Gerald Vizenor was a journalist for the Minneapolis Tribune when he discovered that his direct ancestors were the editor and publisher of The Progress, the first Native newspaper on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota.  Vizenor, inspired by the kinship of nineteenth century Native journalists, has pursued a similar sense of resistance in his reportage, editorial essays, and literary art.

 

Vizenor reveals in Native Liberty the political, poetic, visionary, and ironic insights of personal identity and narratives of cultural sovereignty. He examines singular acts of resistance, natural reason, literary practices, and other strategies of survivance that evade and subvert the terminal notions of tragedy and victimry.

 

Native Liberty nurtures survivance and creates a sense of cultural and historical presence. Vizenor, a renowned Anishinaabe literary scholar and artist, writes in a direct narrative style that integrates personal experiences with original presentations, comparative interpretations, and critiques of legal issues and historical situations.

Gerald Vizenor is Distinguished Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico and a professor emeritus of American studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of more than thirty books, including Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance, and editor of Native Storiers: Five Selections, all published by the University of Nebraska Press.

"The world needs more independent minds of Vizenor's caliber."—Michael Snyder, Great Plains Quarterly