Literature

The oral tradition of Native Americans includes a variety of themes, from simple stories with moraleja to the most eloquent sentences. The development of written language and contact with other cultures have enabled indigenous peoples to further expand their forms of expression. Murder narrative, which is common in many native cultures, has served as a basis for the development of written creativity and the emergence of native literature in recent times. This native literature has not only kept traditions alive, but has also served as a bridge between native culture and the predominant white society.

The autobiography, of which there is a long tradition, is probably the most direct means of communicating to a stranger the realities of Indian life. The son of the woods, by William Apess, a northeastern small-sized mestizo, was almost the first book in which an Indian author translated the native experience for non-natives. Apess wrote his autobiography in 1829, in which he spoke of the abuses he and other Indians had suffered from the hands of the whites, as well as his personal religious beliefs. Prominent authors include Luther Bear Erguido, Charles Eastman (dakota santee), John Rogers (ojibwa), and Paula Gunn Alien. (Laguna Pueblo). Some biographies have also had a great impact, such as Black Alce speaks (1923), written by John Neihardt, which tells the life of the visionary Lakota Black Alse.

Both this and similar works, however, lack a genuinely Indian meaning. Not being an Indian, the author has imposed a narrative structure that is not owned by the subject, which causes the narrative to lose authenticity.

Wynema (1891), written by Sophie Alice Callahan, was the first novel by an Indian author. The Dance of the Spirits and the Wounded Knee massacre were important tribal themes in his time. Native writers, some of whom have achieved great success, including kiowa N. Scott Momaday, whose novel House Made of Dawn won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968, have seen the novel as a fruitful genre. Louise Erdrich (ojibwa; see below), Gerald Vizenor (ojisay), Wendy Rose (hopi-mi-wok) and Maurice Kenny (mohawk) were other authors who received awards. The theme of Indian identity and its relationship with the dominant white culture is one of the most common themes in native novel.

Poets such as Gerald Vizenor and Creek Joy Harjo strive to capture the emotional intensity and rhythms of native-speaking language, as native poetry has a more direct connection to oral tradition. This contemporary poetry, like most of Indian literature, is written in English, but strives to maintain the modisms, spirit and content of native American languages.

The written word is important, but it has not replaced the oral tradition, which continues to exist in both English and native languages and serves as much to express ancient wisdom as the current circumstances. The common purpose of written and spoken language is to explain and record the experience of Native Americans, which is often distorted by whites or dismissed as insignificant.