12 - James Welch

Summary

For nothing in the world today is more complex, difficult, disputed, divisive, or so highly charged with dynamic energies as the question of “Indianness.”

Louis Owens, Mixed-blood Messages

lated to the structures of identity, history, and mythology, the issues of authority, authorship, and authenticity come into play as agents of power. If Indian history since 1492 has been “written” (authored) by white authority, then how can Indians attain or retain authentic identities in the present? The author of history also assumes the power of the author of identity and the arbiter of authenticity.

Scott B. Vickers, Native American Identities: from Stereotype to Archetype in Art and Literature

In American Indian communities, elders are the revered, because we recognize them as our culture-bearers. Arguably, they give us the best long view we have of what it means to be human, since they are the ones who mark in memory where we have been and are the ones who most likely possess a collective vision we need to carry forward and the cultural values and truths that give us our identity as a people. “Elders” in that context does not necessarily refer to someone within a tribal culture who has grown to be a certain age, but instead refers to those people to whom we turn for their wisdom. “Elder” stands for influence, mentor, guide, or culture-bearer. James Welch, a writer of Pikuni (Blackfeet) and Atsina (Gros Ventre) descent, has played all of those roles in the tremendous growth period of Native American literature beginning in the 1960s. He has served as what one literary critic calls a “mediator,” because Welch links an older generation of Native writers with a new, links oral traditions with written, and links cultural survival efforts of times passed with continuing efforts.