A Usable Past: Tradition in Native American Arts and Literature

The present volume explores the multifaceted notion of tradition and its uses by Native American writers and artists over the past hundred years, beginning with Pauline Johnson at the close of the 19th century, down to present-day filmmakers, authors and visual artists. Bringing together creators and scholars, some young, some long established, this collection of essays offers a wide range of new perspectives on this central yet mystifying theme. The Amerindian, so the cliché goes, in order to be acknowledged at all must stick to type: a creature embedded in "tradition." But what do traditions consist of, existentially, for those who count them as part of themselves ? Surely flot a timorous, fetishist attachment to obsolete forms, reflecting inability to tope with modernity or, why not, "civilization." The contributors here forcefully show how all artists, through their idiosyncratic connection to the past, hammer for themselves and for those who share their heritage a capacity to also shed traditions, adapt, and hence survive in an ever changing world.