American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In their literary quests for cultural survival, contemporary American Indian writers have transcended the victim role, which had left its marks on earlier periods of American Indian fiction. Today, new ways to understand mixed cultural origins and to reconcile differing beliefs are superseding notions of assimilation, “precolonial purity,” or mere resistance. A reading of James Welch’s novels, Winter in the Blood (1974), The Death of Jim Loney (1979), and The Indian Lawyer (1990) sheds light on this tendency. Welch’s protagonists, to a large degree, are able to reconcile the alienation that stems from living in contemporary U.S. society while drawing from traditions of a tribal past. They figure as cultural mediators who (re)connect with both levels of experience. There is a process of transformation that has the potential of creating a new and dynamic modern American Indian identity. Through his fictional characters, Welch emphasizes the theme of survival—not by idealizing a tribal past, nor by simply rejecting the dominant culture. Instead, survival remains very much a personal and individual quest. What is of interest in this context is how, by what means, and at what cost ethnicity is constructed and survival is achieved. If we accept a wider definition of the term survival—dissecting it into its physical, spiritual, and ethnic components—we can make out different strategies. Within the variety of “an”—not “the”—American Indian experience in contemporary American society, Welch has depicted three very different American Indian realities.