Sending a Voice: The Emergence of Contemporary Native American Poetry

Abstract

One of ironic aspects of Pulitzer Prize which N. Scott Momaday won in 1969 was that it was given for a novel. House Made of Dawn, which featured a silent protagonist stymied into inarticulacy by his confrontation with Anglo culture. In about same year James Welch, Blackfeet/Gros Ventre writer who has since become best known for his fiction, was writing poetry with deliberateness of someone sharpening a knife and announcing, the renegade wants words. Now, almost fifteen years later, many silenced Native Americans have found voices and gained an audience for words they have carved from history with care. After The New York Times hailed Welch's Winter in Blood as the best first novel of [1974] season, after award of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship to Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Silko, and with formation of a Modern Language Association Discussion Group on Native American Literature complete with newsletter, American Indian writers find themselves enjoying both critical acclaim and scholarly attention.1 Nevertheless,