From Navajo Silverwork to Iron Maiden: The Changing Status of Culture in Contemporary Native American Literature and Richard Van Camp’s The Lesser Blessed

The previous chapter discussed the central roles of exoticism, culturalism, and authenticity in determining the value of the Native American literary text. This chapter interprets signs that say change is afoot in assessing the status of Native American writing. The barest way to put this is culture isn’t what it used to be. At least that is the message that many commentators are conveying with respect to the status of culture in the contemporary Native American literary text. Book jackets might be the handiest index for tracking this change. The fetish language associated with the perceived cultural authenticity of N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn-as discussed in chapter four-has given way to more customary languages of critical praise. Take, for example, this snippet from the back cover of the 1997 Harper Perennial edition of Louise Erdrich’s Tales of Burning Love: “Few modern American writers can equal Louise Erdrich for sheer stylistic brilliance. Tales of Burning Love is an enormously enjoyable book, alive with fascinating and engaging characters, full of love in all its twangy, passionate, and ridiculous excesses-Philadelphia Inquirer.” Immediately signifi cant here is Erdrich as “modern” and “American”—a far cry, to be sure, from Momaday’s remaking as exotic other, the Kiowa novelist as Navajo silversmith. Equally signifi cant is mention of Erdrich’s “sheer stylistic brilliance.” Missing here is the timeworn art-craft dichotomy that informed how Euroamerican social science thinking worked to de-aestheticize Native American cultural products and that transformed House Made of Dawn, a novel, into a piece of treasured Navajo silverware. The essentializing language of an essentialized Native American literary artisanship gives way to more familiar commendatory languages that focus on literary style, creativity and innovation, and humanistic value. Within the space of three decades, the Indian novelist as authentic indigenous craftsman has morphed into the Indian novelist as great modern American writer.