Fighting against the Colonial Snake in the Academic World of America

Abstract

Abstract: Dakota writer Elizabeth Cook-Lynn's memoir In Defense of Loose Translations: An Indian Life in an Academic World is an excellent source for those who are fairly new to Native/Indigenous studies and are enthusiastic to understand the basic concerns of Indigenous scholarship. American historiography demonstrates "a process of collective memory erasure" that denies the presence of the Native Nations. In her memoir, Cook-Lynn vehemently criticizes the colonial supremacy of American literary traditions that misrepresent Indigenous history, politics, and cultures as forms of ethnic cleansing, denials, and refusals of Indigenous claims to lands and territories.