The (Post)Colonial Predicament of Native American Studies

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For reasons having to do with both literary and political theory, post-colonial studies have largely ignored Native American issues in the United States, while at the same time Native American studies have remained ambivalent as to their potential position within a more inclusive, or aware, postcolonial studies. In this essay I argue that the indispensable and yet to date unexamined context for situating Native American literatures of the US within a (post)colonial context is federal Indian law, which perpetuates an ongoing colonialism for the 330 Indian tribes in the lower forty-eight states that come completely under its governance. Among its possible effects, I understand this context as potentially mediating current debates between Native Americanists from the nationalist and cosmopolitan schools of Native studies, though I use mediating here in its theoretical not its political sense, for I doubt these intensely conflictive positions will be reconciled nor do I necessarily have any interest in such reconciliation. My interest, rather, is in making a compelling case for the necessity of deploying federal Indian law in understanding Native literatures of the US. In order to exemplify this necessity, I sketch a reading of Leslie Silko's Almanac of the Dead in the final part of this essay.