Geary Hobson
The Last of the Ofos
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000. Pp. 114. $29.95 $12.95

Nora Marks Dauenhauer
Life Woven with Song
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000. Pp. 135. $29.95 $16.95
Reviewed by Jennifer Andrews

Begun as a small literary journal in the 1970s, the Suntracks series, produced by the University of Arizona, has served a critical role in the publication and distribution of texts by contemporary Native American authors, producing handsome, high-quality works that have garnered increasing national and international attention. The Last of the Ofos by Geary Hobson and Life Woven with Song by Nora Marks Dauenhauer are two of the latest volumes to be released and attest to the continued strength of this series.

Hobson, an English professor at the University of Oklahoma who is a Cherokee-Quapaw/Chickasaw, has written a compelling novella about the Ofos, a Native American tribe whose descendants now reside among the Tunica-Biloxi. He is already a well-established Native writer and scholar, having produced a book of poetry (Deer Hunting and Other Poems) and edited an acclaimed anthology of contemporary Native American literature (The Remembered Earth). In The Last of the Ofos, Hobson draws on his childhood memories of living in Chicot County, Arkansas, near the Ofos, to create an intimate account of the last living member of the Ofo tribe through the character of Thomas Darko. Blending fiction and history, the novella follows Darko's life from childhood to death, describing the tribal traditions he inherited in his youth, his frustration with racism in rural schools, and his eventual careers as a bootlegger, U.S. Marine who served overseas, and even as a Hollywood extra. Hobson playfully resurrects Bonnie and Clyde, who cross paths with Darko during a bootlegging run, and even includes an obituary at the end of the novella, ostensibly excerpted from Contemporary Anthropology. But these comically postmodern touches are countered by the tangible loss of a living, breathing culture. In the most poignant scenes of the text, Darko reaches old age and finds himself sought after by the Smithsonian because of his unique knowledge of the Ofo language. This anthropological desire to preserve a dying tribal culture ironically fulfills Darko's father's prediction, expressed at the beginning of the narrative, that "pretty soon all us Indians gonna be gone" (12). What is perhaps most disturbing about Darko's relationship with the Smithsonian is the arrogance of the young academics who wish to learn from the old man but refuse to let him hold artifacts collected from the Ofos, because Thomas is not considered to be a "qualified specialist" (95). The latter part of the novella becomes a cautionary tale for Native and non-Native readers, an inside look at the demise of a tribe and the attitudes that have contributed to its disappearance.

Nora Marks Dauenhauer writes out of a somewhat different tradition, that of the Tlingit Indians who live primarily in southeastern Alaska. Born and raised in Alaska, where her family moved between seasonal subsistence sites, she spoke Tlingit exclusively until the age of eight, when she entered school and began to learn English. With this expertise, Dauenhauer has authored several important articles on the Tlingit language, dealing with transcription, translation, and explication. Her creative work has also flourished over the past two decades, with a first collection of poetry (The Droning Shaman) published in 1988. Life Woven with Song is a wonderfully diverse collection of prose, poetry, and plays that gives the reader intimate access to Tlingit life and traditions. Dauenhauer's text brings together prose narratives and photographs that describe salmon fishing and drying, tribal dancing, boat building, and childhood games, as well as the role of the Tlingit language and the church in her community. Written autobiographically, what might otherwise be dryly academic is made engaging through Dauenhauer's personalized and self-reflexive accounts of various important aspects of her life. The poetry that constitutes the middle section of the text combines powerful rhythms with the vivid recollection of individual family members as they try to balance Tlingit beliefs and practices with the arrival of Western machinery and medicines. Dauenhauer also pays tribute to the natural world and her dead ancestors with short, sharp lyrics. The three Raven plays, scripts that Dauenhauer adapted from oral narratives told by various storytellers in Tlingit, complete the volume. The scripts are juxtaposed with black and white photographs from various performances that give the texts an added richness. Dauenhauer has created a wonderful collection, one that counters the despair of Thomas Darko's narrative by giving readers access to a Native tribal language and culture that is very much alive, nurtured and celebrated by its members.