Wordarrows by Gerald R. Vizenor
"Wordarrows" by Gerald R. Vizenor is a collection of autobiographical short stories that explores the complex interactions between Native Americans and mainstream society, particularly within the context of modern urban life. Inspired by the storytelling philosophy of Kiowa novelist N. Scott Momaday, Vizenor emphasizes the importance of narrative as a means of self-location and understanding cultural identity. The stories address themes of survival and resilience, highlighting "word wars" where Native Americans reclaim their narratives against historical victimization.
Central to "Wordarrows" is the character Clement Beaulieu, who navigates the challenges of directing an employment center for Native Americans in Minneapolis while confronting societal stereotypes and systemic obstacles. Through his encounters with individuals like Marleen American Horse and Laurel Hole In The Day, Vizenor illustrates the struggle for identity and the impact of cultural dislocation. The work also critiques the implications of colonialism, such as in a poignant scene at an Indian boarding school that highlights the erasure of tribal identity.
In an insightful conclusion, the collection delves into the case of Thomas James White Hawk, a death-row inmate, emphasizing societal responsibility for the conditions that lead to crime. Overall, "Wordarrows" reflects the cultural schizophrenia faced by contemporary Native Americans, blending humor and serious commentary to challenge prevailing narratives and advocate for individual empowerment and community resilience.
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Subject Terms
Wordarrows by Gerald R. Vizenor
First published: 1978
The Work
Wordarrows: Indians and Whites in the New Fur Trade is Gerald Vizenor’s collection of autobiographical short stories. It stems from Kiowa novelist N. Scott Momaday’s belief that storytelling is a means of situating oneself in a particular context in order to better understand individual and collective experiences. Vizenor’s stories recount cultural “word wars” in which Native Americans cannot afford to be victims in “one-act terminal scenarios,” but must become survivors, relying on their own words to preserve their sacred memories and represent the bitter facts. In Wordarrows, the trickster, a figure from Native American oral traditions, who appears in most of Vizenor’s writing, uses stories and humor to balance the forces of good and evil in the world.
Wordarrows describes the reality of urban Indians, who are denied services and shuttled between various government programs. Vizenor’s persona, Clement Beaulieu, directs the American Indian Employment and Guidance Center in Minneapolis, where he is caught between politicians who want to restrict his radical activities and desperate Indians who need his help. At the center, Beaulieu encounters Marleen American Horse, who has been stereotyped as a drunken Indian. He helps her free herself from “the language of white people” so that she can create her own identity. He also meets Laurel Hole In The Day, a woman who struggles to move her family to a white neighborhood in the city. Ultimately, loneliness makes the parents turn to drink, lose their jobs, and return to the reservation.
In another story, Beaulieu and a friend visit an Indian boarding school, where the superintendent makes a boy perform a simulated tribal dance to the music of the Lord’s Prayer. Outraged by the administrator’s idiotic attempt to teach the child racial pride, Beaulieu fumes that white corruption of this dance makes the Indian a spectacle and erases his tribal identity.
The last section of Wordarrows contains four stories centering on the case of Thomas James White Hawk, a death-row inmate in South Dakota. As a staff writer for the Minneapolis Tribune, Vizenor covered White Hawk’s hearing to commute his death sentence to life in prison. Beaulieu blames society for creating the conditions which drove White Hawk to commit his crime and argues that “a man cannot be condemned by an institution of that dominant culture which has actually led to the problems he has to live with.” The “cultural schizophrenia” experienced by Beaulieu and other characters in Wordarrows represents the dilemma of many contemporary Native Americans.
Bibliography
Coltelli, Laura, ed. Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
McCaffery, Larry, and Tom Marshall. “Head Water: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor.” Chicago Review 39, nos. 3-4 (Summer-Fall, 1993): 50-54.
Vizenor, Gerald, ed. Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.