Early Indigenous Literatures

SN-P5

Just as the years 1492 and 1892, situated above and below the wampum belt, assert temporal copresence between the first encounter of Indigenous peoples with Europeans, here depicted as Christopher Columbus, so too does the illustration on the cover. Rather than allowing the willful ignorance of fairgoers to proliferate, to continue to allow them to imagine colonization and dispossession as something relegated to the past, Pokagon forces this continuity, this copresence into the foreground of the Indigenous materials he offers for white audiences.

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