Review of Deep Waters: The Textual Continuum in American Indian Literature by Christopher B. Teuton

• Main Author: Smith, Lindsey Claire
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 2011
• Subjects: American Studies; Cultural History; History; United States History; Indian; anishina*
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2716; https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/context/greatplainsquarterly/article/3733/viewcontent/Smith.pdf

Christopher Teuton's study of four American Indian writers-No Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Gerald Vizenor (Anishinabe), Ray A. Young Bear (Meskwaki), and Robert J. Conley (Cherokee}-offers a useful model for theorizing the interdependence of oral and written traditions within Indigenous communities. In Teuton's view, a limiting separation between oral and written discourse has prevented scholars from recognizing the balance among various forms of signification that, reflecting community histories and identities, has long been a mainstay for Native peoples amid contexts of both tradition and change. This unnecessary divide, which he terms the "oral-literate binary," has informed scholarly practice, comprising "oral-literate theory." Despite their efforts to acknowledge the importance of oral traditions within well-known works of published literature, critics writing about Native American literature have nonetheless failed to problematize this model. Teuton thus intervenes in order to set this critical conversation to an appropriate equilibrium.