barbara Godard, Linda Hutecheon and othersIn its re-enunciai on of the problematic of history in the post modem milieu. The postcolonial theories enunciated by Aschroft, Gareth and T~ ff in n thelr works, H o rnBhabha's concepts of interstitial space and hybr~dity, Paula Gunn Allen's termcosmogyny, Bakhtinian concept of mediaQon and Arnold Krupat's nobon of theSynecdochrc self punctuate the processes and problematic of construction ofidentity(ies)/narratives by Native Txlomen n the fifth chapzer. The critical insights fromthe works of Trinh T. mnh-ha, Julia Emberley, and others will be employed in asignificant manner in enunciating the concerns of identity and representation in thlschapter In selecting the theoretical framework, utmost care has been taken not to imposeWhiteEuropean theories whlch wtll affect violence .on the Native texts, their concerns orworldviews. In the next few lines, a brief appraisal of the semrotlc reproductions of theNatlve tn white narratives and movies will be provided in order to facilitate a betterunderstanding of the concerns put forth a t the beginning of this chapter


20/23

Mainstream Perspectives on Native WOUler :

The mainstream culture, ever since contact, has constructed Native to suit its ownends The popular Westerns novels and movies, often perpetrate the dictum 'The onlyGood Indian is a Dead Indian', a vlew corroborated by the early settler's narratives. TheNatives have been the vlctlms of fantasies of w ~ s h ulfillment for the settler oftenreflected in their representations as the vanishing race found in the works of popularWestern wrlters like Louis L' Amour, Zane Grey and others and even in books byclassical American miters 11ke James Fennimore Cooper Popular American movies likeThe Riders of the Lost Arc, Man Called Horse, The Last of the Mo h~ canrs isseminatethe image of the van~shingNative, or the savage exotic other

Natives have functioned as a source of fantasy for many North Arnerlcan writerslike 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 Feeexplains the complicated thought process behind such representations of Natives in whitenarratives.

A complicated process, simultaneously a confession and a denial of guilt anidentification and a usurpation ensue when white writers choose Native peopleas literary material The moral unease that marks many contemporary texts isillustrated by Andrew Susnakl's comment on this difficulty. Susnaki feels avaguely divided.. guilt for what happened to the hd ian m d guilt (also)because to feel this guilt is a betrayal of what you ethmcally are he son of ahomesteader and his wife, who must be righfilly honored in one's ownmythology (Fee 1987:15)

Terry Goldie has identified two major stereotypes in h ~ snalysis of the image of indigenein whlte narrattves Fear and temptaaon he male native as the ferocious warrior andthe native woman as the representative of earthly sensuality that would lead the whiteman to realms of sensual ecstasy and both these images are perceived as necessary m thesettlers attempts to go native.


21/23

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 InNative Studies indicate an unconscious desl re/~dent~ficationlth the romantlc stereotypeprobably Nat~ve as thus fiinctioned in one way or other as a fetish in White narrativesMargar~e ee eiucldates the fbnctional importance of Native characters In white fictions

Typ~cally, whlte speaker or main character 1s confused and Impelled by a strongdesire to know about the pasr personal, fam~l~ a l,at~ve. or natlonai Theconfusion is resoit-ed through the relat~onshipwith an object, Image, plant. anlmalor peison associated with Nat1r.e people Occasionally, the relat~onship S with areal native person The reso lut~on is often a quasl-mystical vlsion oS or~dent~ficationlth, Natives. although occasionally ~t simply takes the form ofpsychological or creatlve break through Initially, the subject is approachedrationally, even forensically, but the conclusion is poetic, emotional often andrather mystical Th e movement from observer to participant, outslder to inslder,Immigrant to native , h~stor tan to mythmaker is often commented o nspecifically T h ~ s attern may be so ubiquitous because it allows for thefulfilment of several ideological functions simultaneously Flrst, it focuses on theIdentity quest of the bourgeois mdividual so crucial to western literature. It allowsfor the white literary land claim, analogous to the historical terntorlal takeover usually implicit or expliclt in the text And it allows for a therapeuticmeditation on the evil of technology and the good of a life close to nature, thelatter offering a ten lporaq ln~locuiation ghiiist iiia foriner (Fee 1987 16 17)

This 1s true in the case of all the authors mentioned in thls sectlon earher, right &omCooper'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 hisBlbl~ographicReview on Native Wrihng. Due to constraints of space, the present mapplng of the theme 1srather sketchy and provides only ce~tanommon patterns In works by vlllte autllors


22/23

Narrative Threads: A Resume

The previous sectlon has briefly outlined the mainstream perceptions on theNatives that recur In wh~te anatlves The Xatives have, as pointed out by Galeno, beenalways regarded as objects of history n the present study, an attempt is berng made toanalyze the h~storical/narrative oncerns of Native women inlthrough their fictions

The trajectory of Natlve volce from told-to-the-person to told-to-the-pagenarratives, the characteristics features of Natlve wrrtlng as a genre, the description of thetexts selected for study, the crlteria for selection of the texts and a brief appraisal of thesemiotlc reproduct~ons of the Natlves have formed the purview of Chapter Iv he Voice

Chapter 11. Vorce of Trd~tlon: randmothers iGrandfather s Lineage analyzestradit~on s a presence in the Nat~veWomen s texts. It elucidates the importance ofNative Oral tradition/religion as the grand narrative for contemporary Native Women sstories; the relevance of myths, legends and lores in structuring their world view and thepresence of grandmotherigrandfather as the source of stories, in transmitting history asmemory. The chapter which employs the Oral tradition approach will enunciate how thevoice of tradition or traditionalism as a Native perspectrve polermcizes issues like(hi)story telling while positing Orality as remembered hstory The chapter willemphasize the presence of Grand motheritradition m all the texts and chart thedifferences between the Amer~can nd Canadian Native iex?s.

Chapter JII: The WhitdAsslrmairtlonist Volce. The Civilizing Asgumegt traces thetrajectory of colonial discourse, its presence as whiteiassimilationist voice In Native textsunder study The white world view; the genesis of the civilizing argument throughmissionary narratives and government documents, the colonizer s attempts tonegate/erase Native culturesiidentities through semiotlc control by way ofstereotypification and w h te education system w h ~ ch oster colonial binaries and thepresence of civilizing argument as assrmilationist voices m the texts will form the


23/23

purvlew of this chapter The chapter employs the theor~esof Frantz Fanon and HomiBhabha to eiucidate the ambivalence of the coion~ai arrat~ves/d~scourse

Chapter V Polemics of 'i70ices. Historicai,Xarrztwe Tones w~ l map theprocesses of construction of revis~onary/aiternateh~storles y Native Women ~nlthroughthelr stones The chapter while elucidating the probiematic of historical constructlon inthe post modern mll~euw ~ l l ~ghlrghthe polemics In the historical and n rr tive tones inthe texts, the processes of mediation negotiation translationand the trajectory of afemlnlne altematelrev~sionary hlstory and its inscription as her stories after a briefeluc~dation f the similar~tiesn of historical and fict~onal arratives

Chapter V: I fy V o ~ c e nterstltlai nd Nat~veVl7omen sStories will dlscuss the textslstorles from a post colonlal theoretlcal terraln, keeplng inview then hybrldity in occupying an lnterstltlal space, the role of story telling in effectingdecolonizat~on; he process of medlatlon, the presence of what Arnold Krupat Calls"Synecdochic Self' in both American and Canadian texts and the location of the Natlvewoman writer's volce 1x1 the collective women's voice. The Chapter whlch deals w ~ t hheprocess of identity/voice constructlon in a speclfic female context will conclude with areiteration of the role of writing in controlling the Image making process and the powerof wordslnarrative in effecting decolonlzation

1J0. Weavlnvhapter VI: Summln Voice, which employs the analogy ofweaving, wlll thread the various voices In the texts The chapter whi e prwl lny eviewof the previous chapters will stress the emergence of Native women untlng as a genre,the cyclical worldview whlch characterizes Native n rr tives and the rationale behind thepresent study. Further areas in Native Wr~tingshat requlre-ln-depth lnterrogatlon and thenature of interventions required In these areas tv~ ll lso be briefly outlined

Documents

polyphony and rabelais