"The essays in this collection were given at the 1997 American Culture Association's meeting in San Antonio, Texas"--Preface.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. Stories of Identity: From the oral to the written : Mother tongues and native voices: linguistic fantasies in the age of the encounter / Scott Manning Stevens -- Alaska Haida narratives: maintaining cultural identity through subsistence / Jeane C. Breinig -- The act of storytelling and gender dynamics in "Kaweshawa": a study of the Watunna, the Makiritare creation myth / Heatherly Brooke Bucher -- These were Mari Sandoz's Sioux / Malcolm A. Nelson -- Rewriting ethnography: the embedded texts in Leslie Silko's Ceremony / Robert M. Nelson -- Constituting and preserving self through writing / Sidner J. Larson --

II. New Stories: Modern American Indian Literatures : Perception in D'Arcy McNickle's The Surrounded: a postcolonial reading / Jeri Zulli -- Teaching Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony / Conrad Shumaker -- Western fictions in Welch's Fools Crow: languages of landscape and culture / Blanca Chester -- Native American sleuths: following in the footsteps of the Indian guides? / John K. Donaldson -- King and kodachrome: Green Grass, Running Water's models for non-native participation / Maurice Collins -- Dialectic to dialogic: negotiating bicultural heritage in Sherman Alexie's sonnets / Carrie Etter -- Tales of Burning Love: Louise Erdrich's "Scarlet Letter" / Tom Matchie.

Telling the Stories brings together thirteen important statements on major issues of American Indian identities and literatures. Some of the authors tell their stories and those of their people; others give scholarly attention to the most important contemporary Indian authors, such as Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, and James Welch. Thus the book replicates the dynamic process of the ever-changing stories of the American Indian peoples.