'Survivance' in Native American literature: Form and representations

Beginning with the premise that it is nearly impossible to label a text written by a Native American as "Indian" or "not Indian," this project explores how Native American texts challenge and resist stereotypes created in Euroamerican culture. These stereotypes--the noble savage, the doomed Indian, the stoic tobacco store Indian, the psychotic half-breed, and many more--impose false but authoritative definitions of ethnic identity, which both arise from and give rise to widespread misunderstanding between whites and Native Americans. Consequences of such misunderstandings are myriad, including repression of traditional languages and cultures, loss of native lands, and outright genocide, as well as far more subtle effects.; The texts examined not only contest these stereotypes, but parallel what Gerald Vizenor calls "survivance," a means of cultural survival that comes with denying authoritative representations of Native Americans, in addition to developing an adaptable, dynamic identity that can mediate between conflicting cultures. This study focuses exclusively on texts that break down negative stereotypes in a difficult or disturbing manner. Authors studied are Sarah Winnemucca, Mourning Dove, Leslie Silko, and Gerald Vizenor.; Sarah Winnemucca, widely criticized as a "white man's Indian" who is too assimilated to be recognized as a legitimate Native American writer, became proficient at maneuvering between the dominant culture and her traditional Paiute culture. Mourning Dove is also a controversial writer. Many writers argue that the influence of L. V. McWhorter, who heavily edited Cogewea, has ruined it by suppressing her voice. I argue that the collaborative, hybrid elements of Cogewea mirror the larger issues of miscegenation and authoritative notions of ethnic authenticity played out in the novel.; The final two chapters study contemporary writers. I study two difficult trickster narratives which are widely ignored or misunderstood: Gerald Vizenor's Bearheart and Leslie Silko's Almanac of the Dead. Trickster narratives teach through negative examples, a fact that may lead to the main difficulties readers have with these works. The disturbing nature of their work is crucial to Vizenor's and Silko's larger agendas of dismantling false, invented ideas about Native identity.