Native American Renaissance

The Native American Renaissance was a term originally coined by critic Kenneth Lincoln in his 1983 book of the same title. Lincoln’s goal was to explore the explosion in production of literary works by Native Americans in the decade and a half after N. Scott Momaday had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for House Made of Dawn. Before that time, few Native Americans had published fiction. Writers such as William Apess, Pauline Johnson, John Rollin Ridge and Simon Pokagon in the nineteenth century, and Mourning Dove, John Milton Oskison, John Joseph Mathews, Zitkala-Sa, Charles Eastman and D'Arcy McNickle in the years before WWII were known, but they were relatively few.

Lincoln pointed out that in the late-1960s and early-1970s, a generation of Native Americans were coming of age who were the first of their tribe to receive a substantial English-language education, particularly outside of standard Indian boarding schools and in universities. Conditions for Native people, while still very harsh, had moved beyond the survival conditions of the early half of the century. The beginnings of a project of historical revisionism, which attempted to document—from a Native perspective—the history of the invasion and colonization of the North American continent (and particularly the period referred to as the "Wild West)," had inspired a great deal of public interest in Native cultures.

During this time of change, a group of Native writers emerged, both poets and novelists, who in only a few years expanded the Native American literary canon. At the same time, the sudden increase in materials, and the setting up of Native American Studies departments at several universities, led to the foundations of scholarly journals, such as SAIL (Studies in American Indian Literature) and Wíčazo Ša Review, and publishing imprints such as the Native American Publishing Programme (Harper and Row), all of which further increased the interest in new Native American voices and their chances to be published.

Writers normally considered within this movement include:

• N. Scott Momaday
• James Welch
• Gerald Vizenor
• Leslie Marmon Silko
• Barney Bush
• Simon J. Ortiz
• nila northSun
• Louise Erdrich
• Joy Harjo
• Duane Niatum
• Paula Gunn Allen

The phrase “Native American Renaissance” has been criticized on a number of points. As James Ruppert puts it, "Scholars hesitate to use the phrase because it might imply that Native writers were not producing significant work before that time, or that these writers sprang up without longstanding community and tribal roots. Indeed, if this was a rebirth, what was the original birth?"^[1]. Other critics have described it as "a source of controversy"^[2], or have commented on its "vexing implications" of a comparative downgrading of the artistry of oral tradition^[3].

References

Lincoln, Kenneth. Native American Renaissance. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1983. [4].

1. ^ James Ruppert, "Fiction: 1968-Present". In The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature, ed. Kenneth M. Roemer and Joy Porter (CUP, 2005). Page 173 [1]
2. ^ Craig Womack, "Book-Length Native Literary Criticism", in Reasoning Together by Janice Acoose, Lisa Brooks, Craig S. Womack, Tol Foster, Daniel Heath Justice, Christopher B Teuton (Oklahoma, 2008), page 15 [2]
3. ^ A. Robert Lee, "Introduction." Loosening the Seams: Interpretations of Gerald Vizenor (Popular Press, 2000), p.2 [3]