23 - The Native American Essay

Summary

This chapter offers the account of an underexplored subgenre of Indigenous writing, namely, the Native American essay. Historically, these essays bore witness to individual and collective loss and injustice and told the history of murder, dispossession, forced reeducation, exploitation, and mistreatment that characterizes the encounter with European colonizers. In their essays, Indigenous people have proclaimed their existence and continuance and argued for sovereignty. Many of these essays appear embedded in the forms of stories, sermons, appeals, ethnographies, autobiographies, journals, and periodicals, as well as in scholarship. Their style and subject matter are wide ranging, with reflections on the natural world, identity, tradition, self-governance, and spirituality. The contributions of important Indigenous essayists like Samson Occom, E. Pauline Johnson, N. Scott Momaday, Charles Eastman, Winona LaDuke, and Leslie Marmon Silko show the breadth, depth, and beauty of Indigenous writing from the eighteenth century to today.