EDITOR’S NOTE

Gerald Vizenor is a canonical Native writer and theorist whose playfully-deployed neologisms have become fixtures of scholarship and discussion. Rey M. Rodríguez, Hunter Wienke, and I had the opportunity to conduct a long interview with Professor Vizenor, in which he reflects on his writing life, his academic life, and contemporary political and theoretical problems. My idea to publish a concordance alongside our interview is meant as a tribute to the living force of Vizenor’s unique conceptual constellations.

 Navigating the concordance is simple. Each quote is followed by a parenthetical citation, in which the first number refers to the interviewer (1=Rodriguez, 2=Wienke, 3=Dayzie) and the second number refers to the question (as it appears in the interview text itself). For example, one of the concordance entries “On SURVIVANCE” features Vizenor’s provocative claim “Natives might consider that the creative literature of survivance, mockery, irony, and strategic satire outshine the early theories of postmodernism.” (2.3) The parenthetical citation (2.3) shows that Vizenor’s claim was in response to the second interviewer Hunter Wienke’s third question.

 I hope that the interactive nature of this interview and concordance format provides a new way of appreciating the depth and interconnectedness of Vizenor’s critical terminology and historical insight. I am grateful to Gerald Vizenor for his time and wisdom, and to Oona Uishama Narváez and Bhavna Mehta for turning the vision of the format into a reality.