Testaments of colonialism: Six Native American novels

Working chronologically, this researcher examines six novels written by Native American writers as testaments of U.S. internal colonialism. The study explores the following questions: In what way do these stories refute those of the colonizer as perpetuated in mainstream histories and literature? What does it mean to be a colonized Native and how does that definition change over the course of the twentieth century? The study is divided into three parts: Assimilation; Resistance and Revolution, drawing on two novels from the thirties: John Joseph Matthews' Sundown and Darcy McNickle's The Surrounded, two novels from the sixties/seventies: N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony; and two novels from the nineties: Linda Hogan's Power and Silko's Almanac of the Dead. Setting the novels in their historical and political context, I draw an analogy with the observations made by Albert Memmi in his study The Colonizer and the Colonized . Memmi theorizes that colonized peoples go through three stage of response to colonization: assimilation, followed by resistance and revolt.