By now we know a lot more than we ever wanted to know about the debt industry: how some manipulation made dubious debts acceptable through redefining the collateral, bundling bad bets, reselling the portfolios, building-in balloon interest, and all that stuff. It was quite a heads-up that put some people on the streets.
And some of us know how to make a "career" academically by always being a doctoral candidate, starting a thesis here, then finding some compelling reason to move there to a different university, being delayed by the death or retirement of an adviser, slightly changing the defining terms so that more coursework is necessary and so on. Bundling oneself as a “doctoral candidate” can last for decades before bankruptcy. Sometimes the subject itself, not just the scholar, simply ages out, becomes irrelevant.
When I first was cruising along on the Native American literature listservs in the Nineties there was a lot of excitement. The NA Literature Renaissance was in full swing, or so I thought, and it was exciting to be buying books by Indians at Powells for $5 each. I’d buy three copies (I was working for the City of Portland then) so I could keep one, send one to Browning for the town library and another to Heart Butte for the school library. They were wonderful and I read them as quickly as I could. Everyone loved Louise Erdrich and her partner, Michael Dorris, for their mix of legend, romance and reality. I loved Jim Welch’s first two books, “Winter in the Blood” and “The Death of Jim Loney,” because he was Blackfeet and even these bleak high-line stories rang true. I’d been raised in Oregon to believe that Dr. John McLoughlin, the “white-headed eagle,” was near-royalty so I read Janet Campbell Hale’s “Bloodlines” as the scandal it truly is: a direct descendant of that man pushed out as not belonging. Leslie Marmon Silko and N. Scott Momaday wrote classics: “Ceremony” and “The Way to Rainy Mountain.”
Then the Portland bookstores began bringing in the NA writers to do readings and I began to see them in person: Sherman Alexie, very tall and droll; Greg Sarris, very handsome and kind. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, so patrician, sat and visited with me for a half-hour. Vine Deloria overwhelmed the Portland City Club with his erudite challenges. Sidner Larson, Jim Welch’s cousin, organized an NA lit conference in Eugene that was a total blast. Joy Harjo played her saxophone and recited her poetry. I went back to Portland and posted to the NA Lit listserv in the way that I’m still doing on this blog. On the listserv I got into a tussle about running traplines with Rolland Najiwan and Carter Revard played peacemaker. (Rolland is still a good e-friend, though he’s up in Canada and we’ve never met.)
The books couldn’t be written fast enough! Historic people from when the Indians spoke their own languages were brought to the front and translations were made. Old translations were rediscovered and there were arguments about how authentic they were. Who REALLY wrote Chief Joseph’s surrender speech? Maybe that’s when the backlash began. The literary stock of Native Americans was rising like a leaping salmon. The critics moved in like derivative bears. Those who can, do; those who can’t, criticize. Those who are Indian just ARE Indian; those who aren’t, can pretend. So the critics added another layer: criticism of Indians who aren’t Indians but assume that persona. Critics didn’t quite dare to criticize “Ramona,” cherished love story; “Laughing Boy,” which won a Pulitzer; “When the Legends Die” which I’ve read out loud to Indian classes five times. I still love it. Sometimes they took a swipe at Hillerman.
Then there was the hair-splitting over who was an Indian and who was not. The truth is that the “most” Indian authors, Ray Young Bear maybe or maybe Adrian Louis, were less appealing to many people (even Indians) than David Seal (“Pow-Wow Highway”) or Dan Cushman (“Stay Away Joe”) -- and what about “Billy Jack?” The real bonanza would be when a “real” Indian book was made into a movie, though the movies that really struck it big were “Dances with Wolves” by a white man about a white man and maybe “The Deerslayer” by a 19th century white man. Those were far better tales than the nasty little movie called “Warparty,” made here on the Blackfeet Reservation by supposed “Indian lovers” who admired Japanese fatalism. When the absolutely authentic Inuit movie, "The Fast Runner", was made, few Indians watched it.
The idea of the genetic Indian, the hereditary Indian (going by pedigree of ancestors), the cultural Indian, the voluntary Indian, the legal Indian got all mixed up. Phonies included Black Wolf (Ernest Thompson Seton) or Grey Owl (Archie Belaney) or Tonto (oops, a real Indian, Jay Silverheels) or Iron Eyes Cody (Italian or something). The whole idea of literature per se got lost and everyone went hareing off after identity politics, much of it powered by jealousy and the need to “know more” than the next guy. Some Indians made a career of starting flame wars to finger people who were “too white.” Other were gumshoes of the wee smalls, keyboarding away like beavers. There were two tragic suicides of Indian authors.
Then came the collapse. Everyone just got tired of it. No one could understand all the complicated theories. What I hadn’t realized was that the NA lit books were so cheap and so available because they were being remaindered: the last copies no one wanted being dumped for the printing cost.
I love remainders. So often the BEST books were the least bought, mostly because they weren’t promoted or sold in the right place. (A publisher assured Vine Deloria that there were no bookstores on reservations, so there would be no effort to sell his books there.) The Internet and Print on Demand would soon resolve this problem. Now anyone with access to a computer can order a copy of almost anything. Publishers don’t have to make “print runs” of thousands of copies that have to be stored. They just make what’s ordered.
Remainder houses, like Daedalus and Hamilton, are still selling books of which too many copies had been made (luckily not pulped) and I still buy them. That’s how I came to own “The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping.” The author claimed to be half-Navajo, but, hey, sometimes Bill Clinton claims to have a Cherokee grandmother. I don’t pay much attention one way or the other. Being an Indian wasn’t the point of the story, which was really about a victimized kid dying of AIDS. I thought it was a good book, which is how I came to be email corresponding with Tim Barrus, who was quite frank about being Tim -- not Nasdijj anymore, his nom de plume for the book. He doesn’t write books anymore: he teaches video to at-risk boys in Paris.
One lone scholar was still toiling away in Britain, obsessively writing and writing on his thesis about people who pretend to be Indians: Forrest Carter, author of “The Education of Little Tree,” who turned out to have a history in the KKK; Jamake Highwater, long ago identified and investigated; Ward Churchill, laid bare by his own university; and Ruth Beebe Hill. Huh? Ruth Beebe Hill who wrote “Hanta Yo” expecting it to be much more than a little mini-series on TV? Those were the days! Sasheen Little Feather accepted Marlon Brando’s Oscar with a speech about injustice to Indians.
Ruthie only knew a couple of stunt Indians in Hollywood, but they were real enough genetically. Nevertheless her gimmick was to import a big ol’ Sioux-speaking guy into her household. (Her house was Ayn Rand’s house in LA, which she was supposed to be taking care of. It was mostly a matter of cleaning glass since it was built for Marlene Dietrich and had a LOT of mirrors and windows.) Ruthie and her Sioux spent all day with their heads together translating her whole book into Sioux. Then they translated it all back into English. Ruthie felt this “cleansed” it of all Euro concepts since if you don’t have a word for a concept, it’s gone. Evidently there’s a Sioux word for cunnilingus, because that concept triggered absolute outrage among the tribal people who read the book. Personally, it triggered a lot of laughter, but that’s because Ruthie was always making a play for my husband. (He wasn’t Indian -- neither am I, but we lived on a rez and she would announce a royal visit now and then.) He used to roll his eyes behind her back.
So years after this was all water under the bridge, one lone scholar in Britain, toiling away at his thesis year after year, sometimes deriving enough material from it to make a presentation at a conference now and then, discovered Internet stalking and zeroed in on Tim Barrus. It’s always fun to target Barrus because he fights back in such an outraged, profane, over-the-top way on video and then all the nice polite scholars pull back and say, “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” I suspect that the stalking became more fun than the thesis.
This scholar/stalker of not-Indians-who-don’t-write-anymore knows who he is and now so do we. And where he lives. See, technology, like literature, moves on and the thing about Internet stalkers now is that you can make them ping. Remember those old submarine movies where the sonar pinged all the time? This guy moves across the green screen while a periscope scans the horizon and every time he types “Barrus,” it pings.
Actually, I guess this scholar is trying to write science fiction now. Anyway, he sorta drifted off his faux Indian rant or even faux Martians and got hung up on child trafficking in Cyprus. I guess I don’t have a penny to spare for his derivative thoughts.
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