Storytelling: The Heart of American Indian Scholarship

Abstract

Recently some writers and scholars have complained that the academy, particularly American Indian Studies (AIS) programs, gives too much attention to American Indian literature while ignoring scholarly works that focus on the pressing needs of American Indian communities in the areas of economic development, social justice, and sovereignty, among others. For example, in the preface to Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities, Devon Abbott Mihesuah and Angela Cavender Wilson write: “Awards are seemingly presented to . . . poets and novelists. . . . Not enough is being written about tribal needs and concerns, but an inordinate amount of attention is focused on fiction.”1 Almost every person teaching in AIS programs probably would agree that attention needs to be focused on tribal needs and concerns. However, as a professor of American Indian literature, I must respectfully disagree with Mihesuah and Wilson’s assertion that too much attention is focused on fiction. It seems that quite the opposite is true. Intelligent people of good faith will disagree on this issue, but one way of testing the validity of the claim that too much attention is given to American Indian literature to the detriment of writing that emphasizes tribal needs and concerns is to examine the situation through three different lenses: