Bearheart, Gerald Vizenors first novel, overturns "terminal creeds" and violence in a decadent material culture. American civilization has collapsed and Proude Cedarfair, his wife, Rosina, and a bizarre collection of disciples, are forced on a pilgrimage when government agents descend on the reservation to claim their sacred cedar trees for fuel. The tribal pilgrims reverse the sentiments of Manifest Destiny and travel south through the ruins of a white world that ran out of gas. "[Vizenor] is perhaps the supreme ironist among American Indian writers of the twentieth century. Bearheart has become an underground classic." N. Scott Momaday Gerald Vizenor is the author of Wordarrows (1978), Earthdivers (1981), The Trickster of Liberty (1988), Interior Landscapes (1990), and Griever (1990).

Ranging in time and space from Madeline Island and the reservations of northern Minnesota to the urban reservation of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Vizenor recounts the experiences of the Chippewa and their encounters with the white people who "named" them. "Through some very funny moments, Vizenor raises serious questions for the pan-Indian movements and 'radical' academics. A teacher and scholar wishing to avoid and to correct the mistakes of twentieth-century scholarship in discussing 'Indians,' 'Native Americans' or 'Amerindians' would do well to begin with these stories; they are the strength of the Anishinaabeg." World Literature Today Gerald Vizenor is the author of Wordarrows (1978), Earthdivers (1981), The Trickster of Liberty (1988), Interior Landscapes (1990), Griever (1990), and Bearheart (1990).