アメリカ先住民に伝わる原住民文学の起源は、北米大陸に住みついて火を囲み、そこで物語が語られるようになった何千年も前に遡ることができます。本書では、そうして何世代にもわたり口承で伝えられてきた物語が、先住民たち自身の手で英語化されるようになって以来を概括します。文学が雨を降らせ、身体を癒すといった役割を持った古来から、ヨーロッパ人流入と植民地化による苦難を乗り越え、独自の文化を継承する今日までを歴史的文脈に位置づけ概括します。
  

• The first narrative on the emergence of North American Indigenous literature
• A place for discovery of virtually unknown literary achievements by Indigenous people
• An entry into fascinating Indigenous ways of life and worldviews

 
In North America, the Indigenous literature we know today reaches back thousands of years to when the continent's original inhabitants first circled fires and shared tales of emergence and creation, journey and quest, heroism and trickery. Sean Teuton tells the story of Indigenous literature, from the time when oral narrative inspired the first Indigenous writers in English, through later writers' appropriation of genres to serve the creative and political needs of the times. In this lucid narrative he leads readers into the Indigenous worlds from which the literatures grows, where views about land and society and the role of humanity in the cosmos continue to enliven western understanding. In setting Indigenous literature in historical moments he elucidates its various purposes, from its ancient role in bringing rain or healing the body, to its later service in resisting European invasion and colonization, into its current place as a world literature that confronts dominance while it celebrates imagination and the resilience of Indigenous lives.

Along the way readers encounter the diversity of Indigenous peoples who, owing to their differing lands, livelihoods, and customs, evolved literatures adapted to a nation's specific needs. While, in the nineteenth century, public lecture and journalism fortified eastern Indigenous writers against removal west, nearly a century later autobiography enabled western Indigenous authors to tell their side of the winning of the west. Throughout he treats Indigenous literature with such complexity. He describes the single-handed invention of a written Indigenous language, the first Indigenous language newspaper, and the literary occupation of Alcatraz Island. Returning to contemporary poetry, drama, and novel by authors such as D'Arcy McNickle, Leslie Silko, Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Craig Womack, Teuton demonstrates that, like Indigenous people, Indigenous literature survives because it adapts, honoring the past yet reaching for the future.