An occasion for giving

I GREW UP AS ONE OF THE FEW WHITES IN A LARGELY CHICANO NEIGHBORhood where all of the children-myself included-called anyone who took back a gift an "Indian giver." Not until much later did I become aware of the hypocritical inversions of the term, or of the ironies that attended our name-calling, given our respective histories. In Returning the Gift, Native writers make clear (for anyone who hasn't got it yet) exactly who took what from whom. As the speaker in Sherman Alexie's "Red Blues" asks, "What treaties can I sign now? I'd hold you to all your promises if I could find just one I know you'd keep " (3). At the same time as contributors point to the bad faith and false promises that accompanied the taking of Native lands and lives, they (re)claim the term "Indian giver." Witness, for example, these lines from Harold Littlebird's untitled poem about a family reunion: "Oh Grandfather! / In Love, for Giving / I give lovingly / For I am an Indian-Giver, returning. . ." (184). Returning the Gift is indeed "for Giving"; its writings are gifts that Native contributors give to non-Native readers as well to one another and to their respective and overlapping communities. The occasion for the anthology was the July 1992 Returning the Gift Festival, a 4-day conference in Oklahoma which, as anthology editor and conference co-organizer Joseph Bruchac notes, "brought more Native writers together in one place than at any other time in history" (xix).