Cultural Identity
by Andrew Peterson


"I think that a lot of the themes that Indian writers explore are universal," says novelist James Welch. "They're particularized to the Indian culture but they're universal, like the sense of searching for your identity or trying to figure out why a distance exists between you and your family, or your people."

 Although Welch, who is of Blackfeet and Gros Ventre ancestry, started out as a poet, he's best known today as one of this country's most important Native American novelists. While his first two books, Winter in the Blood, and The Death of Jim Loney, have been standard texts in Native American literature courses for some time, his more recent novels, Fools Crow and The Indian Lawyer, have earned him an increasingly wide readership.

 Welch sets his novels in the small Montana towns where he grew up, creating characters who embody both the hopeful and the despairing aspects of Indian life.

 "I have a responsibility not only to keep stories alive but to be as truthful and accurate as possible, not only in the historical or traditional sense, but also in the contemporary sense. That's just as valuable to me as passing along traditional stories," he says.

 Welch's foremost concern as a novelist is that he present Native American life as honestly as possible. "The most valuable reader response I get is from Indian people. And if they read my books and said, 'Well, gee, that's not the way it is.' I'd be pretty crushed," he says.

 Welch was born on the Blackfeet reservation but he also spent several years with his mother's tribe, the Gros Ventre, at Fort Belknap.

 "On the reservation I did attend ceremonies and pay attention to the stories. But I was kind of a marginal person and have remained so. We were not traditional Indians and I always felt very envious of people who had grown up in a traditional style," he says.

 During high school Welch left Montana to live in Minneapolis, an experience he says allowed him to return home with a broader perspective.

 "I think one of the most dramatic relationships for me is a sense of alienation," he says. "Somehow you feel alienated from your own family, or from your own culture, or both. How do you get back to that, or do you get back to it? Is the gap just too great?"

 The main characters in his novels always reflect back on some sort of traditional Native American beginnings--but with mixed emotions. In his earlier books particularly these characters tend to be destitute, sometimes alcoholic. He acknowledges that by depicting this side of Native American life he runs the risk of displeasing some readers. But while he doesn't want to overemphasize problems like alcoholism, he says he can't ignore them either.

 "You have to show Indians in all their manifestations. There are good Indians and there are bad Indians. Most Indians fall somewhere in between. So you can't treat them as an idealistic group of people who have learned to live with the land, with their culture and so on. Many of them have but many of them haven't. You have to treat Indians fairly, all the way across the board."

 Welch continues to stretch his range of writing. Having just finished writing the script for a documentary film about the Little Bighorn, he's now writing a nonfiction book on the same subject. He has another novel in the works, which he says will be different from his previous four.

 But for all of his success, James Welch hasn't lost touch with his roots. No matter how widely read his novels might be, his Native American readers still come first. "They're always looking over my shoulder, making sure that I'm getting it right," he says.