American Indian Intellectualism and the New Indian Story

The role of Indians, themselves, in storytelling of Indian America is as much a matter of jurisdiction as is anything else in Indian Country: economics, law, control of resources, property rights. It goes without saying that it reflects our struggle with colonial experience of our concomitant histories. If that sounds benign, it is anything but that. On contrary, how Indian narrative is told, how it is nourished, who tells it, who nourishes it, and consequences of its telling are among most fascinating-and, at same time, chilling-stories of our time. It is true that the American Indian is to many people a bizarre phrase, falling quaintly on unaccustomed ears of those in American mainstream. While there are images of Jewish intellectuals, European intellectuals, British scholars, African novelists there is no image of an American Indian intellectual. There is only that primitive figure who crouches near fire smoking a sacred pipe or, arms outstretched, calls for gods to look down upon his pitiful being. Worse, drunk, demoralized Chingachgook sitting alongside road, a medallion with George Washington's face imprinted on it hanging about his neck. Or Red Power militant of 1960s. It is as though American Indian has no intellectual voice with which to enter into America's important dialogues. The American Indian is not asked what he thinks we should do about Bosnia or Iraq. He is not asked to participate in Charlie Rose's interview program about books or politics or history. It is as though American Indian does not exist except in faux history or corrupt myth. Yet, American Indian population is one of fastest growing minority populations in America and American Indians own and occupy hundreds of thousands of acres of land throughout country, have earned doctorates and other scholarly credentials, and they run their own homelands-based universities and corporations.