WAL 3 8 .1 S P R IN G 2 0 0 3 for us to take it back” (247). Alongside his claims for sovereignty, Womack also maps a historical space for gay identity in Drowning in Fire with the characters of Tarbie and Seborn— contemporaries of turn-of-the-century Muscogee activist Chitto Harjo— whose love for each other is equaled by their love for the Muscogee Nation. Tarbie and Seborn help Josh understand his place in Muscogee culture, show ing him that he is not aberrant because of his sexuality, as the rampant homo phobia of Christian discourse has led him to believe, but is, instead, part of a grounded and culturally specific tribal continuum that includes men who might today call themselves gay or two-spirit. In a literary era where gay iden tity, especially in the case of gay men, is often still cast as “disease” (see texts like Leslie Silko’s Almanac of the Dead [1991] and James Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk [2000]), Craig Womack breaks new ground by depicting gay Native characters whose sexual identities tie them to, rather than separate them from, both their tribal histories and their present-day tribal cultures. Even while finding Drowning in Fire impressive, I initially questioned Womack’s decision to have a central gay character with a promiscuous history contract HIV/AIDS, given the long literary tradition of gay characters who, if depicted at all, go mad and/or die tragic deaths. While such a death is not rep resented in the text and is not, by any means, the destiny of all people with AIDS, the odds are undoubtedly not in the character’s favor. Reading Wom ack’s 1998 essay “Politicizing HIV Prevention in Indian Country,” however, in which he addresses the importance of bringing positive tribally specific AIDSprevention messages into Native communities, sheds light on Womack’s larger project, which includes the hope that “sovereign nations can make part of their concern homophobia and the lack of AIDS services in their own home lands” (215). In this context, Drowning in Fire can be recognized not merely as a groundbreaking novel depicting the multifaceted nature of Muscogee life, but also as an activist text that highlights the connections between tribal sovereignty and sexual identities. Our Voices: Native Stories of Alaska and the Yukon. Edited by James Ruppert and John W. Bernet. L in coln : U n iversity o f N ebrask a Press, 2001. 394 pages, $25.00. Reviewed by Susan Kollin M on tana State University, Bozeman In their collection of Athabaskan stories from the Yukon as well as south central and interior Alaska, editors James Ruppert and John W. Bemet provide a rich gathering of narratives by both well-known figures and newly emergent storytellers and writers. Over the past twenty-five years, Athabaskans across the region have produced a large body of work, much of it in collaboration with local linguists, individual school districts, and community organizers such as BO O K REVIEW S 9 7 those associated with the Alaska Native Language Center and the Yukon Native Language Centre. Ten years in the making, the volume is intended as a corrective to dominant understandings of the North. As the editors explain, in the popular imagination the region is largely understood as an inviting site for Euro-American adventurers, a “place of awesome wonder, scenic splendor, hos tile nature, and vast white space.” As a result, the region’s native inhabitants often become consigned to being mere “supporting players” or “expendable extras” in the larger drama of U.S. expansion (ix). In their efforts to dismantle popular images of the North, Ruppert and Bemet take care to provide a liter ary, historical, and cultural overview of Athabaskan oral traditions. Organized geographically, the selections in the volume coincide with the major rivers in Alaska and the Yukon, thus mirroring the manner in which these waterways likewise organize the lives of the people who inhabit the land (2). The editors outline the social functions of Athabaskan storytelling, ex plaining that oral narratives may be seen as “individual performances that engage cultural conversations, ongoing discourses, and group values” (6). They also identify...