The Native Voice
Labriola Center
The following bibliography lists reference material dealing with the Native Voice. These resources include material found in the Labriola Center in the University Libraries at Arizona State University, websites, and other research facilities. This subject guide is also located on the Labriola Center website at http://www.asu.edu/lib/archives/labriola.htm
GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE NATIVE VOICE
Significant facets to the study of Native America are the histories, cultural research, and literature written by Native Americans. This subject guide attempts to provide an overview of research pertaining to the Native American authors, researchers, and historians who have contributed to the growing fund of modern Native American scholarship.
The Native voice is derived from a variety of sources. The autobiography provides direct access to the authors’ connection to their tribe, gender, and role in Native American life. Other primary source materials include photographs, manuscripts, ephemera, theses & dissertations, and oral histories. Non-fiction research in the fields of history, ethnography, linguistics, anthropology, and literature comprise a large portion of the Native Voice. Native American academics and authors continually add to the overall scope of their fields of study furthering the development of Native American scholarship.
Autobiographies
Navajo Way, Frank E. Becker. Staten Island, N.Y.: Indian Association of America, 1956. Becker describes the difficulties Navajo soldiers faced in adjusting to Army life and the English language in preparation for service in World War II.
Silent Courage: An Indian Story: The Autobiography of George P. Lee, a Navajo, George P. Lee. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Co., 1987. The story of a Navajo boy and his study to embrace the Mormon faith.
Winning the Dust Bowl, Carter Revard. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2001. Poet and scholar Dr. Carter Revard recalls his life on the Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma during the Great Depression through his poetry and enjoyable anecdotes.
The Names, N. Scott Momaday. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row Press, 1976. Story of the author’s life on the Kiowa reservation in the 1940s and the importance of Kiowa naming ceremonies.
Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian, Don C. Talayesva. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963. Raised as a Hopi until the age of 10, Talayesva spent the next ten years striving to become an American citizen. He returned to Hopi society years later and re-embraced his Hopi heritage and religion.
Looking for Lost Bird: A Jewish Woman Discovers her Navajo Roots, Yvette Melanson. New York, N.Y.: Bard Press, 1999. Author Yvette Melanson, stolen from her Navajo parents at birth and raised by Jewish foster parents, tells her story of life in the white world, her re-discovery of her Navajo roots and being re-united with her Indian family.
Born a Chief, the Nineteenth Century Hopi Boyhood of Edmumd Nequatewa, Edmund Nequatewa. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1993. Edmund Nequatewa was automatically in line to be chief of Hopi society due to his birth. He describes his responsibilities and community relations among the Hopi during the 1890s.
Don’t Let the Sun Step Over You: A White Mountain Apache Family Life (1860-1975.), Eva Tulene Watt (with assistance from Keith Basso.) Tucson. University of Arizona Press, 2004. Born in 1913, Eva Tulene Watt shares the story of her family from the time of the Apache wars to the modern era. Her interpretation of her people's past is a diverse assemblage of recounted events, biographical sketches, and cultural descriptions that bring to life the men and women who lived it to the fullest.
Non-Fiction & Literature
Red Matters: Native American Studies, Arnold Krupat. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Professor Krupat creates a work marked by theoretical sophistication, wide learning, and social passion, Red Matters is a major contribution to the imperative effort of understanding the indigenous presence on the American continents.
Indian Nation: Native American Literature and Nineteenth-Century Nationalisms, Cheryl Walker. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997. Indian Nation documents the contributions of Native Americans to the notion of American nationhood and to concepts of American identity at a crucial, defining time in U.S. history. Departing from previous scholarship, Cheryl Walker turns the "usual" questions on their heads, asking not how whites experienced indigenous peoples, but how Native Americans envisioned the United States as a nation.
Rethinking American History, Donald L. Fixico. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. Dr. Fixico compiles essays on Native American historiography, oral traditions and modern research methodologies for providing a broad examination of Native American studies.
Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian, Shirley A. Leckie. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. Shirley A. Leckie's biography of Debo is the first to assess the significance of Oklahoma's pioneering historian on the historiography of the American Indian, the writing of regional history, and the development of national law and court cases involving indigenous people.
A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History, Peter Nabokov. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Nabokov’s multidisciplinary intellectual history describes the many ways that individual Native American groups have defined their histories for their own purposes. By bringing these varying Native perspectives to the fore, Nabokov has performed a service that will only enrich future research into the history of Native American groups.
Natives and Academics: Researching and Writing about Native Americans, Devon A. Mihesuah, ed. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. The relationship between Native peoples and the academic community has become especially rocky in recent years. Both groups are grappling with troubling questions about research ethics, methodology, and theory in the field and in the classroom. In this timely and illuminating anthology, ten leading Native scholars examine the state of scholarly research and writing on Native Americans. They offer distinctive, frequently self-critical perspectives on several important issues: the representativeness of Native informants, the merits of various methods of data collection, the veracity and role of oral histories, the suitability of certain genres of scholarly writing for the study of Native Americans, the marketing of Native culture and history, and debates about cultural essentialism.
Hopi Voices: Recollections, Traditions, and Narratives of the Hopi Indians, Harold Courlander. Albuquerque, NM: 1982. A collection of seventy-four narrations, explanations, and recollections by individual Hopi Indians with a discussion of the Hopi narrative style and themes in oral literature, history, and ethnography.
American Indian Authors; a Representative Bibliography, Arlene B. Hirschfelder. New York, N.Y.: Association on American Indian Affairs, 1970. A detailed bibliography of Native American authors and Native American publications. Authors and publications under investigation by the researcher should be thoroughly examined to search for more current publications.
Rising Voices: Writings of Young Native Americans, Arlene B. Hirschfeld and Beverly R. Singer. New York, N.Y.: MacMillian International Press, 1992. Through more than 60 poems and essays, contemporary Native American children and young adults share their feelings about themselves, their people and their land.
Kinaaldá: A Navajo Girl Grows Up, Monty Roessel; Foreword by Michael Dorris. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications, 1993. Monty Roessel, Navajo photographer and writer who specializes in contemporary Native Americans, creates a clear, strikingly photographed account of 13-year-old Celinda McKelvey's coming-of-age ceremony, set in its proper historical context.
Native North American Biography, Sharon Malinowski, Simon Glickman, eds. New York, N.Y.: UXL Press, 1996. With its balanced presentation of both historical and contemporary figures, Native North American Biography offers 112 profiles of Native North Americans from the United States and Canada, both living and deceased. These individuals are notable in fields ranging from civil rights, sports, politics, tribal leadership, literature, entertainment, religion, science and the military.
A to Z of Native American Women, Liz Sonneborn. New York, N.Y.: Facts on File, 1998. This unique reference source features more than 100 fascinating profiles of notable Native American women from the 1500s to the present. Detailed entries include biographical sketches, photographs, descriptions of individual challenges and accomplishments, and recommended reading for each woman profiled.
Gerald Vizenor: Writing in Oral Tradition, Kimberly M. Blaeser. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Vizenor, arguably the most prolific contemporary Native American author, has written more than two dozen books, from fiction and haiku poetry to literary theory. Blaeser discusses her subject's use of the Native American trickster in his fiction, his incorporation of Ojibway dream songs and Zen aesthetics in his poetry, and his retention of the Ojibway oral culture in his writings. Her book can be read most profitably by those thoroughly familiar with Vizenor's work and knowledgeable about literary theory and recent Native American writing.
Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko, Ellen L. Arnold, ed. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. Compilation of interviews with Native American author Leslie Marmon Silko. Silko grants interviews rarely, but the sixteen included here are generously wide-ranging and deeply honest. They reflect her heritage of storytelling and give vivid accounts of her life experiences, her creative processes, and her forthright political views. As she speaks, she spins out descriptions of the living oral traditions, the communal relationships, and the desert landscape that are the sources of her inspiration.
Cheyenne Memories of the Custer Fight: A Source Book, Richard Hardorff, ed. Spokane: Arthur H. Clark, 1995. Only six Cheyenne Indians (but 32 Sioux) died in the fighting that wiped out the command of General George Custer. Brave Wolf was at the scene on that bloody Sunday in 1876. Brave Wolf and others of his tribe give a firsthand account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight: New Sources of Indian-Military History, Richard Hardorff, ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. The fifteen Sioux (and one Cheyenne) who speak in this volume witnessed Custer’s Last Stand. Their testimony sheds light on what happened at the Battle of Little Bighorn, June 25, 1876.
Theses and Dissertations – A Selection
“Wooden Duck,” Hershman R. John. Master’s Thesis, Arizona State University, 1998. A collection of four poetry sets designed to serve as a narrative journey into the world of the Navajo.
“Let Them Know We Still Exist: Indians in Albuquerque,” Myla Vicenti Carpio. Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 2001. An addition to the evolving research on urban Indians to illustrate the survival of Indian identity, and more importantly, tribal identity while living in an urban setting.
“Longitudinal Trend Study of Three American Indian/Alaska Native Freshmen Cohorts at Arizona State University,” Charles R. Colbert. Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 1999. An extensive analysis of the educational attainment, academic achievement, and retention rates of American Indians and Alaska Natives attending Arizona State University.
“The Cherokee National Female Seminary: Higher Education for Cherokee Females in the 20th Century,” Lou Ann Herda. Ed.D. dissertation, University of Houston, 1999. This study analyzes the educational accomplishments of the Cherokee Nation by way of its female seminary. It also demonstrates this tribe's perseverance, spotlighting those who helped clear the way for them to create the only school of its kind run entirely by an American Indian tribe for the sole purpose of educating their females.
“Formal Education Among the Siberian Yupik Eskimos on Sivuqaq, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska: An Ethno-Historical Study,” Pam Powell. Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Texas, 1998. The major focus of this study is the effect of formal education on individuals, communities, cultural traditions and values on Siberian Yupik Eskimos of Alaska.
“Hidden Nation: Nez Perce Identity and American Indian Sovereignty,” Janice Ann Johnson. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tulane, 1999. American Indians express national identity and sovereignty often in a context of misrecognition and domination. The dominant culture frequently mythologizes, or depoliticizes, Native Americans to maintain its hegemony. The mythologization of the Nez Perce Indians has been overwhelmingly laudatory from Lewis and Clark onward, yet it frequently distorts Nez Perce/white history, denies the Nez Perces coevalness, and effaces dual U.S./Nez Perce identity and sovereignty.
Journal Articles
There are several ways to find articles online. Here are a few suggestions.
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From the Hayden Library’s home page, click on Find Articles and More. Under subject, drag to or type in American Indians or Native Americans, and click go. You’ll have access to seven databases. America: History and Life, for example, has 39 articles from a keyword search of “Native American Voice”. For newspaper articles, search for material in the database entitled Ethnic Newswatch.
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In addition to database searching, there are dozens of journals and periodicals published by Native Americans. A few examples are: American Indian Report, Indian Gaming, Journal of American Indian Education, Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education, and Wicaso Sa Review. For a list of additional Native American periodicals, please ask for assistance at the Labriola Center reference desk.
Video Recordings
Columbus Didn’t Discover Us [video recording], Wil Echevarria et al. Wendell : Turning Tide Productions, 1992. Indians from North, Central, and South America speak of the impact the Columbus legacy has had on the lives of indigenous people.
A Season of Grandmothers [video recording], George Burdeau. Lincoln : Native American Broadcasting Consortium, 1990. Grandmothers from the Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, and Nez Perce tribes recall and demonstrate some of the roles of grandmothers, including culture carrier, teacher, child disciplinarian, and historian.
Navajo [video recording], John Apgar. Lincoln : Native American Broadcasting Consortium, 1980. Peter MacDonald, Tribal Chairman of the Navajo Nation, explains the traditions represented in Navajo lifestyles.
Interviews with Indian Elders – Part 1 and 2 [video recordings], s.l., n.d. Interviews with Cocopah and Maricopa tribal elders discussing how life was along the Gila River for the Pima, Maricopa, Mojave and Yuman Indians.
Native American Novelists – Parts 1 – 4 [video recordings], Matteo Bellinelli. Princeton: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1995. The Native American experience is portrayed in conversations with four Native American authors, N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie M. Silko and Gerald Vizenor.
Sound Recordings
Hopi Community Value System; Role of Anglo Type School/Parental Expectations of School [sound-recording], Milo Kalectaca, n.d. A presentation on Hopi culture and education. Two-sided, 15 minutes each side.
Educational Studies and Uranium [sound-recording], s.l., n.d. An Indian law student’s lecture about Uranium mining on Indian lands. One-sided, 45 minutes.
The American Indian Oral History Collection [sound recordings], s.l., n.d. A collection of 30 cassettes offering a broad account of the experiences of being Indian.
Making an Indian Place in Urban Schools: Native Americans and Education in Phoenix, 1941-1984 [sound recordings], s.l., n.d. Interviews conducted by Dr. Steven Amerman relating to the educational experiences of Native Americans in Phoenix, Arizona (26 cassettes).
Ephemera
Included are small manuscripts, informational brochures, museum publications, photographs (including slides), radio transcripts, articles and poetry. To find ephemera related to the Native Voice, search the American Indian Index and the Arizona and Southwestern Index, which are accessed from the University Libraries home page under Electronic Resources. Examples of subjects are: Native Voice, Bibliography, Journalism, and Sources.
Examples of Internet Sites
Official web site of the Native American Journalists association located at http://www.naja.org
Official web site to the Native American Press Archives located at http://www.anpa.ualr.edu/
Index of Native American Media Resources on the Internet located at http://www.hanksville.org/NAresources/indices/NAmedia.html
Bibliography of Native American Book Resources located at http://www.hanksville.org/NAresources/indices/historybooks.htm
Web link to the Native American Genealogical Research and Publishing Company located at http://www.nagrpubco.net/
Native American Authors web site provides information on Native North American authors with bibliographies of their published works and online resources located at http://www.ipl.org/div/natam/aboutus.html
Caution! Before using the information from any web pages in your paper, be certain that your source is legitimate and accurate.
The University of South Dakota Oral history collection contains a taped series of interviews conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s with Plains Indians and those non-Indians working actively with them. Participants include members of religious, cultural, linguistic, and political aspects of Native tribal organizations.
Michael Lotstein, Library Specialist, Senior
Labriola National American Indian Data Center
Arizona State University Libraries
Tempe, AZ 85287-1006 Summer 2003
