Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The literatures of American Indian peoples represent an integral part of Native American studies. Creation and emergence myths, etiological myths, ceremonial chants and prayers, legends, and historical narratives embodied in various oral traditions have provided traditional listeners with the collective cultural wisdom that maintains order and control in the universe, and they afford the non-Indian listeners/readers insight into the respective tribe's world view. These oral T exts reveal the people's moral and aesthetic values, relation to the natural world and spiritual powers, views of the landscape as a numinous and living entity, methods of controlling evil and disease, and, perhaps most important, they provide the community with a sense of identity by making the past a viable part of the present by affirming the mythic and historic links to a sacred tribal geography. Oral literatures are not only an important field of study in their own right, but essential for the student of Native American literature written in English. One of the many accomplishments of contemporary Indian writers such as N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Louise Erdrich (Ojibwa), and Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo) is the conscious continuation of the oral tradition in their fictions. This requires readers to be not only aware of the oral quality of their writings and the sacred role of language in oral C ultures ... log in or subscribe to read full text