Subjected to violence, disease, and dislocation, indigenous cultures and individuals have found ways to voice both mourning for losses and strategies for resistance, survival, and joy. War for Indian peoples moves beyond the hostilities perpetrated on them by the dominant culture. War is also a response away from victimry and towards resistance and resilience, becoming an active presence, a staking of a place, a demand for recognition – literal and figurative acts of what Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance.” This essay focuses on representations of violent conflicts between Europeans and Native Americans by historical and contemporary Indian voices, such as Hendrick Aupaumut, Black Hawk, William Apess, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Sherman Alexie.

This chapter explains how particular Native writers in the US have come to serve as reference points and to receive widespread recognition, while others, equally worthy, have not. In particular, I focus on N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe), and Sherman Alexie (Spokane-Coeur d'Alene) as the four Native authors who have been most frequently singled out for attention and "canonized" within mainstream American culture. I identify factors that created a favorable reception for their works, and most importantly, I explore what it means for these authors to be "marginally mainstream." On the one hand, to be "marginally mainstream" is to be deemed worthy of recognition by the critical establishment, which often entails overemphasizing "universal" literary qualities to the detriment of tribally specific elements. At the same time, however, to be "marginally mainstream" suggests that these texts continue to speak eloquently to Native audiences in meaningful ways.