Initially, I was going to post the post-interview weekly post, however, we have several more interviews to conduct beforehand. Over the weekend, I reread the “Dearth of Native Voices” by Metzger and Kelleher, being a Native I did not want to speak up when we discussed it in class due to how personal it was. On a side note, I do not refer to Native American as such due to the personal belief that the Native ethnic group should not be named after a European explorer who “discovered” the continent, but I digress. However, I do agree with the point of the article, either in many works, Natives are misrepresented or Natives are absent entirely, and I did not think of this until the points were presented in the article. For about a year now I have been worldbuilding for a book I am going to eventually write, and after scrapping my initial work early this last fall. Originally, what I wrote a far more western piece, but my Creative Writing professor at the time (and currently), suggested that I write it from a more Native perspective. To be frank, at the time the only concept I could think of was the stereotype. After the meeting, I researched and found very little work that centralized around a Native protagonist.

This also correlates with some research I am doing for my Native Myth and Writing course, a portion of the books that I have read for the class, are interviews or recordings of several Natives. While although extremely interesting, and I have often found myself reading these books late into the night. The culture presented in the books is alien to me, aside from not knowing any, of the Choctaws, my own tribe’s history or culture, I definitely would not be able to connect to connect to the Lakota’s or the Commanche’s. While I cannot speak for any that still live on or have come from the reservations, but living in the Oklahoma City suburbs, I was not exposed to any of elements of native culture, aside from what I saw in my social studies textbooks. Which, strangely, always seemed to make the Natives out to agree to the seizure of land, or that they chose to walk the Trail of Tears, and without exception, each textbook’s artwork was always painting of Native in battle, always on the losing side.  On a side note, I did here in some textbook, I want to say in Texas that said, the Natives were happy to leave their lands and the seizures were completely consensual. Now, I am in a constant state to want to learn more about my own and other tribes, not only as research for what I am writing but also just to gather the information.

To bring this full circle, I believe that it is almost a cultural censorship of Native writing and works, that if the work does not fit the in “stereotypical” Native or the history book answer to the question it is banned. I did a little research on one of the books I am reading for Native Myth and Writing, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, and it has been banned several times often called controversial, and with “good” reason, as it depicts the American expansion into the west from a Native standpoint. As a country and culture, it seems as if we actively try to forget that we did commit mass genocide towards the Native American population, especially towards the Plains Tribes. I believe, and I could be completely wrong about this, Native censorship could be a not as much as a prevention of the spread of ideas and culture, but more of as the colloquial phrases says, “save face” for America.