SOURCE: "The Poetic Languages of Ray Young Bear," in Coyote Was Here: Essays on Contemporary Native American Literary and Political Mobilization, edited by Bo Schöler, Seklos, 1984, pp. 124-33.

In the following essay, Ruppert discusses Young Bear's poetic language, contending that it is "mediative," that it includes "a fusion of public and private voice," and that it "creates a persona in the process."

Contemporary American Indian writers are mediators. By that I do not mean that they are spokesmen or apologists for a cultural sphere, but rather that they are participants in two cultural and literary traditions. Through their work, they express amazing potential for synthesis and creation. They address two audiences—white and Indian, or maybe three—a local one, a pan-Indian one and a white one. This multiplicity of background and audience forces the work into a complex texture. In this complexity, the writer may utilize...