Native American Resistance to Euro-American Hegemony: A Cultural Materialist Critique of Momaday’s the Indolent Boys

Abstract

This study analyzed N. Scott Momaday’s play The Indolent Boys in order to bring the marginalized Native Americans and their literature into centre and to explore the Natives’ resistance to Euro-American hegemony from the perspective of cultural materialism especially hegemony. Cultural materialism tends to challenge hegemony of the dominant culture and ideology because it deals with ‘genuine dissidence’. Employing methodology of cultural materialism and method of Dollimore and Sinfield’s model (1985), this study explored how the Euro-Americans exercise their hegemony over the Native Americans and how the Natives resist to the Euro-American hegemony through imaginative revival of Native culture in the mainstream American society. There are four traits of Dollimore and Sinfield’s model i.e. historical context, close textual analysis, theoretical method, and political commitment. Findings of this study were: employing ‘historical context’ of this model, exploration of hegemony of the state (U.S. government) and academy (the Boarding schools); using ‘close textual analysis’, investigation of the hegemonic position of the Euro-Americans that marginalized the Natives; and utilizing ‘political commitment’, exploration of the resistance of the Natives to the Euro-American hegemony through Momaday’s political purpose of the revival of the Natives’ culture in the mainstream American society from his play The Indolent Boys.