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 in 1934) is an American writer and teacher. He is a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, a Native American tribe.

Mr. Vizenor taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he led the Native American Studies program. He has written over 30 books. He is now a retired professor from the University of California, Berkeley. He also teaches American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Early Life and Education

Gerald Vizenor was born to a mother who was Swedish-American and a father who was Anishinaabe. When he was very young, his father died. The case was never solved. His mother and his Anishinaabe grandmother raised him. He also lived with his uncles. They lived in Minneapolis and on the White Earth Reservation. His mother's partner helped care for him.

After that man passed away in 1950, Vizenor joined the United States National Guard when he was 15. He was honorably discharged before his unit went to Korea. Two years later, he joined the army. He served in Japan with the occupation forces. Japan was still recovering from the huge destruction of the nuclear attacks that ended World War II. During this time, he started learning about haiku, a Japanese poetry style. Later, he wrote Hiroshima Bugi (2004), which he called his "kabuki novel."

Mr. Vizenor returned to the United States in 1953. He used money from the G.I. Bill to finish his college degree at New York University. He then studied at Harvard University and the University of Minnesota. He also taught as a graduate student there. After returning to Minnesota, he got married and had a son.

Working for Change

After teaching at the university, Vizenor worked as a community advocate from 1964 to 1968. He was the director of the American Indian Employment and Guidance Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This job brought him close to many Native Americans from reservations. Many found it hard to live in the city.

His short-story collection, Wordarrows: Whites and Indians in the New Fur Trade, is about this time. Some stories were inspired by his experiences. His work with Native people who were struggling made him question the American Indian Movement (AIM). He felt that some leaders were more interested in fame than in helping Native Americans.

Vizenor started working as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. He quickly became an editorial writer. He looked into the case of Thomas James White Hawk. White Hawk was found guilty of a murder in 1967 in Vermillion, South Dakota. He was sentenced to death. Vizenor's writings explored how justice worked for colonized people. His work helped White Hawk's death sentence be changed.

During this time, Vizenor used the phrase "cultural schizophrenia." He used it to describe how many Native people felt torn between Native and White cultures. His reporting on Native American activists showed some problems within the movement. Because of his articles, he received threats.

Teaching Career

Gerald Vizenor began teaching full-time at Lake Forest College in Illinois. He was then asked to start and run the Native American Studies program at Bemidji State University. Later, he became a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis (1978–1985). He sometimes made fun of the academic world in his stories, like "The Chair of Tears" in Earthdivers. During this time, he also visited and taught at Tianjin University in China.

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

Vizenor was influenced by French thinkers like Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard.

His Writings

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

Non-fiction Works

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

In his own studies, Vizenor has worked to understand how the term "Indian" is used. His book title, Fugitive Poses, comes from his idea that "Indian" is a made-up term. It replaces real Native peoples, making them seem "absent" or "fugitive." Similarly, "manifest manners" refers to the lasting effects of Manifest Destiny. He wrote that Native peoples were still controlled by "stories of dominance" that replaced them with "Indians."

Instead of using one term like "Indian," he suggests calling Native peoples by their specific tribal names. This helps place them in their unique tribal context. It's like how most Americans would tell the difference between French, Polish, German, and English people.

To talk about Native studies more generally, Vizenor suggests using the term "postindian." This term shows that different tribal cultures were grouped together only by how Euro-Americans saw and treated them. He also created the word "survivance". This word combines "survival" and "resistance." He uses it instead of "survival" for tribal peoples. It means a continuing process, not just an end. It shows that tribal ways keep changing, and that their survival is based on resistance.

He continues to speak out against both Native American nationalism and old European-American colonial ideas.

Awards and Recognition

Gerald Vizenor's stories and studies have earned him many honors. He is seen as an important Anishinaabe and American thinker and writer.

• 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

Fiction

• 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

• Thomas James Whitehawk: Investigative Narrative in the Trial, Capital Punishment, and Commutation of the Death Sentence of Thomas James Whitehawk (Four Winds Press, 1968)
• The Everlasting Sky; New Voices from the People Named the Chippewa (MacMillan, 1972)
• Wordarrows: Indians and Whites in the New Fur Trade (U of Minnesota P, 1978)
• The People Named the Chippewa: Narrative Histories (U of Minnesota P, 1984)
• Touchwood : A Collection of Ojibway Prose (Many Minnesotas Project, No 3) (New Rivers Press, 1987)
• Crossbloods; Bone Courts, Bingo, and Other Reports (U of Minnesota P, 1990)
• Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance (Wesleyan UP, 1993)
• Shadow Distance: A Gerald Vizenor Reader (Wesleyan UP, 1994) - essays, fiction, poetry
• Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence (Nebraska UP, 1998)
• Native Liberty: Natural Reason and Cultural Survivance (Nebraska UP, 2009)

Poetry

• 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)