Post by Okwes on Aug 26, 2006 12:33:53 GMT -5
A critical look at American Indian writing
By Dinitia Smith <http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=By Dinitia
Smith&sort=swishrank> The New York Times
[http://www.iht.com/images/article/spacer.gif]
Published: August 22, 2006
www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/22/travel/treuer.php
<http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/22/travel/treuer.php>
[http://www.iht.com/images/icon/null.gif]
[http://www.iht.com/images/icon/null.gif]
[http://www.iht.com/images/icon/null.gif] LEECH LAKE RESERVATION,
Minnesota>en<>res< <http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=LEECH
LAKE RESERVATION, Minnesota>en res> The novelist and critic David
Treuer of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe here does not look like the
received image of an American Indian. With his pale skin and brown
hair, many people would not even take him for an Indian. Nor, Treuer
noted as he sat in a faded bar on the Leech Lake Reservation, does his
r�sum� sound like the stereotype of the American Indian. Now 35,
he was educated at Princeton University in New Jersey (as were his two
brothers; they were inspired to apply there by the movie "Risky
Business"), and is an English professor at the University of Minnesota.
His mother, an Ojibwe tribal judge, met his father, a Jewish Holocaust
refugee from Austria, when he was teaching high school on the
reservation. "My life will rarely be interpreted as Indian unless I
translate it myself," Treuer said. But in two books published this
week in the United States by Graywolf Press, he is mounting a challenge
to the whole idea of Indian identity as depicted by both Indian and
white writers. "Native American Fiction: A User's Manual" is a kind of
manifesto, which argues that American Indian writing should be judged as
literature and not as a cultural artifact. "He's exploring and
revealing a truer history of Native Americans," said Toni Morrison, his
former professor at Princeton. "We tend, even now, to like ethnic
literature to contain our notion of what the iconography is." In the
book, Treuer takes on such American Indian writers as Louise Erdrich,
Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch and Sherman Alexie. He finds much to
praise but argues that the works of Indian authors are often read as
ethnographies rather than as literature. In addition, he says that
some Indian writers use pictures of Indianness passed down by white
authors ranging from Rousseau, Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper to
Forrest Carter - the author of "The Education of Little Tree," a best
seller of the 1970s and '80s - who was discovered to be a violent racist
and a Ku Klux Klan member. While praising Alexie, a Spokane- Coeur
d'Alene Indian, for his abilities as a novelist, Treuer compares him to
Carter. The characters in Alexie's novel "Reservation Blues," Truer
says, are like those in "Little Tree": burlesques, with prose full of
mixed metaphors and far-reaching similes. For example, in "Reservation
Blues," when someone speaks, Alexie writes that "his words sounded like
stones in his mouth and coals in his stomach." Flawed prose and
clich�d images and ideas, Treuer contends, are typical of writing
about Natives - whether by Indians or whites - and are excused because
they fit the culture's preconceived notions of what Indians and Indian
life are like. "What he's saying is that the identity of the writer
doesn't count," Alexie said of Treuer in an interview. "That eliminates
the way books work in the world." Treuer is very much concerned with
identity. "The Translation of Dr. Apelles: A Love Story," the other book
published this week, is his third novel. It's a story within a story. On
the one hand, it's a 19th-century Indian romance, replete with stock
characters from Indian literature: the orphaned hero, the spiritual
leader who shows him the true way, Indians with a special harmony with
nature. But Dr. Apelles is, like Treuer, a contemporary Indian, an
intellectual and a mix of modernity and tradition who, the book
suggests, is translating the story from an unnamed language. Apelles
is a man who cannot make sense of his own history, his personal
narrative, perhaps because it falls between two cultures, two languages.
Something of the same could be said of the author. Treuer was born in
Washington, where his father, Robert, worked for various federal social
service programs. His mother, Margaret, was a nurse and attended law
school, ultimately becoming one of the first female tribal judges.
David was 7 when the family moved from Washington to a small house on
the edge of the Leech Lake Reservation. "By reservation standards we
were very comfortable," he said. He attended Bemidji High School,
whose students were a blend of Indians and whites. He was in the
marching band and played Dungeons and Dragons. But his mother also
encouraged him to attend Ojibwe ceremonies, and he learned to live off
the land like many of his Indian relatives. At Princeton, he found
himself for the first time almost without the companionship of other
Indians, and his years there were lonely - a time, he said, when he "had
to prepare the story of my own life," to explain himself to his fellow
students and professors. While in Morrison's class, he began his first
novel, "Little," about a mysterious Indian boy who goes missing. It was
published in 1995. (His second novel, "The Hiawatha," was published in
1999.) Today Treuer - with his wife, Gretchen, who is half Seneca
Indian, and their daughter, Elsina - still lives part time near the
Leech Lake Reservation, a vast expanse of flat, sandy land in northern
Minnesota, dotted with clear blue lakes and pine forests. There, near
many of the 150 members of his extended family, he continues to hunt,
trap and harvest wild rice. He is on leave from the university, and
will spend the next year and a half recording, transcribing and
translating Ojibwe speech in hopes of preserving the language, which is
spoken by only about 15 percent of the tribe. He sees no disjunction
among his efforts to preserve Ojibwe language, his fiction and his
criticism of exceptionalism in American Indian literature. All, he said,
are concerned with his interest in narratives. From the Boston Tea
Party to "Dances With Wolves," to the New Age movement, Treuer said,
American Indians are inextricably bound up in the myths white Americans
have created about what the country was, what it is and what it
represents. Indians occupy "vast territories of the imagination," he
said. "The stories America tells itself about itself involve us, but
most people will never meet or talk to one of us." With his work,
Treuer said he was trying to create a new Indian story, one in which
American Indian literature joins the mainstream of American letters.
"Words are the most powerful shaping tool," he said. "Writing, speech,
language don't just communicate fact, they create fact." LEECH
LAKE RESERVATION, Minnesota>en<>res<
<http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=LEECH LAKE RESERVATION,
Minnesota>en res> The novelist and critic David Treuer of the Leech
Lake Band of Ojibwe here does not look like the received image of an
American Indian. With his pale skin and brown hair, many people would
not even take him for an Indian. Nor, Treuer noted as he sat in a
faded bar on the Leech Lake Reservation, does his r�sum� sound
like the stereotype of the American Indian. Now 35, he was educated at
Princeton University in New Jersey (as were his two brothers; they were
inspired to apply there by the movie "Risky Business"), and is an
English professor at the University of Minnesota. His mother, an Ojibwe
tribal judge, met his father, a Jewish Holocaust refugee from Austria,
when he was teaching high school on the reservation. "My life will
rarely be interpreted as Indian unless I translate it myself," Treuer
said. But in two books published this week in the United States by
Graywolf Press, he is mounting a challenge to the whole idea of Indian
identity as depicted by both Indian and white writers. "Native
American Fiction: A User's Manual" is a kind of manifesto, which argues
that American Indian writing should be judged as literature and not as a
cultural artifact. "He's exploring and revealing a truer history of
Native Americans," said Toni Morrison, his former professor at
Princeton. "We tend, even now, to like ethnic literature to contain our
notion of what the iconography is." In the book, Treuer takes on such
American Indian writers as Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, James
Welch and Sherman Alexie. He finds much to praise but argues that the
works of Indian authors are often read as ethnographies rather than as
literature. In addition, he says that some Indian writers use pictures
of Indianness passed down by white authors ranging from Rousseau, Walter
Scott and James Fenimore Cooper to Forrest Carter - the author of "The
Education of Little Tree," a best seller of the 1970s and '80s - who was
discovered to be a violent racist and a Ku Klux Klan member. While
praising Alexie, a Spokane- Coeur d'Alene Indian, for his abilities as a
novelist, Treuer compares him to Carter. The characters in Alexie's
novel "Reservation Blues," Truer says, are like those in "Little Tree":
burlesques, with prose full of mixed metaphors and far-reaching similes.
For example, in "Reservation Blues," when someone speaks, Alexie writes
that "his words sounded like stones in his mouth and coals in his
stomach." Flawed prose and clich�d images and ideas, Treuer
contends, are typical of writing about Natives - whether by Indians or
whites - and are excused because they fit the culture's preconceived
notions of what Indians and Indian life are like. "What he's saying is
that the identity of the writer doesn't count," Alexie said of Treuer in
an interview. "That eliminates the way books work in the world."
Treuer is very much concerned with identity. "The Translation of Dr.
Apelles: A Love Story," the other book published this week, is his third
novel. It's a story within a story. On the one hand, it's a 19th-century
Indian romance, replete with stock characters from Indian literature:
the orphaned hero, the spiritual leader who shows him the true way,
Indians with a special harmony with nature. But Dr. Apelles is, like
Treuer, a contemporary Indian, an intellectual and a mix of modernity
and tradition who, the book suggests, is translating the story from an
unnamed language. Apelles is a man who cannot make sense of his own
history, his personal narrative, perhaps because it falls between two
cultures, two languages. Something of the same could be said of the
author. Treuer was born in Washington, where his father, Robert, worked
for various federal social service programs. His mother, Margaret, was a
nurse and attended law school, ultimately becoming one of the first
female tribal judges. David was 7 when the family moved from
Washington to a small house on the edge of the Leech Lake Reservation.
"By reservation standards we were very comfortable," he said. He
attended Bemidji High School, whose students were a blend of Indians and
whites. He was in the marching band and played Dungeons and Dragons. But
his mother also encouraged him to attend Ojibwe ceremonies, and he
learned to live off the land like many of his Indian relatives. At
Princeton, he found himself for the first time almost without the
companionship of other Indians, and his years there were lonely - a
time, he said, when he "had to prepare the story of my own life," to
explain himself to his fellow students and professors. While in
Morrison's class, he began his first novel, "Little," about a mysterious
Indian boy who goes missing. It was published in 1995. (His second
novel, "The Hiawatha," was published in 1999.) Today Treuer - with his
wife, Gretchen, who is half Seneca Indian, and their daughter, Elsina -
still lives part time near the Leech Lake Reservation, a vast expanse of
flat, sandy land in northern Minnesota, dotted with clear blue lakes and
pine forests. There, near many of the 150 members of his extended
family, he continues to hunt, trap and harvest wild rice. He is on
leave from the university, and will spend the next year and a half
recording, transcribing and translating Ojibwe speech in hopes of
preserving the language, which is spoken by only about 15 percent of the
tribe. He sees no disjunction among his efforts to preserve Ojibwe
language, his fiction and his criticism of exceptionalism in American
Indian literature. All, he said, are concerned with his interest in
narratives. From the Boston Tea Party to "Dances With Wolves," to the
New Age movement, Treuer said, American Indians are inextricably bound
up in the myths white Americans have created about what the country was,
what it is and what it represents. Indians occupy "vast territories of
the imagination," he said. "The stories America tells itself about
itself involve us, but most people will never meet or talk to one of
us." With his work, Treuer said he was trying to create a new Indian
story, one in which American Indian literature joins the mainstream of
American letters. "Words are the most powerful shaping tool," he said.
"Writing, speech, language don't just communicate fact, they create
fact."
By Dinitia Smith <http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=By Dinitia
Smith&sort=swishrank> The New York Times
[http://www.iht.com/images/article/spacer.gif]
Published: August 22, 2006
www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/22/travel/treuer.php
<http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/22/travel/treuer.php>
[http://www.iht.com/images/icon/null.gif]
[http://www.iht.com/images/icon/null.gif]
[http://www.iht.com/images/icon/null.gif] LEECH LAKE RESERVATION,
Minnesota>en<>res< <http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=LEECH
LAKE RESERVATION, Minnesota>en res> The novelist and critic David
Treuer of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe here does not look like the
received image of an American Indian. With his pale skin and brown
hair, many people would not even take him for an Indian. Nor, Treuer
noted as he sat in a faded bar on the Leech Lake Reservation, does his
r�sum� sound like the stereotype of the American Indian. Now 35,
he was educated at Princeton University in New Jersey (as were his two
brothers; they were inspired to apply there by the movie "Risky
Business"), and is an English professor at the University of Minnesota.
His mother, an Ojibwe tribal judge, met his father, a Jewish Holocaust
refugee from Austria, when he was teaching high school on the
reservation. "My life will rarely be interpreted as Indian unless I
translate it myself," Treuer said. But in two books published this
week in the United States by Graywolf Press, he is mounting a challenge
to the whole idea of Indian identity as depicted by both Indian and
white writers. "Native American Fiction: A User's Manual" is a kind of
manifesto, which argues that American Indian writing should be judged as
literature and not as a cultural artifact. "He's exploring and
revealing a truer history of Native Americans," said Toni Morrison, his
former professor at Princeton. "We tend, even now, to like ethnic
literature to contain our notion of what the iconography is." In the
book, Treuer takes on such American Indian writers as Louise Erdrich,
Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch and Sherman Alexie. He finds much to
praise but argues that the works of Indian authors are often read as
ethnographies rather than as literature. In addition, he says that
some Indian writers use pictures of Indianness passed down by white
authors ranging from Rousseau, Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper to
Forrest Carter - the author of "The Education of Little Tree," a best
seller of the 1970s and '80s - who was discovered to be a violent racist
and a Ku Klux Klan member. While praising Alexie, a Spokane- Coeur
d'Alene Indian, for his abilities as a novelist, Treuer compares him to
Carter. The characters in Alexie's novel "Reservation Blues," Truer
says, are like those in "Little Tree": burlesques, with prose full of
mixed metaphors and far-reaching similes. For example, in "Reservation
Blues," when someone speaks, Alexie writes that "his words sounded like
stones in his mouth and coals in his stomach." Flawed prose and
clich�d images and ideas, Treuer contends, are typical of writing
about Natives - whether by Indians or whites - and are excused because
they fit the culture's preconceived notions of what Indians and Indian
life are like. "What he's saying is that the identity of the writer
doesn't count," Alexie said of Treuer in an interview. "That eliminates
the way books work in the world." Treuer is very much concerned with
identity. "The Translation of Dr. Apelles: A Love Story," the other book
published this week, is his third novel. It's a story within a story. On
the one hand, it's a 19th-century Indian romance, replete with stock
characters from Indian literature: the orphaned hero, the spiritual
leader who shows him the true way, Indians with a special harmony with
nature. But Dr. Apelles is, like Treuer, a contemporary Indian, an
intellectual and a mix of modernity and tradition who, the book
suggests, is translating the story from an unnamed language. Apelles
is a man who cannot make sense of his own history, his personal
narrative, perhaps because it falls between two cultures, two languages.
Something of the same could be said of the author. Treuer was born in
Washington, where his father, Robert, worked for various federal social
service programs. His mother, Margaret, was a nurse and attended law
school, ultimately becoming one of the first female tribal judges.
David was 7 when the family moved from Washington to a small house on
the edge of the Leech Lake Reservation. "By reservation standards we
were very comfortable," he said. He attended Bemidji High School,
whose students were a blend of Indians and whites. He was in the
marching band and played Dungeons and Dragons. But his mother also
encouraged him to attend Ojibwe ceremonies, and he learned to live off
the land like many of his Indian relatives. At Princeton, he found
himself for the first time almost without the companionship of other
Indians, and his years there were lonely - a time, he said, when he "had
to prepare the story of my own life," to explain himself to his fellow
students and professors. While in Morrison's class, he began his first
novel, "Little," about a mysterious Indian boy who goes missing. It was
published in 1995. (His second novel, "The Hiawatha," was published in
1999.) Today Treuer - with his wife, Gretchen, who is half Seneca
Indian, and their daughter, Elsina - still lives part time near the
Leech Lake Reservation, a vast expanse of flat, sandy land in northern
Minnesota, dotted with clear blue lakes and pine forests. There, near
many of the 150 members of his extended family, he continues to hunt,
trap and harvest wild rice. He is on leave from the university, and
will spend the next year and a half recording, transcribing and
translating Ojibwe speech in hopes of preserving the language, which is
spoken by only about 15 percent of the tribe. He sees no disjunction
among his efforts to preserve Ojibwe language, his fiction and his
criticism of exceptionalism in American Indian literature. All, he said,
are concerned with his interest in narratives. From the Boston Tea
Party to "Dances With Wolves," to the New Age movement, Treuer said,
American Indians are inextricably bound up in the myths white Americans
have created about what the country was, what it is and what it
represents. Indians occupy "vast territories of the imagination," he
said. "The stories America tells itself about itself involve us, but
most people will never meet or talk to one of us." With his work,
Treuer said he was trying to create a new Indian story, one in which
American Indian literature joins the mainstream of American letters.
"Words are the most powerful shaping tool," he said. "Writing, speech,
language don't just communicate fact, they create fact." LEECH
LAKE RESERVATION, Minnesota>en<>res<
<http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=LEECH LAKE RESERVATION,
Minnesota>en res> The novelist and critic David Treuer of the Leech
Lake Band of Ojibwe here does not look like the received image of an
American Indian. With his pale skin and brown hair, many people would
not even take him for an Indian. Nor, Treuer noted as he sat in a
faded bar on the Leech Lake Reservation, does his r�sum� sound
like the stereotype of the American Indian. Now 35, he was educated at
Princeton University in New Jersey (as were his two brothers; they were
inspired to apply there by the movie "Risky Business"), and is an
English professor at the University of Minnesota. His mother, an Ojibwe
tribal judge, met his father, a Jewish Holocaust refugee from Austria,
when he was teaching high school on the reservation. "My life will
rarely be interpreted as Indian unless I translate it myself," Treuer
said. But in two books published this week in the United States by
Graywolf Press, he is mounting a challenge to the whole idea of Indian
identity as depicted by both Indian and white writers. "Native
American Fiction: A User's Manual" is a kind of manifesto, which argues
that American Indian writing should be judged as literature and not as a
cultural artifact. "He's exploring and revealing a truer history of
Native Americans," said Toni Morrison, his former professor at
Princeton. "We tend, even now, to like ethnic literature to contain our
notion of what the iconography is." In the book, Treuer takes on such
American Indian writers as Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, James
Welch and Sherman Alexie. He finds much to praise but argues that the
works of Indian authors are often read as ethnographies rather than as
literature. In addition, he says that some Indian writers use pictures
of Indianness passed down by white authors ranging from Rousseau, Walter
Scott and James Fenimore Cooper to Forrest Carter - the author of "The
Education of Little Tree," a best seller of the 1970s and '80s - who was
discovered to be a violent racist and a Ku Klux Klan member. While
praising Alexie, a Spokane- Coeur d'Alene Indian, for his abilities as a
novelist, Treuer compares him to Carter. The characters in Alexie's
novel "Reservation Blues," Truer says, are like those in "Little Tree":
burlesques, with prose full of mixed metaphors and far-reaching similes.
For example, in "Reservation Blues," when someone speaks, Alexie writes
that "his words sounded like stones in his mouth and coals in his
stomach." Flawed prose and clich�d images and ideas, Treuer
contends, are typical of writing about Natives - whether by Indians or
whites - and are excused because they fit the culture's preconceived
notions of what Indians and Indian life are like. "What he's saying is
that the identity of the writer doesn't count," Alexie said of Treuer in
an interview. "That eliminates the way books work in the world."
Treuer is very much concerned with identity. "The Translation of Dr.
Apelles: A Love Story," the other book published this week, is his third
novel. It's a story within a story. On the one hand, it's a 19th-century
Indian romance, replete with stock characters from Indian literature:
the orphaned hero, the spiritual leader who shows him the true way,
Indians with a special harmony with nature. But Dr. Apelles is, like
Treuer, a contemporary Indian, an intellectual and a mix of modernity
and tradition who, the book suggests, is translating the story from an
unnamed language. Apelles is a man who cannot make sense of his own
history, his personal narrative, perhaps because it falls between two
cultures, two languages. Something of the same could be said of the
author. Treuer was born in Washington, where his father, Robert, worked
for various federal social service programs. His mother, Margaret, was a
nurse and attended law school, ultimately becoming one of the first
female tribal judges. David was 7 when the family moved from
Washington to a small house on the edge of the Leech Lake Reservation.
"By reservation standards we were very comfortable," he said. He
attended Bemidji High School, whose students were a blend of Indians and
whites. He was in the marching band and played Dungeons and Dragons. But
his mother also encouraged him to attend Ojibwe ceremonies, and he
learned to live off the land like many of his Indian relatives. At
Princeton, he found himself for the first time almost without the
companionship of other Indians, and his years there were lonely - a
time, he said, when he "had to prepare the story of my own life," to
explain himself to his fellow students and professors. While in
Morrison's class, he began his first novel, "Little," about a mysterious
Indian boy who goes missing. It was published in 1995. (His second
novel, "The Hiawatha," was published in 1999.) Today Treuer - with his
wife, Gretchen, who is half Seneca Indian, and their daughter, Elsina -
still lives part time near the Leech Lake Reservation, a vast expanse of
flat, sandy land in northern Minnesota, dotted with clear blue lakes and
pine forests. There, near many of the 150 members of his extended
family, he continues to hunt, trap and harvest wild rice. He is on
leave from the university, and will spend the next year and a half
recording, transcribing and translating Ojibwe speech in hopes of
preserving the language, which is spoken by only about 15 percent of the
tribe. He sees no disjunction among his efforts to preserve Ojibwe
language, his fiction and his criticism of exceptionalism in American
Indian literature. All, he said, are concerned with his interest in
narratives. From the Boston Tea Party to "Dances With Wolves," to the
New Age movement, Treuer said, American Indians are inextricably bound
up in the myths white Americans have created about what the country was,
what it is and what it represents. Indians occupy "vast territories of
the imagination," he said. "The stories America tells itself about
itself involve us, but most people will never meet or talk to one of
us." With his work, Treuer said he was trying to create a new Indian
story, one in which American Indian literature joins the mainstream of
American letters. "Words are the most powerful shaping tool," he said.
"Writing, speech, language don't just communicate fact, they create
fact."