Off Native ground: Europe in contemporary American Indian poetry.

The relationship between Europeans and American Indians is normally conceptualized as one in which European gazes distort Native cultures, moulding them to fit the ideal of what Robert Berkhofer calls 'The White Man's Indian'. But in the past half-century it has increasingly been Native Americans who have been the gazing agents, and many Native poets have now set poems or entire collections of poetry in Europe. Examining poems from writers including Simon Ortiz, Jim Barnes, Drucilla Wall, Luci Tapahonso, Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie, Gerald Vizenor, Ralph Salisbury and James Thomas Stevens, I demonstrate that the Europe emerging from their work is, perhaps surprisingly, overwhelmingly seen as a place of welcome and pleasure - even when dark histories of colonization and Holocaust are recognized. Focusing on themes of land and hospitality, I argue that Native writers often use Europe as a space from which to critique American cultural hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]