Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance

Author: Gerald Vizenor

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (1999)

Gerald Vizenor counters the cultural notions of dominance, false representations, and simulations of absence, and, by documents, experience, and theories, secures a narrative presence of Native Americans.

"Combining postmodern and postcolonial cultural theories with the comic wisdom of the tribal trickster, Vizenor analyzes aspects of contemporary Native American culture. He eschews what he terms 'terminal creeds,' that is, views of Native Americans that fix them in a certain cultural pose—usually established by anthropologists and romanticizers —and out of which they can never evolve without destroying their identity. . . .[Vizenor is] the foremost postmodern theorist of Native American literatures and cultures."

–San Francisco Chronicle