The trickster is history: Tribal tricksters and American cultural history in contemporary Native writing

The Trickster is History seeks to imagine a new paradigm of how American Indians fit into American cultural studies. American cultural studies traditionally treat Native people either as obstacles to Euroamerican progress or as victims of Euroamerican colonization. In both cases, American cultural history is determined by the Euroamerican experience. The thesis asks what happens if we consider Native cultural experience as foundational to American cultural studies. This question is explored by turning to how contemporary Native writers like Erdrich, Vizenor, Carr, Morris, and Silko use tricksters from tribal traditions in their works as a means to return to the mythic times of Creation in order to revision what American cultural history is. Returning to the stories of Native Creation, Euroamerican cultural history is revealed to be an incident in a larger narrative of cultural meaning that began in the voices of tribal people long before white contact. In order to achieve this narrative taking back of cultural meaning, these writers turn to tricksters who have the power to destroy cultural conventions and create new worlds.; The thesis explores how tricksters have been dehistoricized by Western scholars and made into a Universal figure that transcends tribal cultural meanings. Native writers re-historicize tricksters in their narratives, locating the tricksters' meanings not in their transcendence of experience but in their desire to help Native peoples realize their place on earth. In their works, these writers liberate tricksters from Western theories that dehistoricize them. In their turn, the tricksters in these writers' works liberate Native characters from a world where Euroamerican cultural history determines meaning. In their trickster narratives, these writers envision a space where Native values define cultural historical meaning in America. They reclaim the American cultural landscape from foundational fallacies of Columbus, Pilgrims, and Progress and ask us to consider how America cultural history looks from the perspectives of tribal tricksters. Through their tricksters, Native writers imagine a new paradigm for American cultural history.