ABSTRACT
The transnational turn in American studies has led to a number of new readings of Native American texts and cultural practices, transcending those limits of interpretation that are bound to a national paradigm, which has projected the limitations of the nation-state onto Native American cultures from the very beginnings of U.S. history to today. 1 In the context of Native American studies, the transnational perspective has also transgressed territorial boundaries besides that of the (colonial) nation state, including inquiries into the trans-tribal, cosmopolitan, and global dimensions of Indigenous cultures. Multidirectional processes of cultural exchange and concerns beyond territorial borders are articulated in a plethora of contemporary Native American texts. Gerald Vizenor’s work, both fictional and non-fictional, is exemplary in teasing out the tensions between the local and trans-local dimensions of Native cultures as well as those between a politics of anti-colonial repudiation of dominant, non-Native, hegemonic forms and the embrace of strategies of appropriation.
