| This dissertation studies the theme of Native American cultural survival and role of the oral tradition in D'Arcy McNickle's The Surrounded, Runner in The Sun, and Wind from an Enemy Sky; N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn; Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony; and James Welch's Fools Crow.; I argue that these novels posit a correlative relationship between cultural survival and the vitality of the oral tradition, and I explore the ways in which these four writers affirm the strength and healing powers of traditional Native American ideologies, critique Anglo-European currencies of value, subvert literary and Hollywood conceptualizations of the "vanishing American," and advocate Native self-responsibility for cultural survival.; My approach to these novels is largely ethnographic in that I endeavor (using author commentary; the anthropological studies of Boas, Parsons, Wissler and Duvall; and historical texts) to locate them both within their specific Native American tribal contexts and within a larger pan-tribal context. I use James Clifford's ethnographic studies to contextualize and to problematize my work, but I take issue with some of his theories about the discontinuous nature of tribal identity. I regard McNickle as a precursor of contemporary Native writers in that his works help set the pattern of ethnically-rich, well-informed fiction that his predecessors have followed.; I begin by discussing the social, cultural, and historical significance of language and sacred stories in Native cultures. Using Jarold Ramsey's theories of "retroactive prophecy," I suggest that McNickle, Momaday, Silko, and Welch reinscribe the oral tradition and create new stories that illustrate its timeless relevance. Building on the work of critics like Louis Owens, John Purdy, and Susan Scarberry-Garcia, I argue that through the dislocation, alienation, and identity quests and crises of their protagonists, who are frequently mixed bloods caught between two cultures, these four authors delineate the differences and conflicts between Native American and Anglo-European cultures and establish a moral context, in which the materialistic, individualistic, and dehumanizing aspects of Anglo culture are challenged. |
