Native American Short Stories

Abstract

This chapter traces a history of Native American short stories, from oral narratives to written short stories infused with retellings of Indigenous oral tales reflecting Native values: close relationships with language, land, human and non-human communities, ancestors, and the sacred. Rather than focus on defining the short story as a genre, Native writers tend to focus on story itself, especially the centrality, power, and life-shaping capacities of story. The earliest short stories were embedded in autobiographies, ethnographies, sermons, etc., but became more standalone stories over time. The long tradition of stories in a primarily realist mode has been joined by speculative fiction, science fiction, horror stories, children’s stories, Young Adult stories, and graphic narratives. Native short stories, including interlinked story cycles, critique settler-colonialism, document historical trauma, present Indigenous alternatives to imposed historical narratives, and offer new possibilities for Native continuance.