LibGuides: Native American Literature: Media

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The Broken Cord: Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris (28:06) In this program with Bill Moyers, authors Louise Erdrich and the late Michael Dorris explain how traditions of spirit and memory weave through the lives of many Native Americans and how alcoholism and despair have shattered so many other lives. The devastating effect of fetal alcohol syndrome on their adopted son and on the Native American community as a whole is also discussed. The issues discussed in the program are underscored by the tragedy of Dorris’s untimely death.
Gerald Vizenor (48:10) His life, like his work, was a long time taking root in a place and a culture. Drawing on his Ojibwa heritage, the bitter effects of his father’s murder when he was himself still a baby, his intermittent formal education, and his need to reconcile the tribal past with the political present, Vizenor has, poem by poem, story by story, and novel by novel, constructed an impressive oeuvre that marks him as among the most prolific and most intellectually challenging writers of the Native American renaissance.
James Welch (47:28) Part Blackfoot, part Gros Ventre Indian, Welch finds his subject matter in his Indian heritage and his plots in the human emotions and trials common to all humans. Here, Welch discusses his background, his sources, his vision, and his personal way of particularizing the universal.
Leslie M. Silko (43:29) The works of Leslie Marmon Silko are strongly rooted in her own matrilineal tribal background. Like all writing of lasting value, they use particular experiences and places to reveal universal truths. Here, Silko discusses her own background and the interrelationship between her smaller, immediate Native American world and the larger, brutal surrounding world.
N. Scott Momaday (44:54) N. Scott Momaday is the most widely published and read of the Native American writers, and the recipient of the most valued awards and prizes for both his poetry and his prose. A Ph.D. in English literature, he has combined his study of Western literature with the themes as well as the structures of his Kiowa Indian heritage. Here, Momaday discusses what it means to a Native American to be an American citizen and reveals the artist, thinker, and imaginative creator behind (or perhaps at the core of) his impressive and important body of work.
Native Voices—American Passages: A Literary Survey (27:38) Native Americans had established a rich and highly developed tradition of oral literature long before the writings of the European colonists. This program explores that richness by introducing Native American oral traditions through the work of three contemporary authors: Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), Simon Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo), and Luci Tapahonso (Navajo).
New Erdrich Novel Deals With Crime and Jurisdiction on North Dakota Reservation (06:41) Novelist Louise Erdrich examines what happens when crimes are committed on Native American reservations, a decidedly non-fictional problem, through the eyes of her fictional protagonist, a 13-year-old boy named Joe. PBS NewsHour correspondent Jeff Brown talks to Erdrich about her novel "The Round House," set on the N.D. reservation of the Ojibwe tribe.
Searching for a Native American Identity: Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris (28:00) This program features the late Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich, a husband-and-wife team who collaborated as writers before his untimely death. They attribute their beliefs in family, community, and place to their Native American heritage: she is half Chippewa, he is half Modoc. As Native Americans, their writing reflects the difficulties of American Indians today. In this program with Bill Moyers, Erdrich and Dorris discuss faith and the search for a Native American identity in a pluralistic society.