ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 takes us into contemporary times, considering not only recent books, plays, and poems by varied authors, but movies as well, and in particular the successful adaptation of Sherman Alexie’s short stories into the feature film Smoke Signals. This chapter aims to place indigenous literary narratives in conjunction with an emergent scholarly and critical voice reflecting the significance of what Robert Warrior refers to as “intellectual sovereignty.” More and more in these works we find Native writers expressing their identity as firmly situated in Native spaces, whether those spaces are reservations, urban enclaves, or simply spaces of intellectual self-assurance that might confidently claim ownership and authorship within the confines of one’s own being. These narratives do not minimize or pass over the troubled historical journey that has created the often-wretched conditions still prevalent in Indian spaces today. But contemporary indigenous writings are characterized by a naturalized assertion of indigenous presence that seamlessly incorporates modernity and tradition, even if the settler colonial world at large still registers neither as viable markers of Native identity.
