What is known as the Native American Renaissance began in the 1970s. It is a cultural event whose name echoes another major cultural event this century, The Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance refers to the those years in the 1920s and 1930s when African Americans constituted themselves as a political and cultural force. Similarly, in the 1970s, American Indian populations established themselves as political and cultural forces with which to be reckoned. Leslie Marmon Silko is an important literary figure in this latter Renaissance.

Until the publication of her first novel, Silko's place within the Renaissance was that of a poet and consummate writer of short stories. Her reputation was bolstered upon the publication of Ceremony (1977), and attention from a wide range of critics followed from this. In fact, Silko's body of work was, by 1981, considered substantial and admirable enough to justify her receipt of a...