Date of Award:

8-2013

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Arts (MA)

Department:

English

Department name when degree awarded

American Studies

Committee Chair(s)

Melody Graulich

Committee

Melody Graulich

Committee

Colleen O'Neill

Committee

Evelyn Funda

Abstract

In the study of contemporary American Indian literature, the definition of work and the characterization of Native and non-native laborers—farmers, ranchers, lawmen, smugglers, Indian Affairs agents, academics, activists, "traditionalists," tour guides, artists, among others—are rarely the lenses that scholars use to interpret the texts. Instead, issues of class and labor often take a backseat to those of cultural survivance and traditional and/or "mix-blood" identity, resistance to historical and ongoing acts of colonialism, reassertion of treaty rights and cultural practices, and reclamation of land and cultural artifacts. However, although the canon of contemporary Native literatures warrants close attention to these issues, the time has come to reexamine American Indian novels, short stories, and poetry published since the Native American Renaissance of the 1960s and '70s in order to begin a more nuanced discussion of how work and masculinity are defined and expressed in Indian Country, especially in sites where the types of work available challenge and/or complicate "traditional" definitions and expressions of wealth and masculinity.

By re-reading American Indian literature of the Great Plains and emphasizing the roles of work, class, and masculinity in texts by influential, yet understudied authors such as D'Arcy McNickle, Carter Revard, and Thomas King, this project offers opportunities for reframing and reimagining contemporary, real-life obstacles faced by Native workers and Native communities: such as the Lakota bid to take over operation of Badlands National Park in South Dakota, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai bid to take over operation rights of Kerr Dam near the Flathead Reservation in Montana, and the struggles for sovereignty faced by Native nations such as the Three Affiliated Tribes in western North Dakota, who are embroiled in heated debates regarding the economic promise and ecological degradation of the oil boom on the Bakken Range. In this way, this project does not place literature in a vacuum, but rather, engages the social, cultural and economic questions that remain as prevalent for understanding the present and, perhaps, for predicting the future, as they are for understanding the past. Moreover, the discussion of dams, roads, and bridges—both as literal structures that present opportunities and obstacles for Native workers and as metaphors for the distance between Native and Euroamerican conceptions of work and wealth—is timely and politically significant given the renewed national emphasis on rebuilding structures such as roads and bridges with programs such as "Fix It First" and "Highways for LIFE" that seek to boost a struggling economy by reinforcing the infrastructure.

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