Roger Dunsmore - Earths Mind: Essays in Native Literature

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title	:	Earth's Mind : Essays in Native Literature
author	:	Dunsmore, Roger.
publisher	:	University of New Mexico
isbn10 | asin	:	0826317987
print isbn13	:	9780826317988
ebook isbn13	:	9780585200842
language	:	English
subject	Indian literature--North America--History and criticism, American literature--Indian authors--History and criticism, Indian philosophy--North America, Indians in literature.
publication date	:	1997
lcc	:	PM157.D85 1997eb
ddc	:	897
subject	:	Indian literature--North America--History and criticism, American literature--Indian authors--History and criticism, Indian philosophy--North America, Indians in literature.

Page iii Earth's Mind Essays in Native Literature Roger Dunsmore University of New Mexico Press Albuquerque

Page iv To my students Especially to those of American Indian ancestry, who have so often been my teachers. 1997 by Roger Dunsmore First edition. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner what soever without the written permission of the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dunsmore, Roger, 1938 Earth's mind:essays in native literature/ Roger Dunsmore.-1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN O-8263-1798-7 (pbk.) 1. Indians literature North America History and criticism. 2. American literature Indian authors History and criticism. 3. Indian philosophy North America. I. Title. PM 157.D85 1997 897 dc21 97-4872 CIP Designed by Sue Niewiarowski

Page v Contents Foreword Vine Deloria, Jr. vii Preface xi Introduction 1 No Boundaries 15 Sucker 33 Earth's Mind 37 Killing The Water 55 Nicholas Black Elk 69 Black SunPure Light 91 Fusion 103 Inside Out Outside In 123 Trud 135 Normal 169 Transformation 173 Columbus Day Revisited 193 Works Cited 215 Index 219

Page vii Foreword When we stop and reflect on it for a moment, the vast body of literature on American Indians is designed to give us information. It may give us some fleeting sense of how it was to be an Indian, but rarely does it force us to think deeply about anything. Much of it is history, a good deal of it descriptive narrative about art, crafts, conditions, and problems, and today we have a bevy of new biographies which now threaten to become a genre in and of themselves. Roger Dunsmore has lived among Indians for many decades and has taught at the college and reservation level and so he is not a summertime "experiencer" of Indians rushing back to the coast to crank out a first-hand (albeit briefly experienced) story about Indians. Rather he reflects on his years in the West, ponders the meaning of his memories, and produces a set of essays that asks us to consider whether we have learned anything or thought anything after our encounter with Indians. This offering is therefore a new turn of events in literature on Indians the proposal to go where few people have gone, to paraphrase Star Trek and to consider what various messages from Indians might actually mean. Drawing on the works of Leslie Silko, Black Elk, Simon

Page viii Ortiz, meditating on the sayings of Chief Joseph and his high school students' logs, and connecting their thoughts with the insights of Laurens Van der Post, Goethe, J. Gleick, and Gary Snyder creates an intellectual/emotion blend that reaches out to the rest of our species even while bringing us toward our own centers. It is not enough, Dunsmore is saying, to read the thoughts of Indians. Our task is to take the ideas, bring them to our inner selves, make them our own, and then see if they have applicability in our lives and in the lives and values of the people around us. What is it that we, as individuals and as societies, are to make of this strange kind of existence that we are condemned to experience? Does distinctive culture color our perceptions or do we respond to police killing a stray dog in universal ways that connect us with life as it struggles to confirm itself everywhere? Dunsmore gives his answer to these questions, ruminating over the connections that seem to bind our lives into particular pathways which, unfortunately, we identify only after we have moved through situations. Dunsmore does not try to become an Indian, only to find a meaningful life with insights gathered from his experiences with Indians. We very much need reflective literature. A stock question in television and newspaper interviews is "What can we learn from Indians?" and regardless of the answers given, no clear direction ever seems to emerge that we can usefully employ in our own lives. Indeed, the relationship of Indians with the natural world has become so much a cliche[clich] that it no longer communicates anything except the need for petting zoos for urban children. The larger intimacy with the earth which makes petting unnecessary is addressed by Dunsmore in an important essay. He takes seriously the idea that mind (and/or spirit) really does manifest itself, at least in particular ways, in our relationship with the earth. Some tribes believed that the physical world was mind as fully manifested and Dunsmore

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