Roanoke and Wampum

The Author: Ron Welburn (Cherokee/Assateague-Gingaskin) is Associate Professor of English and Director of Native American Indian Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A member of MELUS and Wordcraft Circle of Native Authors, he is a widely published reviewer and poet, as well as a veteran jazz critic. Dr. Welburn is active with humanities council teacher workshops.

«The legacy of our people is one of loss, survival, and hope. Ron Welburn weaves these elements into a powerful, well-researched exploration of the American Indian spirit in ‘Roanoke and Wampum’. His thought-provoking essays and poetry not only reflect the musicality and patterns of Native life – past, present, and future – they compel Indian, as well as non-Indian readers to search beyond contradictions, scholarly theories, and cultural boundaries and uncover new perspectives on American Indian literature, history, and oral traditions. Expect to experience a broad spectrum of emotions from X Brands’s tongue-in-cheek to the tragedy of the ‘American Indian Middle Passage’ in this ‘must read’ book.» (Sierra Adare (Cherokee/Choctaw), Visiting Fellow, Cornell University; Author of ‘Takeover of the Andrew Jackson Reading Room‘)«’Roanoke and Wampum: Topics in Native American Heritage and Literatures’ is, in my estimation, a remarkable collection of essays. So far, the field of literary criticism, within the realm of contemporary Native American literature, is somewhat sparse – most particularly so of works produced by Native American authors. Professor Welburn, a contemporary Native American poet and scholar, is eminently qualified for this task which he has not only undertaken, but which he has completed most impressively. His essays in the collection entitled ‘Homecoming Discourse’, in which the category of indigenous fiction is introduced and elucidated, is very much in the vein of two current major Native American literary critical theorists – Greg Sarris and Robert A. Warrior. As a Native American author myself, I welcome such works, and especially now Ron Welburn’s, which examine our literature from within, thus avoiding the usual ‘from without’ methodology that is the general bailiwick of the detached, ‘objective’, and always ‘outsider’, non-Native scholar.» (Gary Hobson (Cherokee/Quawpaw/Chickasaw), Professor of English and Native American Studies, University of Oklahoma; Editor of ‘The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature’)