AustLit

'Shifting the focus from the idea of the privileged individual and focusing on the representation of identity within autobiography and biography, allows for different kinds of writing and reading practices. From this viewpoint the telling of 'life stories' can be read as a 'testimony' to a lived life, and as a form of 'resistance' literature.' Texts can, then, be read as sites of resistance and, at the same time, can reflect our own reading processes.' (Introduction)

'Joel Monture, writer and professor of traditional Native American arts, tells of a visit to Santa Fe, "the place to buy culture and reduce your spiritual deficit".' He writes poignantly of discovering two of his former students - a Lakota (Sioux) woman and her partner, an Arapaho sculpture student - making suede jackets - average price $US 4,000 - in a dingy backroom under sweat shop conditions.' Disgusted and pained by the exploitation, by the counterfeit traditional garb and artefacts on sale and, more discreetly, the illegal sale of authentic heritage items, Monture concludes by noting that Native American popularity peaks in twenty-year cycles, and that during the troughs, a period when Native peoples become invisible, 'mainstream culture' redefines them in alignment with their changing interests.' He then notes that the dominant culture "will not stop short of acquiring even our spirituality for eventual mutation into a New Age pantomime"'  (Introduction)