Gerald Vizenor

Gerald Vizenor was a journalist for the Minneapolis Tribune when he discovered that his direct ancestors were the editor and publisher of The Progress, the first Native newspaper on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. Vizenor, inspired by the kinship of nineteenth century Native journalists, has pursued a similar sense of resistance in his reportage, editorial essays, and literary art. Vizenor reveals in Native Liberty the political, poetic, visionary, and ironic insights of personal identity and narratives of cultural sovereignty. He examines singular acts of resistance, natural reason, literary practices, and other strategies of survivance that evade and subvert the terminal notions of tragedy and victimry. Native Liberty nurtures survivance and creates a sense of cultural and historical presence. Vizenor, a renowned Anishinaabe literary scholar and artist, writes in a direct narrative style that integrates personal experiences with original presentations, comparative interpretations, and critiques of legal issues and historical situations.

Natural Reason and Cultural Survivance

Native Liberty

Prof Gerald Vizenor, PH D

Stone Columbus, a namesake of the explorer and a modern trickster, wins a fortune at bingo and founds a new tribal nation

The Heirs of Columbus

Favor of Crows is a collection of new and previously published original haiku poems over the past forty years. Gerald Vizenor has earned a wide and devoted audience for his poetry. In the introductory essay the author compares the imagistic poise of haiku with the early dream songs of the Anishinaabe, or Chippewa. Vizenor concentrates on these two artistic traditions, and by intuition he creates a union of vision, perception, and natural motion in concise poems; he creates a sense of presence and at the same time a naturalistic trace of impermanence. The haiku scenes in Favor of Crows are presented in chapters of the four seasons, the natural metaphors of human experience in the tradition of haiku in Japan. Vizenor honors the traditional practice and clever tease of haiku, and conveys his appreciation of Matsuo Basho and Yosa Buson in these two haiku scenes, “calm in the storm / master basho soaks his feet /water striders,” and “cold rain / field mice rattle the dishes / buson’s koto.” Vizenor is inspired by the sway of concise poetic images, natural motion, and by the transient nature of the seasons in native dream songs and haiku. “The heart of haiku is a tease of nature, a concise, intuitive, and an original moment of perception,” he declares in the introduction to Favor of Crows. “Haiku is visionary, a timely meditation and an ironic manner of creation. That sense of natural motion in a haiku scene is a wonder, the catch of impermanence in the seasons.” Check for the online reader’s companion at favorofcrows.site.wesleyan.edu.

New and Collected Haiku

Favor of Crows

In the summer of 1962, a group of young Native American puppeteers travel in a converted school bus from the White Earth Reservation to the Century 21 Exposition, World's Fair in Seattle, Washington. The five Natives, three young men and two young women, have endured abandonment, abuse, poverty, and find solace, humor, and courage with a mute puppeteer—a Native woman in her seventies who writes original dream songs, and creates hand puppets and ironic parleys that mock the ghosts of authority. Dummy Trout, the mute puppeteer, also figured in Native Tributes and Satie on the Seine. The troupe attends a performance of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett and they create a puppet parley for Wovoka, the inspiration of the Native American Ghost Dance Religion.

Envoys of Good Cheer and Liberty

Waiting for Wovoka

In this anthology, eighteen scholars discuss the themes and practices of survivance in literature, examining the legacy of Vizenor's original insights and exploring the manifestations of survivance in a variety of contexts. Contributors interpret and compare the original writings of William Apess, Eric Gansworth, Louis Owens, Carter Revard, Gerald Vizenor, and Velma Wallis, among others.

Narratives of Native Presence

Survivance

Jaune Quick-to-see-smith

In traditional tribal creation myths, the earthdiver brings up dirt form the primal water to form the earth. Now they dive in unknown urban areas connecting dreams to earth in the same way that these stories connect metaphor to realities.

Tribal Narratives on Mixed Descent

Earthdivers

Gerald Vizenor’s Native Provenance challenges readers to consider the subtle ironies at the heart of Native American culture and oral traditions such as creation and trickster stories and dream songs. A respected authority in the study of Native American literature and intellectual history, Vizenor believes that the protean nature of many creation stories, with their tease and weave of ironic gestures, was lost or obfuscated in inferior translations by scholars and cultural connoisseurs, and as a result the underlying theories and presuppositions of these renditions persist in popular literature and culture. Native Provenance explores more than two centuries of such betrayal of native creativity. With erudite and sweeping virtuosity, Vizenor examines how ethnographers and others converted the inherent confidence of native stories into uneasy sentiments of victimry. He explores the connection between Native Americans and Jews through gossip theory and strategies of cultural survivance, and between natural motion and ordinary practices of survivance. Other topics include the unique element of native liberty inherent in artistic milieus; the genre of visionary narratives of resistance; and the notions of historical absence, cultural nihilism, and victimry. Native Provenance is a tour de force of Native American cultural criticism ranging widely across the terrains of the artistic, literary, philosophical, linguistic, historical, ethnographic, and sociological aspects of interpreting native stories. Native Provenance is rife with poignant and original observations and is essential reading for anyone interested in Native American cultures and literature.

The Betrayal of Cultural Creativity

Native Provenance

Gerald Vizenor és l'autor indi nord-americà més important d'aquests moments i el que més obres ha publicat. Poeta, assagista, novel·lista, periodista, professor, activista compromés i crític aferrissat de la política racial discriminatòria nord-americana, ha dedicat i continua dedicant la seua vida a estudiar, explorar i redefinir la història passada i present dels nadius nord-americans en la que una vegada fou la seua terra. Autor prolífic 'amb més de trenta títols publicats' i extraordinàriament innovador, ha rebut nombrosos premis i reconeixements. El tret que distingeix la seua producció literària és la unicitat de temes i motius que la recorren amb un estil profundament personal que fon prosa, poesia i assaig sota un denominador comú: el d'un llenguatge on les fronteres entre gèneres desapareixen i donen pas a una literatura única que ben bé es podria encunyar com a vizenoriana. Literary Chance: Essays on Native American Survivance recull quinze assajos en els quals l'autor aprofundeix en com el llenguatge ha creat la imatge del que és l'indi nord-americà; un simulacre que Vizenor tracta de desfer amb un nou vocabulari que pose de manifest aquesta invenció i representació des de la simulació.

Essays on Native American Survivance

Literary Chance

Gerald Vizenor's Native Provenance challenges readers to consider the subtle ironies at the heart of Native American culture and oral traditions such as creation and trickster stories and dream songs. A respected authority in the study of Native American literature and intellectual history, Vizenor believes that the protean nature of many creation stories, with their tease and weave of ironic gestures, was lost or obfuscated in inferior translations by scholars and cultural connoisseurs, and as a result the underlying theories and presuppositions of these renditions persist in popular literature and culture. Native Provenance explores more than two centuries of such betrayal of native creativity. With erudite and sweeping virtuosity, Vizenor examines how ethnographers and others converted the inherent confidence of native stories into uneasy sentiments of victimry. He explores the connection between Native Americans and Jews through gossip theory and strategies of cultural survivance, and between natural motion and ordinary practices of survivance. Other topics include the unique element of native liberty inherent in artistic milieus; the genre of visionary narratives of resistance; and the notions of historical absence, cultural nihilism, and victimry. Native Provenance is a tour de force of Native American cultural criticism ranging widely across the terrains of the artistic, literary, philosophical, linguistic, historical, ethnographic, and sociological aspects of interpreting native stories. Native Provenance is rife with poignant and original observations and is essential reading for anyone interested in Native American cultures and literature.

A. Robert Lee

Postindian Conversations is the first collection of in-depth interviews with Gerald Vizenor, one of the most powerful and provocative voices in the Native world today. These lively conversations with the preeminent novelist and cultural critic reveal much about the man, his literary creations, and his critical perspectives on important issues affecting Native peoples at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The book also casts new light on his sometimes controversial ideas about contemporary Native identity, politics, economics, scholarship, and literature. Gerald Vizenor is a professor of American Studies and Native American literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the American Book Award-winner Griever: An American Monkey King in China. A. Robert Lee is a professor of American literature at Nihon University in Tokyo. His books include Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of Afro-America. His edited works include Shadow Distance: A Gerald Vizenor Reader.

Postindian Conversations

A reconfigured comedy in the trickster tradition features the adventures of "Almost" Browne as he takes American popular culture to task for its misrepresentation of Native American reality

An Almost Browne Novel

Hotline Healers

Gerald Vizenor weaves an engrossing historical portrayal of Native American soldiers in World War I. Blue Ravens is set at the start of the twentieth century in the days leading up to the Great War in France, and continues in combat scenes at Château-Thierry, Montbréhain, and Bois de Fays. The novel contains many of Vizenor’s recurrent cultural themes—the power and irony of trickster stories, the privilege of survivance over victimry, natural reason and resistance. After serving in the American Expeditionary Forces, two brothers from the Anishinaabe culture return to the White Earth Reservation where they grew up. They eventually leave for a second time to live in Paris where they lead successful and creative lives. With a spirited sense of “chance, totemic connections, and the tricky stories of our natural transience in the world,” Vizenor creates an expression of presence commonly denied Native Americans. Blue Ravens is a story of courage in poverty and war, a human story of art and literature from a recognized master of the postwar American novel and one of the most original and outspoken Native voices writing today. Check for the online reader’s companion at blueravens.site.wesleyan.edu.

Historical Novel

Blue Ravens

--Pointed, absorbing novel about an indigenous artist’s long journey of creativity and coming-of-awareness from White Earth Reservation to Paris

Shrouds of White Earth

Gerald Vizenor creates masterful, truthful, surreal, and satirical fiction similar to the speculative fiction of Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman. In this imagined future, seven natives are exiled from federal sectors that have replaced federal reservations; they pursue the liberty of an egalitarian government on an island in Lake of the Woods. These seven narrators, known only by native nicknames, are related to characters in Vizenor’s other novels and stories. Vizenor was the principal writer of the Constitution of the White Earth Nation, and this novel is a rich and critical commentary on the abrogation of the treaty that established the White Earth Reservation in 1867, and a vivid visualization of the futuristic continuation of the Constitution of the White Earth Nation, in 2034.

Gerald Vizenor

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