Ian Frazier's on the Rez: a source of indigenous truth or colonial consumerism?(Critical essay)

Speech, in traditional thought, has great potential for both healing healing and destruction. Speech can be medicine or witchery. Craig S. Womack (Red on Red 78)

The Soul Never Thinks without a Mental Image. Aristotle (qtd. in Barry, 69)

Reclaiming and affirming cultural and personal identity is a struggle for many Native Americans; it is a struggle that is not only passed down in oral tradition but is also disseminated as poetry, fiction, academic scholarship, and creative nonfiction. More and more writers of Native American heritage are telling their stories, writers such as N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa-Cherokee), Luci Tapahonso (Navajo), Geary Hobson (Cherokee/Arkansas Quapaw), Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna), and Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux). Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (Crow Creek Sioux) writes, "How the Indian narrative is told, how it is nourished, who tells it, who nourishes it, and the consequences of its telling are among the most fascinating--and at the same time, chilling--stories of our time" (111). How a Native American story is told formed the heart of the controversy surrounding Ian Frazier's bestseller On the Rez_(2002). Critics from mainstream publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Times Magazine, Writer Magazine, and America Magazine insisted that Frazier recreates an accurate and respectful account of the Oglala Sioux living on the Pine Ridge Reservation. However, reputable Native scholars such as Devon A. Mihesuah (Choctaw), Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene), and Ilze Choi responded with assertions that Frazier's book is far from representing an insightful, authentic telling of a contemporary Indian narrative.

The discrepancies between the reactions of Native American readers and some non-Native readers to Frazier's work raise the question as to whether or not a non-Native should even write an Indian narrative. Wendy Rose (Hopi/Miwok) remarks it is not "only Indians [who] can make valid observations on themselves. [...] We accept as given that whites have as much prerogative to write and speak about us and our cultures [as we do theirs] " (142). If this is true, then what does a writer need to know in order to understand and write about Native Americans? Is good intention and interest in another culture enough? These questions and others will be examined here using On the Rez as a springboard for discussion. Answering these queries will require, at the least, a basic understanding of alternative colonial discourse and Native American literary tradition. As a non-Indian writer, I hope to situate myself in this conversation without perpetuating the harm that deepens the rift between cultures.

On the Rez

In The Best American Travel Writing 2003, editor Ian Frazier introduces the study of travel narrative with an examination of the essence of journey. Toward the middle of his reflection on the need of Homo sapiens for motion, Frazier writes:

 
   Years later, when I was writing a book about the Oglala Sioux 
   Indians of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, I heard of 
   journeys harder to stop than any of mine. Some Sioux took journeys 
   that built up a momentum of rambling and drinking and automotive 
   problems and more drinking and more rambling until the velocity 
   made the details blur. Usually at some point in these stories the 
   police would begin to pursue. And usually, of course, the final 
   scene included arrests and/or a car crash. After a while I 
   understood the physics of that: Without an intervening shock from 
   the outside, certain journeys might never end. (xviii)