Earth Song, Sky Spirit

With this volume, Trafzar, director of Native American studies at the University of California, Riverside, continues the communally practiced Native American art of storytelling; although the book is of uneven quality, Trafzer is to be commended for introducing two dozen Native American writers who, along with a handful of their well-known colleagues, convey a number of Native American traditions as well as contemporary concerns. LeAnne Howe describes Choctaw burial practices, focusing on the duties of a ritual bone picker of the 18th century who scrapes the flesh off the bones of his dead wife; Gerald Vizenor depicts the Native American Silent People who come from various tribes and communicate using their hands; and Gordon D. Henry Jr., tells of a White Earth Chippewa whose ability to speak was destroyed at a boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs but who finds his voice through subversive political acts. Sherman Alexie's Spokane protagonist jokes about his cancer; Andrew Connors's dreamy Bad River Ojibwe hero unwittingly becomes the spokesperson for his people and the media's pet; Harvest Moon Eyes's unscrupulous tribal leaders try to sell out their fellow Cherokee; and Penny Olson's Ojibway girl is sexually molested by her neighbor. (Aug.)