African is to Africa as Native American is to United States

I think Ngugi wa Thiong'o's essay presents little to be argued. I completely agree with him that African universities should dismantle the dominant emphasis there is on their English departments and instead focus on their own indigenous national literature and languages. I do agree with Ngugi when he writes that literature is not natural, nor does it impart truth and beauty, instead the content of our literature syllabus, its presentation, the machinery for determining the choices of texts and their interpretation were all an integral part of imperialism and domination in the colonial phase and now in the neo colonial phase. I believe this, especially for African countries. He is even more agreeable when he says that Africans should not discredit European or English lit and language, but that they should not be the dominant emphasis in that continent. Where things get interesting is when we bring this issue back to our country, the United States.

We are quick to present the issue of expanding our English departments to include (with significant emphasis) Post-colonial and World lit, but I think the issue really deals with Native American lit if we are going to talk about recognizing the literature and the languages of an oppressed minority in a country where white Europeans had invaded and colonized. Hello, what about the Native Americans? Did we forget them? They are our Africans, so to speak, if not in much smaller numbers. Yet even then, this shows the extent of how much weve oppressed them and then forgotten them; I dont even know how many Native Americans are still living in the US. It is easy to say that there probably isnt a lot of them because thats imperialistic thinking-- we have wanted to be rid of them and forget it-- but our own indigenous groups need to be recognized too, possibly before the Africans and Asians and Indians. I would be all for expanding our English departments to include Native American literature, and not just as this cute little side note of a week in appreciation for our indigenous groups, but rather a comprehensive panorama of how our ancestors shaped our country today. Truly, I feel like they have more than they are given credit for. We seem so sympathetic to the Africans and their literature-- there are whole schools devoted to it--but why dont we talk more about the Native Americans? That's what I want to know.