Collaboration in the Translation and Interpretation of Native American Oral Traditions

During the summer of 1992 we sent out a call to scholars to submit work for a special issue of this journal. Our letter of invitation suggested some assumptions we brought to this project. We wrote: We are interested in publishing a group of essays that share several features: 1) presentation of Native American text(s) with commentary, 2) joint authorship that represents collaborative research on the text(s), and 3) reflections on the way collaborative research worked (or did not) in this instance. In more general terms, we would like to publish essays that explore dimensions of perspective, discovery, and meaning which emerge when Native and non-Natives work together on Native oral texts. The scholarship we wish to publish will not be based merely on “cooperation” between working scholars and “friendly ” Natives, nor, we hope, will it repeat that all-too-familiar division of labor: “you perform—we interpret.” Rather, the work we seek will question such commonplace oppositions as “scholar ” and “Native, ” “investigator ” and “informant. ” It will take u