THE EVERLASTING SKY: New Voices From the People Named the Chippewa

by Gerald Vizenor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 25, 1972

Unlike LaPointe's sketches on the Sioux Today (p. 953, J-307) which attempted to do little more than portray some of the tragedy and pathos of reservation life, Vizenor's introduction to the oshki anishinabe (popularly known as the ojibway and/or chippewas) is an all out assault on the concept of the indian which he considers a figment of the white man's racist imagination. Vizenor's concentration on semantics gets rather out of hand as he italicizes ""ethnocentric semantic blunders"" (such as the word indian) throughout without regard to the speaker or context, and at times his own use of the language of the dominant society becomes unnecessarily pedantic (""The fur trade interposed an economic anomaly between the intuitive rhythm of woodland life and the equipoise of the anishinabe spirit. While the people were reluming the human unity of tribal life, thousands of white settlers took their land and enslaved the anishinabe in a fury of discovery.""). When the anishinabe finally do speak there are some lessons to he learned: the horrors of the white school system (except for a lucky few who excel at athletics); the frustration of ashinabe women thrust into a dominant role as a result of their men's demoralization; the alienation of young indians from their own culture; most of all, the depth of ashinabe anger. Though considerably flawed by Vizenor's tendency to underrate and even insult his readership, an abrasive, challenging manifesto.

Pub Date: Sept. 25, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crowell-Collier

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION