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Gerald Vizenor's Blue Ravens, showcased in the book's subtitle as a "historical novel", tells the story of Basile and Aloysius Beaulieu, two Anishinaabe brothers from the White Earth reservation who are drafted in the American Expeditionary Force to serve in the Great War. Based on careful historical research and in part of Vizenor's own extended family history, Blue Ravens features a cluster of chapters devoted to the combat experience of the two brothers and though it would be a stretch to describe it as a "war novel", the narrative deals with themes and issues often found in war stories. In particular, the novel follows the traditional tripartite pattern of war stories, with part of the novel devoted to the pre-war experience, a rite-of-passage middle featuring the experience of combat, and a final section devoted to post-war recovery. In Blue Ravens, this third part sees the two brothers achieve artistic success as, respectively, a writer and a painter, as they mix as peers with the crowd of expatriates and Modernist visual and literary artists of post-war Paris. Though it provides in many ways an interesting and uncommon portrait of two Indians finding a sort of new emotional and artistic home abroad, the narrative is weighed down by Vizenor's often tiresome philosophizing. His ventriloquist tirades nearly obliterate the subjectivity of his narrator (Basile), and, even more problematically, his depiction of the war, and of his Indians' participation in it, skirt many of the thorniest political problems his own narrative both implicitly and explicitly raises.

Among Native American writers and scholars, none have been more internationally engaged than Gerald Vizenor. From his his earliest works of haiku poetry, Two Wings the Butterfly (1962), Seventeen Chirps (1964), and Empty Swings (1967), to the publication of novels such as Griever: An American Monkey King in China (1990), The Heirs of Columbus (1991), Hiroshima Bugi (2010), and Blue Ravens (2016), Vizenor has sought give his characters a prominent transnational presence. In Blue Ravens, the first of a trilogy of novels addressing the experiences of Anishinaabe soldiers, including some of Vizenor's actual relatives, he gives narrative substance to Jodi Bryd's notion of the "transit" of colonial violence through what his narrator terms the European wars of the "empire demon more sinister than the ice monster" (109). In Vizenor's body of work, this is not not just an intervention into a burgeoning area of critical concern, but perhaps, the culmination of a broader socio-historical critique that runs throughout much of his work. This article addresses Vizenor's attention to historical moments through his fiction that overturn colonial knowledge and posit a new understanding of transnationalism. These include the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the extreme violence of Spanish colonialism as documented by figures such as Las Casas and Bernal Diaz alike, through the abduction of Pocahontas and her death and burial in England that threaten to make her into a perpetual captive, to life "in the remains of the first nuclear war" at Hiroshima, Japan as engaged through the experiences of the crossblood character, Ronin Ainoko Browne (1), and finally to the experiences of two Anishinaabe brothers from the White Earth Reservation, Basile and Aloyisius Beaulieu, in World War I, and after as expatriates living in Paris to escape their position as "political prisoners by the federal government in a civil war" (217). Taken together, these narratives and the characters that populate them, provide a sustained engagement with the multivalent sources, impacts, and legacy of colonization and empire-building through the tease of Vizenor's biting humor, irony, and practice of trickster hermeneutics.

Autor/s Gerald VizenorUniversity of New Mexico ABSTRACT The Constitution of the White Earth Nation was ratified by sworn delegates on April 4, 2009. The Constitution declares a separation from the current federal constitution that consolidated six Anishinaabe or Chippewa reservations in Minnesota. This federal constitutional association has not served the specific interests of the citizens of the White Earth Reservation. The disposition of treaty land, for instance, and the uses of natural resources cannot equitably be decided by any other government or federation of reservations. Forty citizen delegates were appointed to deliberate the appropriate formation of an independent reservation government. In the past two years after three two-day Constitutional Conventions on the White Earth Reservation, Gerald Vizenor was named the principal writer of the new constitution. The Constitution of the White Earth Nation was ratified at the fourth Constitutional Convention. The ratified Constitution will soon be presented to the citizens of the reservation as a referendum. ; Author/s Gerald VizenorUniversity of New Mexico ABSTRACT The Constitution of the White Earth Nation was ratified by sworn delegates on April 4, 2009. The Constitution declares a separation from the current federal constitution that consolidated six Anishinaabe or Chippewa reservations in Minnesota. This federal constitutional association has not served the specific interests of the citizens of the White Earth Reservation. The disposition of treaty land, for instance, and the uses of natural resources cannot equitably be decided by any other government or federation of reservations. Forty citizen delegates were appointed to deliberate the appropriate formation of an independent reservation government. In the past two years after three two-day Constitutional Conventions on the White Earth Reservation, Gerald Vizenor was named the principal writer of the new constitution. The Constitution of the White Earth Nation was ratified at the fourth Constitutional Convention. The ratified Constitution will soon be presented to the citizens of the reservation as a referendum. ; Autor/es Gerald VizenorUniversity of New Mexico ABSTRACT The Constitution of the White Earth Nation was ratified by sworn delegates on April 4, 2009. The Constitution declares a separation from the current federal constitution that consolidated six Anishinaabe or Chippewa reservations in Minnesota. This federal constitutional association has not served the specific interests of the citizens of the White Earth Reservation. The disposition of treaty land, for instance, and the uses of natural resources cannot equitably be decided by any other government or federation of reservations. Forty citizen delegates were appointed to deliberate the appropriate formation of an independent reservation government. In the past two years after three two-day Constitutional Conventions on the White Earth Reservation, Gerald Vizenor was named the principal writer of the new constitution. The Constitution of the White Earth Nation was ratified at the fourth Constitutional Convention. The ratified Constitution will soon be presented to the citizens of the reservation as a referendum.

In Blue Ravens, Gerald Vizenor employs his familiar trickster trope to expand Anishinaabe Indigenous networks to overseas territories in ways that affirm and reinvent existing connections between Indigenous peoples. More than any of the author's previous work, the novel deploys a transnational aesthetic which playfully explores potential avenues for Native sovereignty: a space of self-determination opened up by artistic production that juxtaposes an Anishinaabe sensibility onto French war scenes and the urban environment of Paris, thus imprinting Native presence onto the land. It enables like-minded individuals to find refuge and create a new order in which Native voices are heard and artistic influence is mutual as Indigenous artists participate in the thriving cultural scene of interwar France. Indeed, Vizenor's fiction explores mobile forms of citizenship, which do not attempt to regulate subjects but allow a celebration of communal as well as individual identities. The novel showcases a Native relationship to space transformed by Indigenous art into inventive, transnational forms of aesthetic citizenship. It also outlines dynamic maps of transnational networks that nevertheless retain their Indigenous, tribal-specific focus even as they open up the field for new exchanges with global spaces. The focus on Anishinaabe art and writing demonstrates that tribal national specificities, when entering transnational space, can adapt and evolve without compromising their integrity. As this article will show, instead of breaking its ties to White Earth, the protagonists' art transposes Anishinaabe aesthetics onto Parisian locales, thus exploring new forms of Indigenous sovereignty that span beyond political borders.

The Constitution of the White Earth Nation was ratified by sworn delegates on April 4, 2009. The Constitution declares a separation from the current federal constitution that consolidated six Anishinaabe or Chippewa reservations in Minnesota. This federal constitutional association has not served the specific interests of the citizens of the White Earth Reservation. The disposition of treaty land, for instance, and the uses of natural resources cannot equitably be decided by any other government or federation of reservations. Forty citizen delegates were appointed to deliberate the appropriate formation of an independent reservation government. In the past two years after three two-day Constitutional Conventions on the White Earth Reservation, Gerald Vizenor was named the principal writer of the new constitution. The Constitution of the White Earth Nation was ratified at the fourth Constitutional Convention. The ratified Constitution will soon be presented to the citizens of the reservation as a referendum. ; La Constitución de la Nación de la Tierra Blanca fue ratificada el 4 de abril de 2009 por representantes jurados. La Constitución proclama una separación de la constitución federal actual que consolidó seis reservas anishinaabe o chippewa en Minnesota. Esta federación constitucional federal no ha servido a los intereses concretos de los ciudadanos de la reserva de la Tierra Blanca. La enajenación de tierras que fueron cedidas mediante tratado, por ejemplo, y los usos de recursos naturales no pueden, equitativamente, ser decisión de cualquier otro gobierno o federación de reservas. Para deliberar sobre la formación adecuada de un gobierno de la reserva independiente se nombró a cuarenta ciudadanos como representantes. Tras la celebración de tres convenciones constitucionales de dos días de la reserva de la Tierra Blanca, Gerald Vizenor fue designado como principal redactor de la nueva constitución, en la que ha trabajado los dos últimos años. La Constitución de la Nación de la Tierra Blanca fue ratificada en la cuarta convención constitucional y será presentada en breve a los ciudadanos de la reserva para votarla en referéndum. ; La Constitució de la Nació de la Terra Blanca va ser ratificada el 4 d'abril de 2009 per representats jurats. La Constitució proclama una separació de la constitució federal actual que va consolidar sis reserves anishinaabe o chippewa a Minnesota. Aquesta federació constitucional federal no ha servit als interessos concrets dels ciutadans de la reserva de la Terra Blanca. L'alienació de terres cedides per tractat, per exemple, i els usos de recursos naturals no poden, equitativament, ser decisió de qualsevol altre govern o federació de reserves. Per tractar la formació adequada d'un govern de la reserva independent, quaranta ciutadans van ser nomenats com a representants. Després de tres convencions constitucionals de dos dies celebrades per la reserva de la Terra Blanca, Gerald Vizenor va ser designat com a principal redactor de la nova constitució, en la qual ha treballat els dos últims anys. La Constitució de la Nació de la Terra Blanca va ser ratificada en la quarta convenció constitucional i serà presentada en breu als ciutadans de la reserva per votar-la en referèndum.

The White Earth Nation of Anishinaabeg Natives ratified a new constitution in 2009, the first Indigenous democratic constitution, on a reservation in Minnesota. Many Native constitutions were written by the federal government, and with little knowledge of the people and cultures. The White Earth Nation set out to create a constitution that reflected its own culture. The resulting document provides a clear Native perspective on sovereignty, independent governance, traditional leadership values, and the importance of individual and human rights. This volume includes the text of the Constitution o.

The Chippewa novelist Gerald Vizenor puts across his interconnected politico-philosophical notions of "survivance" and "terminal creeds" in his early novel, Bearheart. To do so, Vizenor implemented some of the aesthetic strategies of magical realism. He filled his novel with an excessive amount of bizarrely sexual and violent scenes-which turn out to be magical-in order to "upset" the established standards of normality. Moreover, he used American Indian mythic folktales of transformation and metamorphosis, a magical realist technique, to re-shape the cultural and tribal identity in Bearheart's modernized context.

In this anthology, eighteen scholars discuss the themes and practices of survivance in literature, examining the legacy of Vizenor's original insights and exploring the manifestations of survivance in a variety of contexts. Contributors interpret and compare the original writings of William Apess, Eric Gansworth, Louis Owens, Carter Revard, Gerald Vizenor, and Velma Wallis, among others

ABSTRACT: Gerald Vizenor seeks to challenge static definitions of Native American identity in his early novel Bearheart. To this end, he fills the novel with grotesquely violent and humorous scenes which give the work a seemingly perverse appearance. The normalized violence and the grotesque humor throughout the novel, however, disrupt socially normalized concepts and thwart the reader's notion of normality which is a reminiscent of "realism" as a traditional mode of narrativization. Violence theories of scholars like Schinkel, Arendt, and Benjamin together with humor theories of Morreall, Cohen, and Carroll are drawn upon in order to clarify the interconnected mechanism of humor, grotesquery, and violence in producing tribulations in the narrative line of Bearheart. This aesthetic strategy, which is aligned with a dexterous manipulation of focalization, is used throughout the novel to break the unquestioned authority of masternarratives and also to help the already marginalized Native Americans' voices produce their own narratives of identity. RESUMEN: Gerald Vizenor busca desafiar las definiciones asentadas sobre la identidad de los Nativos Americanos en una de sus primeras novelas, Bearheart. Con este fin, su novela está llena de escenas grotescamente violentas y humorísticas que le dan a la obra una apariencia perversa. Tanto esta violencia normalizada como este humor grotesco a lo largo de la novela, sin embargo, alteran los conceptos normalizados e impiden la noción de normalidad del lector, reminiscencia del realismo como modo tradicional de narración. Se recurre a los estudios sobre la violencia como los de Schinkel, Arendt, y Benjamin y a los teóricos del humor Morreall, Cohen y Carroll para clarificar el mecanismo de las interconexiones del humor, de lo grotesco y de la violencia que producen tribulaciones en la línea de la narrativa de Bearheart. La estrategia estética, junto con una hábil manipulación de la focalización, se usa a lo largo de la novela para romper la autoridad incuestionable de las metanarrativas y así ayudar a los Nativos Americanos, cuyas voces han sido marginalizadas, a que produzcan sus propias narrativas con respecto a su identidad.

At the core of this (re)coded comic holotrope are two concepts: game as world (re)mapping (rather than game as text) and the relationality and connections that reverberate through multiple realms. Indigenous use of digital media warrants engagement of indigenous theorists and scholars to this digital realm - Gerald Vizenor and Mishuana Goeman's work on political and literary analysis to explore the concepts of Never Alone (re)mapping the comic holotrope of survivance. The portmanteau kinnections is introduced here to further articulate emergences of decolonial relations and kin-making practices.