• It was hard to survive for natives in other places and learn a new life, but the most difficult was to leave the stories behind. These stories were like their Bible, thus their stories in other places would not make any sense, since they were specific about certain rivers, mountains...

• Resistance and survival of their stories beyond oral tradition to written.

• Assert and reaffirm identity.

• Performative and interactive qualities.

• Native stories often serve as counter narratives to mainstream history, that is, history told by white people.

• Memory of their history and culture.

“Before the arrival of Columbus, there were

thousands of narratives, ceremonies, songs, and speeches performed by experts trained in performance and interpretation.” - The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature.

Native American oral traditions include a rich variety of forms such as myths, legends, folktales, and songs, which have been used to transmit cultural knowledge, history, and values for generations. These forms are not static; they are dynamically passed down through storytelling, often involving elders and collective memory. Key elements include powerful storytelling, repetition, and a deep connection to the natural world

• Creation, trickster, hero, and animal stories for narratives.

Most forms of Native American oral literatures are communal. The individual performing the song, ceremony, or narrative is usually not considered the ‘‘creator’’ of the ‘‘text.’

• Stories that explain the origin of the world, humanity and natural elements.

• The more spiritual stories (could not be told by anyone)

• The world was created by ‘‘Thought-Woman, the spider,’’

• The earth diver motif

• Iruiqois legend: A story of a great island floating in the sky where Sky people live in. A Sky woman gets pushed down to the world below by her husband because she is going to give birth to twins. Thanks to the help of animals, land is created and the Sky woman then creates the sun and the moon. Later, she gives birth to the twins, Saplingand and Flint. One representing good and the other representing evil.

• The Yamakama tribe legend: This creation story tells us about the Great Chief Above who created the world. He went to shallow places in the water and created land out of mud, he also piled mud that froze creating mountains. The Great Chief Above also created a man and showed him to hunt and later a woman so that the man could feel less lonely and he showed her how to make baskets, to cook and dress skin.

  
  

  
  

  
  

- A traditional figure that appears in Native American tales.

- Narratives with a didactic (teaching) element.

- A cultural and mythological character.

- A supernatural entity primarily associated with transformation.

- It appears in various forms across different Native American nations and the narratives they create, knows as trickster stories:

• Shape-shifting trickster.

• Hero trickster.

• Dakota trickster, Iktomi.

• Reservation trickster.

- Gerald Vizenor is "widely recognized as a leading writer and scholar of Native literature, the innovative author who gave trickster narrative a contemporary turn." - The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature.

Tribal trickster:

• In traditional Native American literature.

• Oral storytelling.

VS.

Urban trickster:

• Modern Native American literature.

• Written literature: fiction, poetry and theatre.

• Born in Little Falls, Minnesota in 1954.

• She is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books.

• She is a descendant of Native American Indians (the Ojibwe Indian tribe), although she is also of German descent.

• She has won awards such as the World Fantasy Award, the National Book Award, the Scott O'Dell Prize, and the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 2021.

  
  

• Born October 7, 1966. Spokane Indian Reservation, Washington

• Mixed Salish ancestry: mother from Spokane tribe, father Coeur d’Alene.

• Health problems, unable to compete physically, so he became a passionate reader.

Education:

• All-white high school, out the reservation

• Graduated from Washington State University (BA) in 1991.

• Poetry course at WSU

Literary Career

• Focus on poetry, short stories, novels, essays, and screenplays

• Central theme: challenges of American Indians

• Film: Wrote Smoke Signals (1998)

Recent Controversy

• 2017 published memoir You Don’t Have to Say You Love

  -->allegations of sexual misconduct

• Shiprock, New Mexico, 1953

• Nationality: Navajo (Diné)

• Languages: Navajo and English

• In 2013, she became the first Poet Laureate of the Navajo Nation

Literary Work

• She mainly writes poetry, but she is also an autobiographer, essayist, and children's fiction writer

• Bilingual poetry: Navajo-English

• Main themes: clans, families, places, and language of Dinetah (Navajo Country), often from a woman's perspective

• She was an American poet, writer, musician and activist.

• She was the first Native American to be named U.S. poet laureate.

• She was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma (U.S.) in 1951. 

• She was enrolled as a member of the Muscogge (Creek) Nation.

EDUCATION AND BECOMING A POET:

• She turned to painting for solace and at age 16 she attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

• She wrote songs for an all-Native rock band and joined an all Native theater group. 

• She enrolled at the University of New Mexico with the intention of studying medicine. However, she soon switched to art before changing her major again to creative writing.

• She attended the University of Iowa, where she studied creative writing.

- The publication marked the beginning of what some call the ‘‘second wave’’ of a Native American literary renaissance.

• Born March 5, 1948 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

• Mixed ancestry: Laguna Pueblo, Mexican and Anglo-American.

• Studied at the University of New Mexico, where she graduated with honors in 1969.

• She briefly enrolled in law school, but left to pursue her writing career in 1971.

MAIN TOPICS IN HER WORKS:

• Indigenous identity – pride and search for roots.

• Cultural clash – between the Laguna Pueblo and the Western world.

• Oral tradition – stories as a form of memory and teaching.

• Healing and balance – healing wounds from the past (personal and collective).

• Indigenous resistance – criticism of colonialism and defense of the land.

- She was moved to write it to show aspects of a real native family during that time in history.

• He was born in Oklahoma, California 1982.

• Raised in a mixed-raced Native family.

• American writer and Novelist and member of Cheyenne and Arapho tribes.

• One of the most famous Native American authors.

Education:

• He worked in a bookstore and joined Native storytelling programs to record and share Native stories before becoming a writer

• He is now a teacher of Literary Writing and he still writes novels and essays.

• Common Topics: modern Native life, family, and how history still affects people today.