Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary HistoryOnce the most powerful indigenous nation in the southeastern United States, the Cherokees survive and thrive as a people nearly two centuries after the Trail of Tears and a hundred years after the allotment of Indian Territory. In Our Fire Survives the Storm, Daniel Heath Justice traces the expression of Cherokee identity in that nation’s literary tradition. Through cycles of war and peace, resistance and assimilation, trauma and regeneration, Cherokees have long debated what it means to be Cherokee through protest writings, memoirs, fiction, and retellings of traditional stories. Justice employs the Chickamauga consciousness of resistance and Beloved Path of engagement—theoretical approaches that have emerged out of Cherokee social history—to interpret diverse texts composed in English, a language embraced by many as a tool of both access and defiance. Justice’s analysis ultimately locates the Cherokees as a people of many perspectives, many bloods, mingled into a collective sense of nationhood. Just as the oral traditions of the Cherokee people reflect the living realities and concerns of those who share them, Justice concludes, so too is their literary tradition a textual testament to Cherokee endurance and vitality. Daniel Heath Justice is assistant professor of aboriginal literatures at the University of Toronto. |
Contents
Beyond the Civilized Savage | 19 |
Geographies of Removal | 43 |
The Trail Where We Cried | 55 |
Unruly Cherokees in the Indian Territory | 89 |
Regeneration | 147 |
Readings in Contemporary Cherokee Literature | 155 |
The Stories That Matter | 205 |
Notes | 221 |
257 | |
267 | |
Other editions - View all
Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History Daniel Heath Justice No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
allotment American Indian assertion assimilation Awiakta balance Beloved Path blood quantum ceremonial Chero Cherokee history Cherokee Indians Cherokee language Cherokee literary tradition Cherokee literature Cherokee Nation Cherokee nationhood Cherokee Night Chickamauga consciousness civilization claim Conley contemporary Cherokee criticism Dragging Canoe Echota Emmet Starr erasure Eurowestern father fire Five Civilized Tribes Georgia Glancy historian homeland human Ibid identity Indian Territory Indigenous intellectual Jace Weaver John Ridge John Ross Keetoowah kinship leaders living Mankiller Marilou Awiakta mixedblood Nancy Ward Nanye'hi narrative Native American novel Oklahoma Oskison peace peoplehood Press Principal Chief principles Red on Red relationship Removal response rhetorical Riggs Riggs's Rogers Rogers's sacred scholars Selu settlers social sovereignty spirit stories struggle survival Tecumseh texts Thomas tion traditionalist Trail of Tears Treaty Party tribe Truth and Bright Tsiyu Gansini U.S. government understanding United University voices warriors Weaver White Wilma Mankiller Womack Woman writing yoneg