為了取代美洲原住民在歐洲文明中不可避免的原始野蠻人的觀念，詹姆斯•韋爾奇（James Welch），謝爾曼•阿列克謝（Sherman Alexie），杰拉爾德•維澤諾（GeraldVizenor）和布萊克•豪斯曼（BlakeHausman）等近代原住民作家都在尋求替代性敘事，藉由文化的融合來重新定義美洲原住民堅持的特性。這些敘述抵抗了純正和真實的誘人意識形態，從美洲原住民對過去、現在，和未來的創造性修改來補充當代經驗的現實主義版本，從而促進了美洲原住民的自決。這些作家皆尋找過去以作為一個潛在資源。本論文探討這些原住民作家於文化混合世界中尋找一個可用的過去，以抵抗霸權對於美洲原住民的錯誤解讀、文化盜用，以及物化。他們的文本使用這些資源來試圖想像文化的新形式、政治主權，甚至是烏托邦式的原住民生活。
第一章討論了韋爾奇在《愚人鴉》中如何與過去對峙，以便研究和修改文化記憶來揭示其中現在和未來的新可能性。第二章探討了謝爾曼•阿列克謝（Sherman Alexie）的悲觀觀點，即美洲原住民堅守保護區的生活現狀阻礙了維持傳統的機會，這樣的機會因大眾消費文化中的白人世界所滲透。第三章和第四章介紹了Vizenor和Hausman如何提出誘人的前景和變動中未來的威脅。Vizenor認為，美洲原住民傳統與其重塑自身的永恆能力不能被抑制。另一方面，豪斯曼(Hausman）探索了這些可能性，但同時警告我們隱藏在永久重新發明的過去的新危險。

To replace concepts of Native Americans as primitive savages inevitably superseded by European civilization, recent Native writers like James Welch, Sherman Alexie, Gerald Vizenor and Blake Hausman have sought alternative narratives to redefine Native people as persisting through cultural hybridity. These narratives disrupt seductive ideologies of purity and authenticity in order to promote Native self-determination by supplementing realist versions of contemporary experience with creative revisions of Indian pasts, presents and futures. These writers seek the past as a potential resource. This research argues that against the hegemony of Native Americans' cultural misrepresentation, appropriation, and objectification, these Native writers seek a usable past within a culturally hybrid world. Their fictions deploy these resources in attempting to imagine new forms of cultural and political sovereignty and even utopian forms of Native life.
The first chapter discusses how James Welch’s confrontation with the past in Fools Crow revisits cultural memory of the end of the Plains Indians’ autonomy to disclose fresh possibilities for the present and future. The second chapter considers Sherman Alexie's bleak view that the present conditions of Native life on and off the reservation block access to Native traditions within a white-dominated world saturated by popular consumer culture. The third and fourth chapters cover how Gerald Vizenor and Blake Hausman posit the alluring promise and threat of mutable Indian futures. Vizenor believes that the perpetual capacity of Native tradition for reinvention cannot be suppressed. Hausman, on the other hand, explores possibilities for renovation but at the same time warns us of the new dangers hidden in perpetual re-invention of the past. Although each with a different focus, these authors demonstrate that despite Native Americans' ambivalent situation in the hybrid world (the U.S.A), resistance in Native American culture is an on-going endeavor concealed within their traditions, seeking their cultural and political rights.