Postcolonial Theory and Native American Literature

Abstract

Studying Native American literature through the lens of postcolonial theory has been controversial both in the field of Native American studies and postcolonial studies. However, this historical study of the evolution of thought among of scholars of Native American literature regarding the main research question of whether postcolonial theory can be meaningfully applied to Native American literature leads to the discovery that literary nationalists and cosmopolitans—supporters and opponents of postcolonial theory in the field of Native American studies—are actually working toward the same direction, revealing the impact of colonial discourses upon Native American people and striving to deconstruct such colonial influences. Eight postcolonial terms, including Antonio Gramsci's hegemony, Bill Ashcroft's appropriation, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's strategic essentialism, Homi Bhabha’s mimicry, liminality and vernacular cosmopolitanism, Frantz Fanon's critical nationalism and the idea of center and margin in Bill Ashcroft, Careth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin’s The Empire Writes Back, are systematically selected and applied to four Native American texts—D’Arcy McNickle’s The Surrounded (1986), James Welch’s Fools Crow (1936), Louise Erdrich’s Tracks (1988), and Frances Washburn’s The Sacred White Turkey (2010)—both to examine if they can illuminate the influences of colonization upon Native American people, and to address the concerns of postcolonial scholars and scholars in the field of Native American literature.