This Introduction makes available for both student, instructor, and affcianado a refined set of tools for decolonizing our approaches prior to entering the unfamiliar landscape of Native American literatures.

Drew Lopenzina is Associate Professor at Old Dominion University and teaches in the intersections of Early American and Native American literatures. His 2017 book, Through an Indian's Looking Glass (University of Massachusetts Press), is a cultural biography of nineteenth-century Pequot activist and minister William Apess. Lopenzina is also the author of Red Ink: Native Americans Picking up the Pen in the Colonial Period (SUNY Press 2012). The journal American Studies has called Red Ink "an impressively thorough and often compelling study" that "extends the bounds and enriches our understanding of Native American Literary history." Lopenzina's essays appear in the journals Early American Literature, Native American and Indigenous Studies, American Literature, American Quarterly, Studies in American Indian Literature, American Indian Quarterly, and others.

Introduction to the Introduction

Chapter 1 - Oral Encounters: Moving the Forest and Rocks by Song

Chapter 2 - "Still the Same Unbelieving Indian": Native Voices in the Emerging Republic

Chapter 3 - Red Progressives and Indian Passwords

Chapter 4 - Sunset, Sunrise: The American Indian Novel and the Dawning of the Native American Literary Renaissance

Chapter 5 - "Many of Our Songs Are Maps": Poetry in the Native American Literary Renaissance and Beyond

Chapter 6 - "Every One of those Stars has a Story": Narrative and Nationhood

Chapter 7 - Teaching Louise Erdrich's Tracks: A Case Study

Conclusion: Greetings from Standing Rock