Returning Home: Life Histories and the Native Community

Abstract Early life histories were written with little consideration of the native community as audience. Today's life histories make their way back to the native communities where they are sold to locals and tourists, absorbed into the school or community library, and even read. Publication of two life histories of Native American women invites reflection on how these books have been "read" in their native communities and their impact on their narrators and on native-initiated life-history research in these same communities. These works also raise the issue of whether anthropologist authors can write life histories for a culturally diverse audience or whether we must present life stories differently to the multiple audiences our works now address. (Life history interviewing and editing; issues of cultural representation; cross-cultural communication)