Great Plains Studies, Center for

 

Date of this Version

2010

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly 30:1 (Winter 2010)

Comments

Copyright 2013 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract

It is often said that if you present fifty Cherokees with a given proposition, you'll get fifty-one opinions about how best to proceed. Cherokee Thoughts captures the humor, complexity, and contention embedded in such aphorisms. Careful to emphasize that the volume speaks neither for all Cherokees nor for any Cherokee government, Robert J. Conley engages a variety of contemporary tribally specific conversations, ranging-in no particular order-from the highly contentious issues of Cherokee citizenship, identity, and the freedman debates, to thoughts on tribal specific historical fiction and intellectual production ("Cherokee Literature," "Tribally Specific Historical Fiction," "John Oskison and Me"), to Cherokee celebrities/ outlaws, Indian gaming, and Oklahoma history, to list but a few. Perhaps better known for his Cherokee historical fiction and his popular history, The Cherokee Nation (2005), Conley traverses and often collapses generic boundaries, weaving together family narratives with short fiction ("Ricochet"), oral tradition with legal and popular discourses ("Indian Casinos," "Cherokees and Sports"), and historical analysis with personal, often scathing-but always wryly humorous-editorial commentary ("Cherokee Outlaws," "California Cherokees," "Henry Starr").

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