BOOK OF ABSTRACTS

ontemporary ndigenous ealities

International Conference

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Montenegro Nikšić, Montenegro June 25-27, 2015

Organized by

Faculty of Philosophy, Nikšić, University of Montenegro, Montenegro Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Osijek, Croatia

Department of English, University of Central Oklahoma, U.S.A.

Edited by

Neil Diamond Dr. Marija Krivokapić Dr. Timothy Petete Dr. Sanja Runtić

Faculty of Philosophy Nikšić, 2015

We are thankful to the Embassy of the United States in Podgorica and the Ministry of Culture, Montenegro, for the financial support of this project.

"CALIFORNIA FORGETS. LUNA REMEMBERS": SENSING CONTEMPORARY NATIVE AMERICAN REALITIES IN JAMES LUNA'S PERFORMANCE NATIVE STORIES: FOR FUN, PROFIT & GUILT CLAUDINE ARMAND • Abstract

James Luna's multimedia performances are largely rooted in his culture and lived experience as a Luiseño Indian from Southern California. Informed by a polyphonic style, they interweave, overlap, converse, and collide with various stories (personal, collective, fictional, non-fictional) and discourses the texture of which is made of glimpses of narratives, snippets of conversation, isolated words, sounds, and silence. Such a fluid and yet fractured approach incorporating sound, written and oral language, installation, and projection directly engages the contemporary beholder: first through the echoes, the resonances and dissonances of present and past; the perception and material presence of the artist's acting body presented in its complexity, vulnerability, and intimacy; finally through the interactive spaces viewers are invited to share with the artist in the "here and now." Those spaces are gaps to fill in as well as arenas of reflection and meditation, of indeterminacy and silence. This paper is based on a performance that James Luna presented last October in San Francisco during the Litquake festival featuring Sheila Tishmil Skinner and followed by a spoken-word monologue by writer and performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña. It aims to highlight how Luna senses today's indigenous people's realities and mediates California's present and historical past. The play with metamorphosis, distortion, and dissonances, the slippages in personae, along with the shifts in perspectives and the interaction with technology-mediated devices, are some of the artist's strategies to trace the complexities of contemporary indigenous people's realities.

• Keywords: Performance art, intermediality, anthropology, history, memory, fiction memory, survivance, montage, sound, silence.

• About the Author Claudine Armand is Associate Professor in the English department at the University of Lorraine, Nancy, France where she teaches American

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literature and art. Her research centers on the text-image interface and on contemporary American art. She is the author of an exhibition catalog, Anne Ryan: Collages (Giverny, Museum of American Art, Terra Foundation, 2001), and she has co-edited four collections of essays, Ancrages/Passages (2006), Créatures et créateurs de Prométhée (2010), London-New York: Exchanges and Cross-Cultural Influences in the Arts and Literature (2012), and Enjeux et positionnements de l'interdisciplinarité/Positioning Interdisciplinarity (2014). She is a member of IDEA (dedicated to the study of interdisciplinary theories and practices) and is currently working on a book on contemporary African and Native American artists.

THE PURPOSE OF ART: INTELLIGENT DIALOGUE OR INTERIOR DECORATION? (INTERVIEW WITH THE APACHE SCULPTOR BOB HAOZOUS) JEANINE BELGODERE

• Abstract The presentation includes an introduction to the Apache sculptor Bob Haozous, as well as an interview I conducted with the artist in Santa Fe in 2014. In this interview, upon which I will comment when I feel necessary, Mr. Haozous expresses himself on his father's artwork which, in his opinion, conveys a romanticized view of Native Americans. He further provides the cultural context which explains why his father presented this beautiful but uncritical image of Native Americans. Some of the issues Mr. Haozous raises deal with his concept of art as a cultural statement and his view of Indian market as based on romance and decoration. He also goes deeply into what it means to be Indian: it is not a genetic identity but a philosophy. He further elaborates on the idea that if Native Americans are vibrant and alive, they are also very damaged. His zombie sculpted figures are symbolic of Indians eating their own culture and feeding the enemy: ignorance.

• Keywords: Bob Haozous, Allan Houser, Indian market, Indian people, Apache holocaust, cultural statement, political statement, internal dialogue, decoration, romance, zombie.

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• About the Author

Jeanine Belgodere is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Le Havre, France. Her main areas of research are dance aesthetics and the interrelations between the arts and Native American culture. She has lectured on the history of modern dance in the U.S. and the cultural expressions of Native Americans. In 2004 and 2009, she was a Visiting Professor at the University of New Mexico (Department of Theatre and Dance). In 2010, she was a Guest Professor at the University of New Mexico (Department of Art and Art History). During her successive stays in the U.S., she conducted research on Southwestern Indian ceremonials. She has published articles on the sculptural works of the Apache artist Allan Houser, the choreography of Isadora Duncan, the modernist and graceful aspects of Duncan's dance aesthetics, and the traditions and rituals of the Pueblos. In September 2010, she published a few articles on the U.S., including "The Major Dance Companies," "The Sun Dance," and "Allan Houser." She has a forthcoming book Danses du maïs Pueblo, vision du monde (Pueblo Corn dances), publisher: Indes Savantes, Paris.

THE TIMELESS NARRATIVITY OF TRADITION OF THE SHUAR INDIANS OF ECUADOR SHAI COHEN

• Abstract The Shuar (Shuara) Indians live in the south of Ecuador and north of Peru. They are some of the most ancient indigenous tribes of the Amazon, a habitat where they live harmoniously with nature. For many centuries they have kept a lifestyle that is different from the Western one with an equalitarian socio-political system. The Shuar tribe is known for its medicinal herbs, profound respect for nature, and is a stronghold in the protection of the jungle where most of them live in small villages amongst thousands of different wild trees and animals. During the time I spent living with the family of the local shaman in the jurisdiction of the village of Asunción, I learned about their traditions, nature, and some peculiar customs the tribe used to practice (the most famous one is the shrunken heads). One of the exceptional aspects is the Shuar narrative, practiced through different traditions, which helps

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maintain their exceptional way of life in spite of all exterior intrusions (at least since the sixteenth century when they first entered Western historical accounts). In the talk I will share some of my impressions about this incredible indigenous tribe of the Amazons through an analysis of the cultural heritage they pass from one generation to another and a description of their encounters with Western society.

• Keywords: Shuar tribe, Amazonas, indigenous, Ecuador, myth, anthropology, ethnicity, narrativity, South America.

• About the Author Shai Cohen began his academic studies in France, finishing his BA in Spanish Language, Literature and Culture. Later he moved to Jerusalem to complete the MA studies with honors. He has recently received his PhD from the University of Navarre in Pamplona, Spain, where he completed four years of doctorate studies with honors (Summa Cum Laude). In addition, he has written three books, amongst them is Strapado, an historical novel taking place in fifteenth-century Spain, as well as numerous articles and book reviews. At the moment, he is a pro-bono research associate at the Pedagogical Center of Montenegro. He is also assisting with the teaching of Spanish at the Mediterranean University and teaching Hebrew Language at the Jewish Community at the University of Montenegro.

MANAGING THE UNITED STATES-MEXICO BORDER: WHAT ROLE FOR AMERICAN INDIAN TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS?

RAPHAËL EPPREH-BUTET • Abstract

Nearly seventy American Indian Tribes are established at or in the vicinity of the borders with Mexico and Canada. When it comes to U.S. homeland security, border and immigration issues, American Indian tribal governments describe their role as a goodwill gesture and a contribution to the process of peace and national security on their territories. In spite of their achievements, American Indian tribal governments are unable to get Federal Homeland Security Grant Program funding and therefore are not in the situation to accomplish 4

their mission properly. The confrontational style of border agents often angers some Native Americans who cross the border for cultural, commercial, and family purposes.

• Keywords: United States, American Indian tribal governments, the United States-Mexico border, DHS Tribal Homeland Security Grant Program.

• About the Author Raphaël Eppreh-Butet received a PhD in North American Studies from the University Sorbonne-Nouvelle Paris 3. He is currently an Associate Professor of American Civilization at the University of Lille. He is a member of the Centre d'Etudes en Civilisations, Langues et Littératures Etrangères (CECILLE, Université de Lille, France). His research interests include immigration to the United States, American immigration policy, American foreign policy. His recent publications include "A propos du livre de 'Deborah Welch Larson, Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S.-Soviet Relations During the Cold War', quelques rappels et réflexions sur le rôle de la méfiance/confiance dans l'évolution des rapports entre les Etats-Unis et la Russie dans le cadre de la bipolarité Est-Ouest" in Armand Héroguel, Raphaël Eppreh-Butet (eds.), "Approaches interdisciplinaires de la confiance à l'international : aspects linguistiques, culturels, managériaux et juridiques," Villeneuve d'Acq: les Presses de l'Université Charles de Gaulle Lille 3, 2014; "La gestion de l'immigration illégale au Canada et aux Etats-Unis," in Jean-Michel Lacroix, Gordon Mace (eds.), "Politique étrangère comparée: Canada-Etats-Unis. Bruxelles," PIE Peter Lang, 2012, p. 253-265.

THE OVER-CONSUMPTION OF NATIVE AMERICAN IMAGERY AND THE ONGOING RESULTS FOR CONTEMPORARY REALITY DANIEL GREEN

• Abstract In 1966, as a ten year old, I went to Disneyland where I encountered my first Native American stereotype: in Frontierland, a group of "Indians" dressed in chicken feathers and faux buckskins would take us via canoe to Huck Finn Island. One of the four "Indian guides" was a real Indian

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(it takes one to know one, even at the age of ten). At the same age I met the Native American movie star Iron Eyes Cody at a pow-wow. Enamored by his status, I asked my relations why no adults would talk to him, to which I was told disdainfully, "He's not Indian, he's Italian!". Thus began a lifelong interest in Native American imagery and study. Overwhelmingly, the consequence of popular American Indian imagery is oppression. This oppression is often internalized by Native Americans and results in cultural dysfunctions from increasing rates of attempted suicide to obesity. The talk I am proposing will address the lingering effect of the over-consumption of Native American imagery and will be complemented by a looping slideshow of about 120 images. Furthermore, the culminating dialogue will examine the patterns of ubiquitous representation of Native America.

• Keywords: Social Representation theory, internalized oppression, intropunitive behaviors, stereotype threat, self-perception and alienation, social stigma, academic underperformance of minorities, Native American sport mascots.

• About the Author Daniel Green is a Native American (Ho Chunk) Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse where he has taught the human relations course Understanding Human Differences for the past twenty years. He has lectured on Native American imagery throughout the U.S. and limited in Europe. He has been actively engaged in the elimination of Native American sport mascots for the past thirty years.

FACT VS. FICTION IN RUDY WIEBE'S WHERE IS THE VOICE COMING FROM MILENA KOSTIĆ

• Abstract Rudy Wiebe's collection of short stories Where is the Voice Coming From was first published in 1974. The mere fact that this collection has seen numerous new editions at the turn of the twenty-first century reflects its credibility in depicting contemporary indigenous phenomena. Apart from exploring the complex relationship of

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document, history, and fiction, the well-known title story depicts two contrasted views on experiencing reality: the one that perceives it as a mysterious, almost mystical experience and is generally related to the oral culture of the Indigenous peoples, and the other one that rests on the allegedly objective factual evidence of the white settlers. In his exploration of the conflict between "Almighty Voice" and the North West Mounted Police, which has been the subject of various conflicting accounts, Wiebe examines the process of turning events into stories and expresses his doubts about their historical accuracy. In that, he comes close to the view of various postcolonial literary critics, who generally oppose the trend of falsifying reality by relying on the objectivity of historical reports as the only way of experiencing and decoding the past.

• Keywords: Fact, fiction, oral culture, historical accuracy, post-colonialism.

• About the Author Milena Kostić is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia. Her MA thesis, "The Faustian Motif in the Tragedies of Christopher Marlowe," was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2013. She defended her PhD thesis entitled "Public vs. Private in Shakespeare's History Plays" at the Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad, Serbia in 2013. Her areas of academic interest include medieval and renaissance English literature, Shakespeare studies, British studies, Scottish studies, and Canadian studies.

THE BOOKS OF OJIBWE ISLANDS AS READ BY LOUISE ERDRICH MARIJA KRIVOKAPIĆ

• Abstract Hereby I propose a close analysis of Louise Erdrich's Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country. I will consider the book as a piece of travel writing and will look at it first through the lenses of recent developments in travel writing critical theory. However, as this paper intends to show, this theory, being developed on the theoretical tools of postcolonialism, i.e. on problematizing the intentional perception of the Western travelling

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subject and on questioning this subject's almost innate adoption of hierarchical superiority in relation to the travelling object, cannot vitally apply to another "conceptual reality," to use John Trudell's phrasing, in which these relations are nonexistent. I will then look into the feminist reading of contemporary travel writing and will conclude that its, often militant, stand does not comply with a culture that knows child bringer and language teacher as a woman. To try to pay due respect to the text in question, I will also turn to some of Native American authored discussions on the difference of meaning of land in contrast to mapping territory, of understanding of circularity of time in contrast to linearity of history. Finally, this paper will show how this text is emancipated from the burden of Theory. It naturally breathes out the knowledge and impressions about the people who once painted rocks and now own bookshops, who once used cattails as a diapering material, but now engage their babies with toy computers while driving them in their Buicks at 65+ on highways, etc.

• Keywords: Travel, travel writing, travel writing theory, postcolonial theory, feminist theory, Native American critical theory, territory, land.

• About the Author Marija Krivokapić teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century British Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Montenegro, where she also serves as a vice-dean for science and international relations. Her publications focus on the work on D.H. Lawrence (Lawrence in Italy, Belgrade 2000; Quest for the Transcendent in D.H. Lawrence's Prose, Nikšić, 2009), contemporary Anglo-American literature (Essays in Contemporary Anglo-American Literature, Nikšić), but her recent interests also include contemporary Native American literature (co-authored with Sanja Runtić, Suvremena književnost američkih starosjedilaca, Osijek, 2013), and travel writing. She has edited and co-edited dozens of collections of papers on literature and language, as well as a series of translations of British, Canadian, South African, and Native American authors. She is the current general editor of the linguistics and literature journal Folia linguistica et litteraria. She is a Fulbright alumna (Alexandria, LA, 2009; University of Central

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Oklahoma, 2015) and was a coordinator of an international project for the advancement of language studies, SEEPALS 2010-2013, financed by the European Commission.

ALEXIE'S ONE GOOD MAN: DECONSTRUCTION OF A MYTH

GORDANA KUSTUDIĆ • Abstract

Sherman Alexie is a sharp, satirical, even sardonic voice of postmodern literature, the one trying to destroy the myth and eradicate all the prejudices about Indians and their life. It is to this particular purpose that the compilation of short stories entitled The Toughest Indian in the World serves. The present paper focuses on the very last story in the collection, "One Good Man," which characteristically, and most certainly not incidentally, completes and clearly problematizes the issue that Alexie's artistic conscience is occupied with. Deftly and poetically undermining the myth, Alexie articulates some new insights into Indian reality which one could hardly expect given the established knowledge and impressions about Indians. These new interpretations are emphasized by the question What is an Indian? which re-emerges like a chorus throughout the story. Furthermore, the writer manoeuvres a shockingly abundant amount of lascivious language and obscene images, thus making his own visions of his own people brutally iconoclastic, and completely open and contemporary at the same time. We are going to try to identify the way in which Alexie's story "One Good Man" reveals and clarifies Indian reality while demystifying our misrepresentations about it.

• Keywords: Alexie, myth, lascivious, obscene, iconoclastic, misrepresentations.

• About the Author Gordana Kustudić (b. 1984, Nikšić, Montenegro) received her MA degree in English Literature from the University of Montenegro in 2011 with a thesis which dealt with the freedom of choice in Huxley's utopias and dystopias. She works as a teaching assistant at the Faculty

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of Philosophy in Nikšić. She is a PhD candidate at the postgraduate doctoral studies in English Literature at the University of Montenegro. In addition, she is the author of several original research articles, as well as a number of translations in Montenegrin.

RECONFIGURATIONS OF THE DIASPORA SPACE IN NEOINDIGENOUS WESTERN EUROPE CARLOS YEBRA LÓPEZ

• Abstract Drawing upon British Asian sociologist Avtar Brah's notion of Diaspora Space (1996), this proposal aims at analytically describing and artistically expressing the emergence of a contemporary indigenous reality in Western/Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece) as a result of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2009-). In particular, my thesis is that the aforementioned financial crisis has created a new diaspora space (understood as an abstract zone where boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of "us" and "them" are contested) in the so-called PIGS economies (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain) that is now inhabited not just by the migrants but also by those who have stayed behind (i.e., people that have not had the chance or the will to emigrate to better economies). The latter group is being constructed and represented as neoindigenous by diaspora intellectuals from their own countries (i.e., not only natives in a foreign land but also spokespersons for the natives back home). My goal is to first, show the intricacies of this reality via a multimedia presentation (Prezi) and then, to carry out a brief poetry reading concerning two poems which revolve around this topic and that are part of my forthcoming poetry book Schizoverses from Babylon: Exploding Monolingual Poetry as a History of Neurotic Rhymes.

• Keywords: Europe, crisis, neoindigenous, diaspora, intellectuals, Avtar Brah, politics, economy, poetry, multilingual.

• About the Author Born in Zaragoza (Spain), Carlos Yebra López has devoted his career to the study of language and culture. He first entered a BA (Hons.) in

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Philosophy (University of Zaragoza, Spain), where he specialized in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory. He then pursued a Master of Arts in Philosophy at University of London, focusing on the philosophy of language, as well as graduate diplomas in German, English, and French. After having taught an academic course at Missouri Western State University, he moved to New York University where he has recently been appointed as a PhD candidate in Spanish Language and Literature.

THE DEVIL'S LANGUAGE OF MARILYN DUMONT VESNA LOPIČIĆ

• Abstract The article is meant to be a sort of case study, where the case is a book of poetry by Marilyn Dumont, and the study focuses on contemporary indigenous realities as represented by Dumont in her poems. A Really Good Brown Girl is a relatively short collection of poetry published in 1996 by Brick Books, chosen for a sole reason of being the only book of poetry by a Metis author on my shelf. I was curious to see how much of contemporary indigenous reality will be identifiable in the poems collected in a single book by an author who is widely anthologised but not overwhelmingly popular in Canada. Close reading of her poetry proves that Dumont touches on many aspects of Metis contemporary reality such as corruption of their original culture, the problem of Indian identity, the relationship between the First Nations and the White people, living conditions, gender roles, school system, etc. Support for Dumont's poetic rendering of the realities of indigenous people is found in Thomas King's The Inconvenient Indian and other critical works. A conclusion may be drawn that social criticism finds its expression in the poetry which is personal and yet a form of resistance writing.

• Keywords: Marilyn Dumont, poetry, contemporary indigenous realities, close reading.

• About the Author Vesna Lopičić is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia. Her publications include Fall into Culture:

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Human Nature in the Work of William Golding and Margaret Atwood (2002), two collections of essays on Canadian literature, and a number of course books, readers, and conference proceedings. She co-edited (with B. Mišić Ilić) three collections of essays Identity Issues: Literary and Linguistic Landscapes (2010), Challenging Change: Literary and Linguistic Responses (2012), and Values Across Cultures and Times (2014) published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. She teaches English literature and British and Canadian studies courses. Her research is focused on the Serbian diaspora and on the novel in English.

HEALING AND RECUPERATION IN LOUISE ERDRICH'S STORY "THE BINGO VAN" TIJANA MATOVIĆ

• Abstract The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of Louise Erdrich's short story "The Bingo Van" as a representative work of her long-standing narrative attempt to use gambling as a way of addressing the possibility of change in Native American communities. The protagonist of the story, Lipsha Morrissey, is psychologically disoriented, although apparently focused on short-term goals, which ultimately reveal themselves as a corrupt version of an illusory American Dream. Lipsha is otherised and as such almost without resistance forced to accept the normative stamp of the "culture of dominance," in Gerald Vizenor's terminology. His healing power decreases as he becomes overwhelmed by the materialistic drive fuelled by a prominent van-obsession. The sacred place is replaced with a pre-empted one, and it brings about moral devastation to Lipsha. His subsequent recovery progresses within a healing narrative, which brings about a waking-up into a restful "nothing" – such an emptiness being vital in what Erdrich shapes as a powerful potential for recuperation.

• Keywords: Louise Erdrich, Native American, gambling, healing, culture, identity.

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• About the Author

Tijana Matović is a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Philology and Arts at the University of Kragujevac, Serbia. She was awarded both her bachelor's and master's Degrees in English Language and Literature from the Faculty of Philology and Arts and is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in Philology at the Department for Literature at the same faculty. Since 2012, she has attended numerous national and international conferences, giving presentations on Anglo-American and Serbian literature and literary theory. She has published papers in renowned Serbian journals and a study entitled Stvaralaštvo Silvije Plat: strastvene apokalipse jednog feniksa (The Works of Sylvia Plath: Passionate Apocalypses of a Phoenix) in 2013. Her interests span topics related to postmodernism, gender studies, trauma theory, contemporary drama, contemporary ethnic literatures, etc.

REFLECTIONS ON INDIAN GAMING: CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK OR WIN THROUGH A SLOT MACHINE? MAJA MUHIĆ

• Abstract This paper is an attempt to throw a critical look into the controversial debates revolving around casinos on Native American reservations. Gambling on Native Indian reservations is a fairly recent phenomenon dating from the 1980s. The National Indian Gaming Association was founded in 1985 as a non-profit organization of 168 tribes with the aim of protecting and preserving "the general welfare of tribes striving for self-sufficiency through gaming enterprises in Indian country." As such, gaming on native land brought a number of complex questions to the fore, ranging from legal issues to cultural tensions which excelled with surrounding communities. However, first and foremost, gaming on Native American land created a new image of the otherwise unimaginable "rich Indian" and it thus shook the firm grounds on which cultural myths about Native Americans stood. Gaming on Native land has therefore disturbed the two most dominant perceptions about Natives – that of the inferior, savage, oppressed on the one hand, and the noble savage, natural, spiritual on the other. The paper will refer

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to several anthropological studies on gaming on Native American land, primarily using Eve Darian-Smith's study, comparing it to the still prevalent imagery of Natives and the contemporary stereotypes (especially those portrayed through Hollywood) still surrounding them. While agreeing with Darian-Smith's argument that casinos on reservations enabled Native Americans for the very first time to participate in corporate capitalism, involving them in party politics and bringing them political, legal, and social power, my aim is to filter this issue through the lenses of Spivak's questions of the (in)ability of the subaltern to speak. In its final instance, this work will mobilize Spivak and her utterly important discourse on the subaltern as different from the oppressed, as the one which does not have access to the revision of history. In an online article, Noopur Tiwar says about Spivak that "If she could say one thing to the Arab Spring rebels and Wall Street occupiers she'd say, 'What you folks have to learn is to turn that passion into permanent political structures'" (2013). If Spivak calls for radical action on the part of those who have the passion, yet have either no access to revision or else they can only speak and be recognized in as far as they are oppressed, the question to be posed is where do Native Americans stand? Can they revise history through gaming on reservations or do they speak again only through the oppression of the corporate, capitalist world of slot machines and lottery?

• Keywords: Casino, gambling, Native American gaming, Native American land, subaltern.

• About the Author Maja Muhić, South East European University, Tetovo, Macedonia, is lecturer of cultural studies, post-colonial theory, and culture of the English-speaking countries. Her focus is on interpretive and symbolic anthropology with special emphasis on the American anthropological trends. She had worked closely with a number of renowned universities, such as the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Santa Barbara, California. Apart from a number of articles in philosophical and anthropological journals, Muhić is the co-author of the Encyclopedia of Global Religion (2011) edited by Mark Juergensmeyer and Wade Clark Roof. She has also published her work in the recent

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After Yugoslavia: Identities and Politics within the Successor States (2011) edited by Robert Hudson and Glenn Bowman.

IN THE HEART OF HER LIFE: JOY HARJO'S LIFE, HER POETICS ALEKSANDRA NIKČEVIĆ-BATRIĆEVIĆ

• Abstract This paper focuses on Joy Harjo's memoirs, Crazy Brave, published in 2013, in which she maps the unique story of her life and its intermingling with other people, American culture, its educational system, its systems in general, as well as America's diversity – in its positive and negative connotations – and the ways in which all of these factors have affected her work. In this context, this paper also offers an approach to her poetry, at least to some of her best known poems, which deal with her heritage, the place of her heritage within American culture in general, as well as the role of women in a society that witnesses numerous examples of marginalization based on class, race, gender, and sexuality. From the very beginning of her life, aware of her responsibilities and "entrusted with carrying voices, songs, and stories to grow and release into the world, to be of assistance and inspiration," Harjo's uniqueness has manifested itself in multiple ways, challenging traditional and nontraditional responses to American poetry and invigorating its critical discourses in a manner that remains of huge importance to the whole survey of diverse poetic practices.

• Keywords: Memoirs, poetry, critical discourse, heritage.

• About the Author Aleksandra Nikčević-Batrićević teaches courses on American literature, American women's poetry, and feminist literary theory and criticism at the University of Montenegro (Faculty of Philosophy, Department of English Language and Literature). She received her MA and PhD in American literature. Her publications include papers on Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, second wave feminism, Herman Melville, and other American authors. Since 2008 she has served as president of the Montenegrin Association for Anglo-American Literary Studies "dr Biljana Milatović." She has edited or co-edited sixteen books, published in

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Montenegro and Great Britain. She is currently writing a book about the literary canon and feminist interventions in it.

ETHNIC IDENTITY IN THOMAS KING'S GREEN GRASS, RUNNING WATER JOVANA PETROVIĆ

• Abstract The paper analyses the elements that constitute Native American identity in Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water. In the novel, King juxtaposes two ethnic identities, white Christian American, representing the majority in American society, and Native American, representing a minority. King portrays the struggle of Native Americans in the U.S. and Canada to define their identity given the historically long rift between their native heritage and the white culture. Stigmatized for their ethnicity and race, Native Americans were exposed to marginalization and prejudice and forced to somehow overcome this position. The struggle has been made more difficult by the efforts of the dominant society to assimilate them and at the same time prevent them from claiming full citizenship. King carefully weaves the stories of his characters that constantly go back and forth between the reservation lands and the outside world having to find their position in both and usually not belonging to either. By focusing on the world of the reservation, Native American spirituality, tribal tradition of storytelling and creation myths, King examines different aspects of Native American ethnic identity. In addition, through juxtaposition of the Native American ethnic identity with that of the dominant society, he reevaluates the marginalized position of Native Americans.

• Keywords: Thomas King, Green Grass Running Water, Native American identity, ethnicity.

• About the Author Jovana Petrović is a student currently pursuing a master's degree in English Language and Literature, at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad. She received her bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, in 2014. Her research interests include twentieth century American literature, ethnic studies, and postcolonial theory. She is 16

currently doing research in the field of Native American literature, ethnic studies, and postcolonial theory for her master thesis "Identity in Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water.”

NO LOGO!: VISUAL SOVEREIGNTY AND THE "WASHINGTON REDSK*NS" DEBATE SANJA RUNTIĆ

• Abstract The paper draws upon the controversy over the use of indigenous-related sports emblems that has recently sparked a series of protests across the United States against the "Washington Redsk*ns" name and imagery. It focuses on the visual aspect of the debate, tracing the white-supremacist foundations of the Washington team's insignia to the institutional construction of Native identity through popular Indian Head Pennies and Buffalo Nickels in the period between 1859 and 1938. Pointing at the seemingly paradoxical discrepancy between the minted messages and the systematic political, legal, and military invasion on American Indian sovereignty in that period, it proceeds to deconstruct the paradox by exposing the numismatic pictorial language as a manifestation of the same ideological project and the configurations of power that have remained unchanged to this day. The continued circulation of indigenous-based iconography in the contemporary American context shows that the same cultural imagination continues to serve not only as a powerful rationale for European America's historical, national, and political narrative but also as a form of "anti-conquest" that both obscures and enacts the established formulas of colonial domination and control. Observing the alterations of the "Washington Redsk*ns" logo design across some of the key moments of the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century – the McCarthy era, the Civil Rights Movement, post 9/11 sentiment, the global financial crisis, the campaign against ethnic studies, and the illegal immigration debate – the analysis explores how various forms of national anxiety transcend into identity through the politics of representation. In that light, it regards recent activism against mass-mediated symbolization of indigenous identity as an important

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arena in which centuries-long hegemonic discourses are contested against new venues of self-determination and internal decolonization.

• Keywords: Washington Redsk*ns, Native American mascots, indigenous identity, representation, visual sovereignty, activism, decolonization.

• About the Author Sanja Runtić is Associate Professor of English and head of the BA Programme in English at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Osijek, Croatia. She teaches surveys of early and nineteenth-century American literature and specialized courses such as American Realism and Naturalism, Contemporary American Women Writers, American Indian Literature, and Multicultural Literature in English. She was awarded the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies research grant at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2002 and was a Fulbright Fellow at the American Indian Studies Department, University of Arizona, in 2003/04. Her research interests include indigenous literature and art, postcolonial literature and theory, theories of globalization, postmodernism, women's studies, and American realism and naturalism. She is currently serving as vice president of the Croatian Association for American Studies (HUAmS) and on the Board of the Literature and Cultural Identity PhD Programme at the University of Osijek.

UNDERSTANDING THE MOTIVATIONS OF MĀORI INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE LEARNERS AWANUI TE HUIA

• Abstract Indigenous languages are essential to global diversity, yet many indigenous languages are under threat of endangerment and extinction (Simons & Lewis, 2013). Te reo Māori (Māori language) is the indigenous language of New Zealand and is currently in the process of being revitalised. There are a number of institutions that currently offer te reo Māori as a second language, yet the language continues to be spoken by only one in five Māori (Statistics NZ, 2013). Through

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understanding the reasons why individuals choose to engage in Māori language learning and why learners persist in their attempts to improve their knowledge and use of the language, we may be able to target strategies that enhance Māori language use. Interviews with nineteen Māori learners of te reo Māori illustrated some of the complexities surrounding indigenous language learning as a second/heritage language. Findings indicated that there are a number of reasons why Māori decide to learn their heritage language, and identity is one of those reasons. The motivations, enablers and inhibitors of Māori who have chosen to learn te reo Māori at a range of varying levels will be discussed during this presentation. Findings confirmed that language learners do not simply follow a linear path. If we can understand some of the common factors that enhance the learning experiences of some Māori language learners, this knowledge is likely to be positive in supporting our shared understanding about indigenous language learning more broadly.

• Keywords: Indigenous language revitalisation, identity development, heritage language motivations, enablers and inhibitors.

• About the Author Dr. Awanui Te Huia is a lecturer at Te Kawa a Māui, the Māori Studies department at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. She is a member of the Māori language team within the school. Alongside her desire to improve Māori and indigenous language revitalisation, Awanui has worked in the area of Māori health and psychology. BIOCULTURAL APPROACH AND COGNITIVE ECOCRITICISM IN KIANA DAVENPORT'S HOUSE OF MANY GODS SLAVICA TROSKOT

• Abstract While, Nancy Easterlin (2012) proposes a biocultural theory and interpretation that would combine cultural, historical, and literary analysis within a cognitive evolutionary framework, Lisa Zunshine's Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies (2010) introduces an

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interdisciplinary scientific field that represents human cognition as both the initiative and the consequence of human ecological survival. Zunshine sees nature and culture as interwoven structures, science and humanities as, at the same time the "cause and [the] result" of the transformations of the human mind, and human cognition and life in general as a process of both learning and creativity. According to cognitive cultural theory, human understanding of and interaction with the world around us seems to be a result of a complex cognitive sequence of random attempts to process our thinking, which can result in mistakes, as well as achievements. Out of this cognitive creative gap of the so called "hungry mind" humans create the spiritual and material world whose categories are ontologically unstable. This fluctuation gives us the ability to adapt and survive. According to Zunshine, Raymond Williams and Ellen Spolsky comprehend art as a cognitive tool and form of communication caused by a living need of human organism to be adapted to the environment that is constantly changing. The novel that would serve as a case study for this analysis would be House of Many Gods (2006) by Kiana Davenport, a writer of Native Hawai'ian and Anglo-American descent. The novel opens the question of human survival in the Pacific, Hawai'i, by connecting native Hawai'ian culture, the search for identity, environment, and ecology issues. The novel reflects questions on nature and culture, human knowledge, and wayfinding, the question of universal human survival at the turn of the century, as well as the turn in humanities.

• Keywords: Biocultural approach, environment, ecology, ecocriticism, human wayfinding, interdisciplinary research, postcolonial, cognitive cultural studies. Pacific, Hawai'i.

• About the Author Slavica Troskot was born in Zadar in 1977. She received her BA in English and German Language and Literature from the University of Zadar. She is a PhD candidate in Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb and a research assistant at the English Department at the University of Zadar. She teaches courses in Anglophone cultures in the postcolonial context. Her fields of interest include postcolonial studies, cultural studies, cognitive

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cultural studies, ecocriticism, environmental studies, biocultural theory, American studies, and Pacific studies. FULL-TIME NARRATION (AS AN ABSOLUTION) FOR PART-TIME REALITIES IN THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN BY SHERMAN ALEXIE VANJA VUKIĆEVIĆ GARIĆ

• Abstract Belonging to a broad genre of Bildungsroman and a less broad literary form known as fictional diary, Sherman Alexie's young-adult novel The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian explores the implications of self-narration in the context of a painful search for a more unified and solid identity within fragmented and stereotype-troubled social framework. This paper will, therefore, focus not only on the psychological and cultural duality of Junior's development but also on the dual power of autobiographical writing to deconstruct and, on a higher level, reconstruct and reaffirm that development, with all its poignancy, humour, and irony. Drawing on the basic features of diary as a narrative form, the aim will be to point to its multiple therapeutic forces, as well as to the existential importance of free self-expression in both artistic and human terms.

• Keywords: Diary, self-narration, psychological, social, cultural, duality, integrity.

• About the Author Vanja Vukićević Garić works as a teaching assistant at the University of Montenegro, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of English Language and Literature. She obtained her MA degree in English literature from the University of Novi Sad and her PhD from the University of Montenegro. The main field of her academic research is the work of James Joyce and modernist poetics, whereas her other interests also include postmodernism, the contemporary British novel, nineteenth-century English literature, as well as the theory and practice of translation. She has participated at several international conferences and published many articles, academic papers, and translations of both fiction and non-fiction.

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SPONSORS

BLUES BROTHERS BAR Nikšić, Montenegro

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