The Wíčazo Ša Review ("Red Pencil" in Lakhota) is a bi-annual interdisciplinary journal of Native American Studies. Dedicated to the mission of assisting Indigenous peoples across the Americas, the Wíčazo Ša Review compiles inquiries into the Indigenous past and its integral relationship to the present. It is devoted to the development of Native American Studies as an academic discipline, and the emergence of the Indigenous American voice.
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Founded in 1985 by editors Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Roger Buffalohead, and William Willard, the Wíčazo Ša Review was created to cultivate the emergence of Native American Studies as an academic discipline .
American Indian and Native American Studies programs have become centers for Indigenous peoples seeking to define the religious, cultural, legal and historical parameters of scholarship and creativity essential to the ongoing process of decolonization and to survival in the modern world. The Wíčazo Ša Review supports this scholarship, thus serving as an instrument to help Indigenous peoples of the Americas regain possession of their own intellectual and creative pursuits.
Wíčazo Ša Review is published by the University of Minnesota Press, which acquired it in 1999. When founded it was published at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington, under the guidance of the university's Native American Studies center. Issues include essays, articles, interviews, reviews, poems, short stories, course outlines, curriculum designs, scholarly research and literary criticism reflective of Native American Studies and related fields.
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn is a member of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe. Born in 1930, she retired from her academic career as a professor of Native American Studies in 1993 at Eastern Washington University. A poet, essayist, novelist and editor, Cook-Lynn's strong views on Native American politics and tribal sovereignty have been controversial.
William Willard, a continuing guest editor of the Review, is a professor emeritus in the departments of Comparative American cultures and Anthropology at Washington State University. His main focuses include American Indian literature, the renaissance of American Indian religion, the evolution of tribal government and the development of inter-American indigenous alliances.
Vine Deloria, Jr. is a Native American author, historian and activist of the Yankton band of the Nakota Nation.
Joy Harjo is a poet, musician and author of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma.
Thomas King is a Canadian novelist and broadcaster of Cherokee, Greek and German descent. He most often writes about Canada's First Nations.
Simon Ortiz, a Native American poet from the Acoma Pueblo tribe has been a key figure in the second wave of the Native American resistance.
Gerald Vizenor is a prominent Native American writer of Anishinaabe heritage and a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation.
Ray Young Bear is a Native American poet of Meskwaki ancestry, from the Black Eagle Child Settlement in Iowa. He writes primarily about the dislocation of Native Americans who are being pulled by two different cultures, often switching between English and the Meskwaki language to fully express himself.
James Riding In, the current editor, is a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. He is also a professor of Justice Studies and American Indian Studies at Arizona State University, where he played a large role in the department's development.
Susan A. Miller, the Associate Editor, is from the Tiger Clan and Tom Palmer Band of the Seminole Nation. Trained as a historian at the University of Oklahoma and University of Nebraska, she focuses on the decolonization of indigenous nations. She is also a member of the faculty of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University.