Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles

I've been reading Gerald Vizenor since the late 1980s and this book is still my favorite._Bearheart_ is a wild dystopian ride through the American heartland. Some unnamed natural disaster has deprived the United States of its petroleum reserves. Consequently, in order to meet the growing needs for wood fuels, the governmet has nationalized timber on Indian reservations. These actions lead to a chain of events that displace Proude Cedarfair, the guardian a certain cedar grove, from his ancestral lands. The reader journeys with Proude, picking up an assortment of pilgrims along the way, to Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico.This work deserves to be read alongside classic satiric journeys from Western literature, such as Chaucer's _The Canterbury Tales_ and Voltaire's _Candide_.When this book was first published, Jimmy Carter was President and the nation's dependance on foreign oil was stimulating new initiatives to drain natural resources from Indian reservations with as little benefit to the inhabitants as possible. Vizenor used this political context to craft a story that pokes fun at conventional ideas regarding tribal peoples, resource exploitation, and a lot more.

Vizenor depicts the harsh reality of the Native children who were taken from their homes by the oh-so-well-meaning children's aid workers (at least, that's what they're called in Canada) in order to "save" them from growing up in the Government-sponsored Native death camps...I mean reservations.This book is a stream-of-consciousness novel, somewhat similar to "Almanac of the Dead" in style. There are many scenes that really are likely to make many readers wince. But, that said, I really laughed at many of the characters and situations depicted, particularly as the white people (who have managed to wreck their "part" of America) keep trying to steal onto the Native reservations. Yes, this could very well be the truth in a few years when we've turned the rest of the continent into a large open-pit-garbage-dump which we currently seem bent on.The bottom line: highly recommended but likely to cause laughter that, if you are of European descent, will slowly fade to dismay as the true impact of history sinks in...

This book is so baffling, no reader should feel bad about not understanding it. It is innovative and wonderful in its courage to experiment with new kinds of forms. There are also moments that are very funny. It reminds me somewhat of Eastern European novels (Transatlantyk and A Little Hungarian Pornography) in its attempt to challenge the reader. Vizenor is a Native American writer, and his book is an important part of the Native American Literature canon.