ABSTRACT
Indigenous sovereignty, Leslie Marmon Silko stresses in Ceremony, can only be reached through a place-based indigeneity. One of the ways the United States regulates indigenous sovereignty is by limiting tribal enrollment to one tribe per person. Silko's novel suggests that indigenous communities have spiritual strength resulting from their connection to ancestral place, but the consequences of that insularity, Sherman Alexie argues, are indigenous annihilation. Silko's influence becomes even more apparent when Alexie's Absolutely True Diary is read alongside Silko's Ceremony and evaluated as a response to and a debate of the polemic Ceremony articulates in terms of indigenous sovereignty. Much like Ceremony is about a half-blood Laguna Indian struggling to understand Alexie's relationship to his people, Absolutely True Diary concerns a young Spokane Indian, Arnold "Junior" Spirit, regarded by his tribal community, as the title suggests, as a "part-time Indian" because he attends an entirely white, off-reservation school.
