Re-Visioning Deer Woman
Re-Visioning Deer Woman

Summary/Abstract: “Evolution is a beautiful thing. To witness something grow, change, and move forward—is sacred,” says Patty Stonefish in her introduction to Deer Woman: An Anthology, a 2017 comic book edited by Elizabeth LaPensée and Weshoyot Alvitre. The Native works discussed in this article re-contextualize Deer Woman, a spirit found in the oral traditions of many Native American nations. They use literature and “sequential art” (Lee Francis IV) as vehicles for retelling old stories in a contemporary setting, have myth live on, and keep tradition alive and valid, rather than lodged in the past, “adding new layers of growth […] just as living trees do” (Bruchac 8). Non-Native cultural products continue to display the tension between “fixity” and “repeatability” (Bhabha 94-95) in the monstrous representation of the “Indian,” a product of the “wétiko” (cannibalistic) impulse of colonialism and patriarchy (Forbes 22). Multiple Native voices “revision”/“re-vision” (Osborn 261) Deer Woman to articulate criticism of the colonially-rooted construction of the Indigenous and employ her tricksterism to subvert static meaning and reclaim sovereignty.

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