That the People Might Live: Native American Literatures and Native American CommunityLoyalty to the community is the highest value in Native American cultures, argues Jace Weaver. In That the People Might Live, he explores a wide range of Native American literature from 1768 to the present, taking this sense of community as both a starting point and a lens. Weaver considers some of the best known Native American writers, such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, and Vine Deloria, as well as many others who are receiving critical attention here for the first time. He contends that the single thing that most defines these authors' writings, and makes them deserving of study as a literature separate from the national literature of the United States, is their commitment to Native community and its survival. He terms this commitment "communitism"--a fusion of "community" and "activism." The Native American authors are engaged in an ongoing quest for community and write out of a passionate commitment to it. They write, literally, "that the People might live." Drawing upon the best Native and non-Native scholarship (including the emerging postcolonial discourse), as well as a close reading of the writings themselves, Weaver adds his own provocative insights to help readers to a richer understanding of these too often neglected texts. A scholar of religion, he also sets this literature in the context of Native cultures and religious traditions, and explores the tensions between these traditions and Christianity. |
Contents
Native American Literatures and Communitism | 3 |
Occoms Razor and Ridges Masquerade 18th19th Century | 46 |
Assimilation Apocalypticism and Reform 19001967 | 86 |
Indian Literary Renaissance and the Continuing Search for Community 1968 | 121 |
Anger Times Imagination | 160 |
Notes | 169 |
213 | |
233 | |
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Amer-European American Indian American Indian Literatures Anishinaabe Apess autobiography blood Carmody century Christian Cogewea colonial communitism communitist Creek critical crossblood Dakota Destinies Earth Elias Boudinot Ella Cara Deloria Emphasis original English European fiction Fixico Forked Tongues Geary Hobson Gerald Vizenor Hobson human Ibid identity Indian Territory indigenous Jace Weaver John kinship Krupat land language Leslie Marmon Silko literary live Louis Owens Manifest Manners McPherson and Rabb missionary mother Mourning Mourning Dove Murray Native American Literature Native community Native cultures Native literature Native writers Ngugi Nieuwenhuys Noley non-Native Norman notes novel Occom Oklahoma Press oral tradition orature Paula Gunn Allen Pauline Johnson Peelman Peter Jones Petrone Posey published religion religious Robert Warrior Ruoff Ruppert Scott Momaday sense sovereignty speak stories Storyteller survival theology Thomas King tion Trafzer Tribal Secrets tribes trickster University of Oklahoma University Press Vine Deloria Jr Voice Western White worldview writes wrote York