NATIONALISM AND/AS MODERNITY IN NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES: TOWARDS THE NEW AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIES?
NATIONALISM AND/AS MODERNITY IN NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES: TOWARDS THE NEW AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIES?

Summary/Abstract: Reflections by Native American scholars on the state of indigenous affairs have often been circumscribed within the paradigm of vehement nationalism or accusations of Third-World-ization. A battle has been fought over the past few decades over the right to representation among critics of various persuasions. This essay will attempt to look at a possible way out of the cycle of essentialism and will thus try to re-define modernity on the scale of the new American Indian Studies. The theoretical framework of the paper rests on the categorization put forth by the critic Arnold Krupat, who differentiates between nationalist, indigenist and cosmopolitan Native authors. The essay will discuss the understanding of ‘modernity’ as intellectual sovereignty in a few texts by nationalist authors (Craig Womack, Robert Allen Warrior and Elizabeth Cook-Lynn), while establishing Gerald Vizenor’s position as a cosmopolitan. Vizenor’s postcolonial approach to the Western construction of modernity will be seen both in his critical discourse and in one of his short stories, “Graduation with Ishi.” His transcultural view of the new American Indian Studies, based on his approach to cultural hybridity, is supported by his own version of an indigenous type of deconstruction, namely trickster hermeneutics. Unlike the strategically essentialist modernity proposed by the First Nations theorists such as Cook-Lynn and Craig Womack, Vizenor’s modernity is stripped bare of any claim to authenticity. His reconceptualization of modernity denies the possibility of historical accuracy and disputes the exploration of indigenous cultures through any kind of genuine and blood-based expertise.

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