Choctaw Tales: An Interview with LeAnne Howe

LeAnne Howe, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Eidson Distinguished Professor of American Literature in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia, writes poetry, fiction, screenplays, plays, creative non-fiction and critical essays. Her work is primarily concerned with the experiences and the perspectives of American Indian people and communities. Howe’s latest book, Choctalking on Other Realities (2013), which she describes as “three parts memoir, one part tragedy, one part absurdist fiction, and one part ‘marvellous realism’”, received the inaugural Modern Language Association Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures and Languages in 2014. Along with being the recipient of a United States Artists (USA) Ford Fellowship, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, Howe also received the 2015 Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award, a prize that “honours transformative contributions to the field of Western American literary studies.” Howe’s writing could easily be described as enlivening, eclectic and often hectic, and, more often than not, she brings together a plethora of stories concerning the historical and contemporary experiences of the Choctaw nation. Various geographical, spiritual, familial and narratological spaces are revealed or plotted during the course of Howe’s narratives, and, as a consequence, images that relate to the act of mapping, the basis of storytelling, and the subject of community and place become recurring motifs throughout her writing. Concerned with the ways in which Choctaw lifeways have been mapped out across time, Howe appears to be especially interested in the representation of travel, exchange, contact, and consumption not only in pre-contact and post-contact America, but within the global village

Recognition, Resilience & Relief: The Meaning of Gift

“Recognition, Resilience and Relief” provides an interpretation of the ways in which the gift demonstrates that the tribe was not only acknowledging the Irish and their plight, but was also relating to Padraig Kirwan hopes to show that the recognition revealed in the Choctaw Nation's gift to the Irish in 1847 came to be associated with deep senses of empathy, connection, and appreciation as well as the forms of political and cultural autonomy that come with sovereignty. By closely examining the newspapers of the day, and by considering the analogies and synergies that the Choctaw and the Irish often made and generated between them, he argues that the gift has become a powerful placeholder for both communities pride in their own sense of charity, internationalism, resilience, and spirit

Introduction

The remarkable story of the gift sent by the Choctaw to the Irish in 1847 is one that is often told and remembered by people in both nations. Famine Pots came to life in the bid to honor that extraordinary gift, and to provide some context and consideration; it has long been our intention to examine what might be called the deep ecology of the relationship between the Choctaw and the Irish. We hope that this book initiates conversations and considerations, not least because we believe that this connection deserves further, sustained attention

An Exploratory Study of the Implementation of an Energy Management Information System using an Adapted Adaptive Structuration Theory Model

Oil prices globally have risen 500% since 1999. Ireland will have to pay €1.45bn in penalties next year and up to €4.3bn by 2012, as CO2 emissions are currently 23% over the agreed Kyoto allowances. Over the next 25 years, population and economic growth will cause global energy needs to increase by approximately 50%. Consequently, Energy Efficiency (EE) has become an essential part of most organisations. This paper reports on research-in-progress which explores the implementation of an Information System (IS), which is used to manage and monitor energy usage and implement energy efficiencies within several organisations. Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) provides the conceptual model that helps to capture the longitudinal change process. There is currently no published research in the area of IS implementation investigating an energy management system using AST. Preliminary results show that stricter imperatives to adopt the IS will not necessarily lead to a successful system

Remapping Place and Narrative in Native American Literature: David Treuer's "The Hiawatha"

David Treuer's 1997 novel, "The Hiawatha," engages the traditional literary strategies employed by Native American writing, compares those strategies to earlier narratives (Native American and canonically American), offers a reassessment of indigenous novelistic structures, engages critical responses to tribal fiction, and does so in response to current discursive debate within the field of Native American literary studies. In this essay, the author aims to explicate Treuer's use of that style and how this usage facilitates a fresh sense of space within Native American fiction. Most particularly, this essay will examine a sense of space that makes palpable the potential directions open to tribal literatures and attendant criticism while remapping existing images of place and subverting notions of homecoming

Recognition, Resilience, and Relief: The Meaning of Gift

Winner of the Fishkin Prize 2021

Transatlantic Irishness: Irish and American Frontiers in Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy

Much has been written about the manner in which Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy explores Irish identity on the island of Ireland. This essay examines the novel from an international perspective, paying particular attention to the novel's transatlantic imagery and its intertextual relationship with Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Kirwan argues that McCabe locates Ireland in a global context, and does so in order to deconstruct notions of a quaint or insular Irishness, to examine stories concerning Irish marginality in the United States, and to interrogate overlapping narratives of nation and identity that connect Ireland and America

‘Mind the Gap’: Journeys in Indigenous Sovereignty and Nationhood

Sovereignty. Self-determination. Autonomy. Nation. Native American studies is currently being shaped dramatically by this particular set of terms, and the prevailing discourse aims to interrogate not only various senses of tribal self-determination, but also earlier formulations of cultural, spiritual, political, and artistic autonomy. Indeed, the publication of myriad nuanced and substantial works of scholarship focusing on the subject of sovereignty alone is testament to the critical role that definitions of indigenous self-determination and authority play within the field today. Inevitably, perhaps, it is also the case that the definition of the terms mentioned above, and the application of those terms to any particular set of circumstances in Indian Country, is not entirely a straightforward affair. Nor, given the seriousness of the matter in hand, should it be. On the contrary, the values that a state of sovereignty affords a Native individual or tribe is a complex and multifaceted matter, and should be understood as such. For that reason, while it is vital to prioritize the benefits of tribal independence, it is also necessary to take note of the diverse nature of a range of issues that inform current conversations about indigenous homelands, tribal self-government, and various forms of Native sovereignty. The purpose of this essay is to consider that diversity in situ, and to raise some important questions about the possibility — and effectiveness — of signalling our international support for indigenous communities as they seek to enact and express various forms of sovereignty and nationhood