Gerald Vizenor presents in this anthology some of the best contemporary Native American Indian authors writing today. The five books from which these excerpts are drawn are published in the University of Nebraska Press' s Native Storiers series. This series introduces innovative, emergent, avant-garde Native literary artists and promotes a sense of survivance over the conventional themes of victimry, historical absence, cultural tragedy, and separation that often accompany Native characters in popular commercial fiction. These original narratives demonstrate a new and distinctive aesthetic in the literature of Native American Indians. The five Native authors in this anthology, drawing from the practices of traditional oral storiers, create an active sense of presence, both in the literary world, and the wider world of cultural studies.