SOURCE: Helford, Elyce Rae. “Going ‘Native’: Le Guin, Misha, and the Politics of Speculative Literature.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, no. 71 (autumn 1997): 77-88.

In the following essay, Helford examines Le Guin's “Buffalo Gals Won't You Come out Tonight,” finding it a “highly problematic cultural text, embedded in Anglo-Native American struggles over language, meaning, and culture; rich in the contradictions of the white, mainstream worldview through which it was written.”

Imagine—white Canadians and Americans telling Native stories because their governments outlawed Native languages and lifeways, and punished those of us who resisted.

(Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, p. 119)

If you want to write our stories, then be prepared to live with us.

(Maria Campbell, quoted in Keeshig-Tobias, p. 119)

Ursula K. Le Guin's “Buffalo Gals Won't You Come Out Tonight” (winner of both Hugo and World Fantasy Awards for 1987) grabs you emotionally and takes you for a fantastic ride. This...