Acts of empathic imagination: Contemporary Native American artists and writers as healers.

Abstract

This dissertation uses the model of Native American "Morning Prayers" to establish four geographic and cultural regions within the United States as the means to discuss the relationship between health and contemporary artistic expression by Native American writers and artists. The colonial experience has resulted in intergenerational Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among Native families and communities, concepts explained by Eduardo Duran and Bonnie Duran. Chapter One focuses on the region of the Northeast and explores the early contact period between Europeans and Native Americans and the resulting colonial consequences of tribal land losses, deaths due to disease and enforced Christianity. The works of Louise Erdrich and Ric Danay Glazer establish the artistic context for discussions of continued suffering caused by these historical events. Chapter Two is devoted to the region of the Southeast. Writers Rilla Askew and Diane Glancy relate the continuing traumas caused by the Indian Removal Period and patterns of domestic violence. Artist Dorothy Sullivan offers visuals models of family and nurturance for contemporary Indian families. Alcoholism and other addictive behaviors in the region of the Southwest are the focus for Chapter Three. Leslie M. Silko, N. Scott Momaday, and artists Diego Romero, Mateo Romero, Gerald L. Clarke and Kukuli Velarde offer images of historical violence that have created the need for self-medicating practices to prevent psychological dissociation. Chapter Four completes the prayer cycle in the Northwest and examines the possibilities of personal transformation as alternatives to suicide. The overwhelming nature and experience of pain itself, as described by Elaine Scarry, is related to contemporary acts of violence against others, specifically torture and murder. Sherman Alexie provides an example of the violent community in his fiction and artists Rick Bartow and John Hoover provide visual models of transformation borrowing from their traditional tribal backgrounds. The final chapter examines the healthy possibility of uwoduhi, the Cherokee concept of balance. The works of Edgar Heap of Birds provide examples of converged literary and visual expressions that in turn offer suffering Native Americans healing words and concepts.