History and Memory in Winter Count

• Main Authors: Yi yi Chen, 陳依依
• Other Authors: Stephen Ohlander
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/a486gc

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 97 === Abstract The thesis attempts to subvert the argument to exclude Native American memory from Euro-American history. Native American literature has long been viewed as a kind of minority literature. In this thesis, I attempt to challenge and even interrogate the seemingly unproblematic Euro-American history that in essence includes and replaces Native American memory. Besides, the Native American novel, Winter Count (1967), published during the Indigenous Renaissance (between the 1960s and the 1970s), is defined as a historical novel about the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Wounded Knee Massacre is regarded as one of the most tragic events of Native American, having occurred on Dec.29, 1890. In the introductory chapter, I proffer the background of Winter Count—the Wounded Knee Massacre, as the notable slaughter of Native Americans—and discuss different historiographic ideas about the past and their influence on Native Americans and Euro-Americans as well as their significance for Winter Count, the tribal calendar and history recorder of the Sioux, one of the major Native American tribes. Brief introductions to every chapter will be included in this chapter. Chapter Two will focus on debates on cultural issues in the postmodernist context, concerning upper-case vs. lower-case historiography pitting Native American memory against Euro-American history. The monument of the Wounded Knee Massacre offers a glimpse of this argument between the two historical perspectives of Native American and Euro-American historiography. I believe that both memory and history are in fact originated from the same lieux de mémoire, (sites of memory), suggesting a place where both the memory and history initiated. Therefore, Native American memories should not be excluded from Euro-American historiography. Chapter Three lays emphasis on the returning of Native Americans. How Native Americans retrieve their tribal past through their traumatic memories will be illuminated from different perspectives. The following chapter discusses the impossible returning of Native American posterities in reality. Loss of land and memory has frustrated Native American posterities. Meanwhile, different ideas about land and way of life between Native American and Euro-Americans again intensify the different expectations of history and memory. Future potential development of Native American posterity will be the main concern of the conclusion. An alternative perspective of the future and discourse on the Native Americans to come is offered as my conclusion, suggesting that there can be a possible or even multiple discourses for the Native American Literature in the future, besides the existing discourse of environmental justice.