Aestheticizing a Political Debate:
Can the Creek Confederacy Be Sung Back Together?
Can the Creek Confederacy Be Sung Back Together?
Craig Womack, Emory University
Overview:
 |
Speaking at Emory University on
April 13, 2007, Dr. Womack explores the complex historical relationship
between African Americans and the Creek Confederacy through a close
reading of two short stories by Creek author Alexander Posey: "Uncle
Dick and Uncle Will" (1894) and "Uncle Dick's Sow"
(1900). |
Presentation Sections:
Aestheticizing a Political Debate: Can the Creek Confederacy
Be Sung Back Together?:
|
Part 1
(8:57 min.) |
Womack introduces his talk by reviewing
the relationship between Creeks and African Americans. After aligning
themselves with the Confederate States of America during the Civil
War, the Creeks were forced to admit their former slaves as full
tribal members in 1866. Over 130 years later, in 1979, the Creeks
voted to overturn this decision and in so doing, disenfranchised
black Creeks. This troubled relationship is a prominent subtext
of two short stories by Creek author Alexander Posey (1873-1908),
which feature two freedmen characters, "Uncle Dick" and
"Uncle Will." Womack discusses these two characters as
well as the intriguing figure of the sow, which he argues is a metaphor
for the Creek Confederacy itself. |
| Part 2
(12:41 min.) |
Womack continues his discussion
of Posey's short stories, arguing that the author uses Dick and
Will to represent the vexed relationships between Creeks and Freedmen.
His discussion revolves around the complex and multilayered reality
of race or ethnicity within the Creek Confederacy, in which "tremendous
genetic variability" exists. Womack examines another of Posey's
representations of the hybrid and ambiguous interrelationship between
Freedmen and Creeks in the story "Jes Bout a Mid'lin', Sah." |
| Part 3
(10:24 min.) |
While Posey's stories present African
Americans and Creeks as highly intertwined and interdependent, the
contemporary reality within the Creek Confederacy reflects a much
starker and more reductive view of these racial/ethnic categories.
Rather than arguing about whether the Freedmen’s descendents are
"really Creek" or not, Womack suggests that the Confederacy
would be better served by acknowledging "the commonalities
and interdependency" between the two groups. |
About Craig Womack:
Dr. Craig Womack is an Oklahoma Creek-Cherokee Native
American literary scholar, writer, and teacher. He received an MA in English
from South Dakota State University in 1991, and his PhD from the University
of Oklahoma in 1995. He is the author of Red on Red: Native American
Literary Separatism (1999), Drowning in Fire (2001), and
Reflections on Aesthetics (2008). He is co-author of American
Indian Literary Nationalism (2007) and Reasoning Together: The
Native Critics Collective (2008). At the time of this lecture, Prof.
Womack taught Native American literatures and gay and lesbian literatures
at the University of Oklahoma. He joined the English Department of Emory
University in the fall of 2007.
For another video lecture by Womack, visit "Baptists and Witches: Multiple Jurisdictions in a Muskogee Creek Story."
For another video lecture by Womack, visit "Baptists and Witches: Multiple Jurisdictions in a Muskogee Creek Story."
Presentation Sections:
