Last reviewed: June 2017
Ojibwe novelist, poet, journalist, short-story writer, and scholar
October 22, 1934
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Gerald Vizenor is often recognized as the most innovative writer of Native American fiction ever to put pen to paper. Born to Clement William Vizenor and LaVerne Lydia Peterson Vizenor, he was raised in Minneapolis from the age of two primarily by his father’s family (originally from the White Earth Reservation), following the unsolved murder of his father. After weathering a less than ideal childhood, tempered by Anishinaabe trickster tales, Vizenor joined the National Guard at fifteen and the Army at eighteen.
Stationed in Japan for several important formative years, he returned to civilian life in 1955 and began college at New York University. He transferred to the University of Minnesota the next year, where he earned a B.A. in 1960. In 1959 he married Judith Horns, with whom he had a son, Robert Vizenor; in 1969, they were divorced. He married Laura Hall in 1981. During the early 1960’s, Vizenor first began to write about the problems faced by city-dwelling Native Americans. His inside perspective as a social worker, his community activism and journalism, and his report on the trial of Thomas James White Hawk eventually led him to work as a Minneapolis Tribune reporter. He moved north temporarily to direct the Indian Studies Program at Bemidji State University in 1971–1972 and studied at Harvard University in 1973 before returning to the Tribune as a staff and editorial writer. Gerald R. Vizenor
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In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Vizenor taught at both Berkeley and the University of Minnesota, and then at Tianjin University, China. In 1984 he returned to Berkeley, leaving for the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1987 and serving as provost of Kresge College in 1989–1990. He then held the David Burr Chair of Letters at the University of Oklahoma before returning again to Berkeley, in 1992, as professor of Native American literature. Over the course of more than seven years, he was the editor of the American Indian Literature and Critical Studies series (which he founded) for the University of Oklahoma Press. Vizenor eventually moved to the University of New Mexico, from which he retired.
First published as a poet in 1960 and renowned for his haiku, Vizenor is probably best known for his novels, perhaps better described as colorful tapestries of strangely talented characters and trickster figures. Additionally, through his large body of nonfiction, Vizenor has contributed immeasurably to modern American ethnic studies, notably in his unceasing efforts to define in dynamic—as opposed to static—terms what it means to be Native American. Appropriately, he has coined the term “crossblood” to signify people of mixed Native American and immigrant ancestry. As Native American and post-immigrant American identities continue to evolve, that concept becomes increasingly relevant.
Although incensed by the many abuses Native Americans have endured, Vizenor has nonetheless never embraced either violence or victim status. Indeed, his own accounts from the early 1970’s, published initially as reportage in the Minneapolis Tribune and later in works such as Interior Landscapes, reveal the often-comic ineptitude of many self-styled revolutionary radicals: Most are described as city-bred opportunists with little real understanding of the ideals, language, and culture of the various rural tribal peoples they have attempted, often inaccurately, to represent. In startlingly fresh style, Vizenor resolves conflicts with humor, skewering radical wannabes, mainstream media materialists, and nabobs of new-age philosophizing left and right, often directing his sharpest gibes—as he does in Manifest Manners—at all who continue to invent and perpetuate the publicly accepted mythic and romanticized images of Native Americans. His novel Chancers embodies most of these characteristics, taking on the topic of the repatriation of Native American bones from museums in a tale that involves tricksters, human sacrifice (of professors by graduate students), resurrected spirits, and more.
Although his work is often challenging to read, his appeal should prove enduring, for his writing illuminates the perils and passions not only of Native Americans but also of all people. His ironic humor, artistically subtle wordplay, unusual plot twists that blur boundaries between the real and the imaginary, and odd characters living in a frustratingly capricious world have won for him an enthusiastic following among readers of postmodern American literature. Throughout his writing, but especially in his fiction, Gerald Vizenor reveals himself as the pre-eminent literary trickster of modern American authors.
Vizenor has gained critical attention for his literary contributions over the years. Among Vizenor's numerous honors are the American Book Award (1988), PEN Oakland's Josephine Miles Award (1991, 1996), the Native Writers Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award (2001), a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association (2005), and the MELUS Lifetime Achievement Award (2010).
In addition to continuing to pen novels, works of nonfiction, and poetry, Vizenor remains active in the native community. In 2009, he participated in the White Earth Nation's constitutional conventions and wrote its new constitution, which was adopted in 2013. He followed up that experience with a book containing the draft and essays about the process, as well as the satirical novel Treaty Shirts, involving issues of governance in the White Earth Nation in the 2030s. Vizenor is also an honorary council member of the Minnesota Historical Society.