Professor Cheryl Walker Native American Literature November 9, 2000 Do Lesson Plan Read and Listen Expert Session

How did Native Americans view the United States in the 19th century? Professor Cheryl Walker of Scripps College is an expert on the writings of 19^th century Native Americans.

Cheryl Walker, author of Indian Nation: Native American Literature and 19^th century Nationalisms will be chatting with students online about the writings of figures such as William Apess, Black Hawk, George Copway, John Rollin Ridge, and Sarah Winnemucca and more. In addition to her expertise in these areas, Professor Walker wrote The Nightingale's Burden: Women Poets and American Culture Before 1900 and will be available to discuss the role of women in the 19^th century and their writings as well.

Professor Walker is the Richard Armour Professor of Modern Languages and former Director of the Humanities Institute and the English Department at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Her interests in this project were sparked while teaching courses about American identity and its many variations. Presently, Professor Walker teaches a course on Race and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature for undergraduates, but her audience is much wider than that. She has lectured on Native American issues and other topics to community groups, postdoctoral seminars, American Literature Association members and American Studies scholars.

Professor Walker wants people to realize that Indians ARE Americans and that the whole notion of American identity is to some extent founded on a conception of the Indian native. According to Walker, we tend to think of minorities as "outside the circle" or opposed to the American culture, but she would like us to think of Native Americans as "the outsider inside," as people who have been forcibly alienated from America's European roots and yet have been and still are deeply involved in the very fabric of American life.

Professor Walker is interested in emergent literatures composed by people who have been traditionally excluded from the canon and welcomes questions in all areas of her research and writing. Cheryl Walker makes it her job to help Americans hear the voice of Native Americans and women especially. She feels their voices have an urgency and, "at their best, a power that comes from having something really important to say; something which is simultaneously personal, political, and literary."