Gerald Vizenor facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Gerald Vizenor
Gerald Vizenor in Geneva, 2000
Born	Gerald Robert Vizenor 1934 (age 90–91) Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Occupation	Writer literary critic professor ethnographer
Nationality	White Earth Band of Ojibwe
Genre	Anishinaabe traditional, haiku
Literary movement	Postmodernism, Native American Renaissance
Notable works	Interior Landscapes, Manifest Manners, Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart

Gerald Robert Vizenor (born 1934) is an American writer and teacher. He is a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, which is part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Vizenor taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he led the Native American Studies program. He has written over 30 books. Today, he is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and a professor at the University of New Mexico.

Gerald Vizenor's Early Life

Gerald Vizenor was born in 1934. His mother was Swedish-American and his father was Anishinaabe. When he was very young, his father passed away. He was raised by his mother and his Anishinaabe grandmother. He also lived with several of his father's uncles. They lived in Minneapolis and on the White Earth Indian Reservation.

When he was 15, Vizenor joined the Minnesota National Guard. He was honorably discharged before his unit went to the Korean War. Two years later, he joined the army. He served in Japan, helping with the recovery after World War II. During this time, he learned about haiku, a Japanese form of poetry. Later, he wrote a novel called Hiroshima Bugi (2004), which he described as a "kabuki novel."

In 1953, Vizenor returned to the United States. He used a program called the G.I. Bill to pay for his college degree at New York University. He then continued his studies at Harvard University and the University of Minnesota. After returning to Minnesota, he got married and had a son.

Gerald Vizenor's Activism and Journalism

After teaching at a university, Vizenor worked as a community helper from 1964 to 1968. He directed the American Indian Employment and Guidance Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This job connected him with many Native Americans who had moved from reservations to the city. They often faced challenges living in the city.

His experiences during this time inspired some of his short stories. These stories are collected in his book Wordarrows: Whites and Indians in the New Fur Trade. Vizenor also became a staff reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune newspaper. He quickly became a writer for the editorial section.

Vizenor investigated the case of Thomas James White Hawk. This person was found guilty of a murder in 1967 and sentenced to death. Vizenor's articles looked at how justice worked for colonized people. His writing helped White Hawk's death sentence be changed.

During this period, Vizenor used the phrase "cultural schizophrenia." He used it to describe how some Native people felt torn between Native and White cultures. His articles sometimes led to threats against him.

Gerald Vizenor's Academic Career

Vizenor began teaching full-time at Lake Forest College in Illinois. He was then asked to create and lead the Native American Studies program at Bemidji State University. Later, he became a professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis from 1978 to 1985. He even made fun of the academic world in some of his stories, like "The Chair of Tears" in Earthdivers. During this time, he also taught as a visiting professor in China at Tianjin University.

Vizenor worked and taught for four years at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was also the Provost of Kresge College there. He held a special teaching position for one year at the University of Oklahoma. After that, Vizenor became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is now a professor at the University of New Mexico.

Vizenor was influenced by French thinkers like Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard. These thinkers explored ideas about how language and meaning work.

Gerald Vizenor's Writings

Vizenor has written many different types of books. These include collections of haiku poems, plays, short stories, and novels. He has also translated traditional tribal tales. He is considered part of the Native American Renaissance. This was a time when Native American literature and art became very popular, starting in the mid-20th century.

Non-fiction Works

Vizenor has written several important books about Native American issues. These include Manifest Manners and Fugitive Poses. He has also edited collections of academic writings about Native American literature. He started a series of books at the University of Oklahoma Press called the American Indian Literature and Critical Studies series. This series has been important for publishing critical works by and about Native writers.

In his studies, Vizenor has explored how the term "Indian" is used. He argues that the word "Indian" is a made-up term that doesn't truly represent Native peoples. He suggests that Native peoples should be called by their specific tribal names. This is like how most Americans would tell the difference between French, Polish, German, and English people.

Vizenor also uses the term "postindian." He uses it to show that different tribal cultures were only seen as "unified" by Euro-American ideas. He also created the word "survivance." This word combines "survival" and "resistance." He uses it to describe how tribal peoples continue to change and resist being completely taken over by other cultures.

He often criticizes both Native American nationalism and old-fashioned Euro-American ideas about Native peoples.

Honors and Awards

Gerald Vizenor's fiction and academic studies have earned him many awards. He is recognized as a major Anishinaabe and American writer and thinker.

• 1983, Film-in-the-Cities Award, Sundance Festival
• 1984, Best American Indian Film, San Francisco Film Festival
• 1986, New York Fiction Collective Award
• 1988, American Book Award
• 1988, New York Fiction Collective Prize
• 1989, Artists Fellowship in Literature, California Arts Council
• 1990, PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award
• 1996, PEN Excellence Award
• 2001, Lifetime Achievement Award, Native Writers' Circle of the Americas
• 2005, Distinguished Achievement Award, Western Literature Association
• 2005, Distinguished Minnesotan, Bemidji State University
• 2011, MELUS Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2011, American Book Award for Shrouds of White Earth
• 2020, Lifetime Achievement Award, Paul Bartlett Re Peace Prize
• 2021, Honorary Curator, American Haiku Archives

Selected Works by Gerald Vizenor

Fiction Books

• Shrouds of White Earth (SUNY P)
• Father Meme (University of New Mexico Press)
• Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57 (Nebraska UP)
• Chancers (Oklahoma UP)
• Hotline Healers: An Almost Browne Novel (Wesleyan UP)
• Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles (Minnesota UP) (a changed version of Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart)
• The Heirs of Columbus (Wesleyan UP)
• Griever: An American Monkey King in China (Minnesota UP)
• The Trickster of Liberty: Tribal Heirs to a Wild Baronage (Emergent Literatures)
• Landfill Meditation: Crossblood Stories (Wesleyan UP)
• Dead Voices: Natural Agonies in the New World (University of Oklahoma Press)

Non-fiction Books

• Thomas James Whitehawk: Investigative Narrative in the Trial, Capital Punishment, and Commutation of the Death Sentence of Thomas James Whitehawk (Four Winds Press, 1968)
• Touchwood : A Collection of Ojibway Prose (Many Minnesotas Project, No 3) (New Rivers Press)
• The People Named the Chippewa: Narrative Histories (Minnesota UP)
• The Everlasting Sky; New Voices from the People Named the Chippewa (MacMillan)
• Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance (Wesleyan UP) (later called Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance)
• Crossbloods; Bone Courts, Bingo, and Other Reports (Minnesota UP)
• Wordarrows: Indians and Whites in the New Fur Trade (Minnesota UP)
• Shadow Distance: A Gerald Vizenor Reader (Wesleyan UP)
• Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence (Nebraska UP, 1998)
• Native Liberty: Natural Reason and Cultural Survivance (Nebraska UP, 2009)

Poetry Books

• Poems Born in the Wind (1960)
• The Old Park Sleepers (1961)
• Two Wings the Butterfly (privately printed, 1962)
• South of the Painted Stones (1963)
• Summer in the Spring: Anishinaabe Lyric Poems and Stories (Oklahoma UP)
• Slight Abrasions: A Dialogue in Haiku, with Jerome Downes (Nodin Press, 1966)
• Water Striders (Moving Parts Press)
• Seventeen Chirps (Nodin Press)
• Raising the Moon Vines (Nodin Press)
• Matsushima : Pine Island (Nodin Press, 1984)
• Cranes Arise: Haiku Scenes (Nodin Press, 1999)
• Empty Swings (Haiku in English Series) (Nodin Press)
• Bear Island: The War at Sugar Point (Minnesota UP, 2006)
• Almost Ashore (Salt Publishing, 2006)

Plays and Screenplays

• Harold of Orange (1984)

Edited Collections

• Native American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology (1997)
• Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures (Oklahoma UP)
• Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence (Nebraska UP, 2008)

See also

• List of thinkers influenced by deconstruction