Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism Book

Womack's approach to Native American literature and literary studies is provocative, challenging, and problematic. He raises many useful questions and points out huge gaps in the study of Native American literature thus far--"Even postcolonial approaches, with so much emphasis on how the settler culture views the other, largely miss an incredibly important point: how do Indians view Indians?" (13)--making a strong case for increased Native involvement in literary studies of Native American literature as well as for thinking about Native American literature in more tribally specific terms. He says, "My concern has to do with the way we play into colonial discourse with these stories, the way we depoliticize our own literatures in an oral tradition genre that was once strongly nationalistic, and the way significant tribal differences are blurred and a sense of specific sovereignty is diminished. I am concerned about what happens to the political intent of the stories when they are separated from their tribal contexts, removed from a total existential situation" (62).

Furthermore, he argues, "I have felt that literature rises out of land and language and stories, and given that tribal nations have different landscapes, different languages, and different stories from the United States and England (and, importantly, tribal members and their nations are defined, legally, differently from the rest of the American citizenry, including America's minorities), those differences must suggest rejection of the approach to teaching Native literature as simply some kind of 'minority extension' of the American canon" (76).

These two lengthy quotes indicate his position pretty clearly: Native American literature is tribally specific, tied to the nation/culture/land/language out of which it comes, and unique among minority literatures of the United States.

These two quotes do not, however, reveal the degree to which Womack advocates the "Native American Literary Separatism" of his subtitle. He is at times funny, at times bitter, and at times academic in his analysis of the relationship between Native literatures and white critics/the academy, but the gist of his argument on this point is pretty consistent: white people don't get it. This I have a problem with. And I don't think that's just because I'm white. I am fully aware that I don't get the Native American texts I read in the way that someone raised with these stories, these references, these places, would get them, but that's just as true of my reading of other minority literatures or literature based in other locations (e.g., New York or the Pacific Northwest). In all of those cases, I will be missing some of the picture. Why should this literature be that different?

Womack makes this separatist argument because he sees Native American literature as ultimately and necessarily political. He asks, "Are tribal literatures merely a salve, or should they engage in active critical political commentary? Should they concern themselves with tribal history and politics? Should they be a means of exploring more radical approaches to sovereignty? Should they seek the return of tribal lands? This book argues that the answer to such questions is a resounding 'yes'" (149). I would agree that it is important to read such literature as political for there are major political issues at stake, but that does not mean that I agree with his reification of the us versus them dichotomy that says to non-Native readers, "It's an Indian thing. You just wouldn't get it."

Well. Maybe not. But I am not convinced that turning away those outsiders who are genuinely interested in the literature and culture is the way to create political change.