Native American Autobiography

In studying the autobiographies of Native Americans, most scholars have focused on as-told-to life histories that were solicited, translated, recorded, and edited by non-Native American collaborators—that emerged from “bicultural composite authorship”. Limiting their studies to such written documents, these scholars have overlooked traditional, preliterate modes of communicating personal history. In addition, they and writing that underlie the concept of an autobiography—that indeed constitute the English word’s root meaning.

The idea of self was, in a number of pre-contact Native American cultures, markedly inclusive: identity was not merely individual, but also relational to a society, a specific landscape, and the cosmos. Within these cultures, the expression of life experiences tended to be oriented toward current events: with the participation of fellow one person might require the enactment of that vision in the form of a tribal pageant.

One can view as autobiographical the elaborate tattoos that symbolized a warrior’s valorous deeds, and such artifacts as a decorated shield that communicated the accomplishments and aspirations of its maker, or a robe that was emblazoned with the pictographic history of the wearer’s battles and was sometimes used in reenactments. Also autobiographical, of its owner, who was often assisted in the painting by other tribal members.

A tribe would, then, have contributed to the individual’s narrative not merely passively, by its social codes and expectations, but actively by joining in the expression of that narrative. Such intercultural collaboration may seem alien to the European style of autobiography, yet any autobiography is shaped by its creator’s ideas about the additionally have been shaped by the cultural perspectives of the people who transmitted them.