Overview

The word ""elegy"" comes from the Ancient Greek elogos, meaning a mournful poem or song, in particular, a song of grief in response to loss. Because mourning and memorialization are so deeply embedded in the human condition, all human societies have developed means for lamenting the dead, and, in ""That the People Might Live"" Arnold Krupat surveys the traditions of Native American elegiac expression over several centuries. Krupat covers a variety of oral performances of loss and renewal, including the Condolence Rites of the Iroquois and the memorial ceremony of the Tlingit people known as koo'eex, examining as well a number of Ghost Dance songs, which have been reinterpreted in culturally specific ways by many different tribal nations. Krupat treats elegiac ""farewell"" speeches of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in considerable detail, and comments on retrospective autobiographies by Black Hawk and Black Elk. Among contemporary Native writers, he looks at elegiac work by Linda Hogan, N. Scott Momaday, Gerald Vizenor, Sherman Alexie, Maurice Kenny, and Ralph Salisbury, among others. Despite differences of language and culture, he finds that death and loss are consistently felt by Native peoples both personally and socially: someone who had contributed to the People's well-being was now gone. Native American elegiac expression offered mourners consolation so that they might overcome their grief and renew their will to sustain communal life.

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Reviews

<p> 'That the People Might Live' retools with precision a troubling genre in Indigenous literature so that the elegy may continue to heal and renew originary nations. Searching and compassionate, Arnold Krupat leads us through the absorbing historical and cultural moments that called and continue to call for the elegiac voice, tempering his fine literary analysis of Indigenous loss with an eye to a defiant Indigenous presence. Sean Kicummah Teuton, University of Wisconsin Madison, author of Red Land, Red Power: Grounding Knowledge in the American Indian Novel

<p> 'That the People Might Live' retools with precision a troubling genre in Indigenous literature so that the elegy may continue to heal and renew originary nations. Searching and compassionate, Arnold Krupat leads us through the absorbing historical and cultural moments that called and continue to call for the elegiac voice, tempering his fine literary analysis of Indigenous loss with an eye to a defiant Indigenous presence. -Sean Kicummah Teuton, University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Red Land, Red Power: Grounding Knowledge in the American Indian Novel

Arnold Krupat is a deeply respected scholar. . . He has done much to help the world contextualize relationships between Native American literary voices and the American canon. . . a book that so powerfully details aspects of the Native American response to loss and death. Joy Porter, The Journal of American History, (March 2014)

<p> Arnold Krupat's central argument in 'That the People Might Live' is that there is a fundamental difference between the individualistic orientation of Western elegy and the expressions of a collective sense of loss and exile, which is designed not just to mourn but to allow the community as a whole to continue. -David Murray, University of Nottingham, author of Matter, Magic, and Spirit: Representing Indian and African American Belief

Author Information

Arnold Krupat is Professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of many books, including All that Remains: Varieties of Indigenous Expression and Red Matters: Native American Studies.

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