Lullaby

Like many literary movements, the “Native American Renaissance” is a loosely defined period of history; writers and literary works associated with the movement span the late 1960s to the late 1990s. The term itself is sometimes problematic because it implies that a period of time existed when Native Americans were not engaged in the arts.

Literary works from this era tend to share a similar set of concerns. These concerns include the pressure felt by Native Americans to assimilate into white American society and the difficulty of preserving indigenous culture in the face of those demands. “Lullaby,” for instance, concerns one important way that forced assimilation impacts families: the removal of Native American children from their parents’ custody. Although this practice had culminated in the establishment of Native American boarding schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it continued in various guises long after the schools were founded; prior to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, Native American children were likely to be taken from their families and placed in foster care, just as Ella and Danny are in “Lullaby.”

Silko’s work also resembles that of other Native American Renaissance-era writers in its ambition to capture a distinctly Native American mode of storytelling.