1970s: Silko's novel Ceremony (1977) was the first novel by a Native American woman ever to be published.

1990s: Several Native American women novelists have risen into prominence, including Paula Gunn Allen, whose first novel, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows, was published in 1983, and Louise Erdrich, whose first novel Love Medicine,

1970s: The Native American rights movement, first formally organized in 1968 as the American Indian Movement (AIM), was still in its early stages. Native Americans were concerned with such issues as the return of land stolen from them by the U.S. government, the return of cultural artifacts and human remains pillaged by white anthropologists and collectors and placed in museums; and the right to practice spiritual traditions on sacred ground, among many other concerns.

1990s: Although AIM was disbanded in the early 1980s, Native Americans in North America have met...