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Abstract
This paper attempts to analyse how Gerald Vizenor unveils in his Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart the rich, complex, and contradictory experiences inherent in the Native-American oral literatures. In this novel, Proude Cedar air, the trickster shaman along with his circus caravan engages in the act of ritual quest and journeys from Wisconsin to New Mexico when there is a cultural loss in the area where they lived due to the depletion of energy resources. His journey begins in the third world which evil spirits have powered with disrespect for the living and the fear of death. He successfully reaches the fourth world by outwitting the evil spirits by moving backward in time and using the languages of animals and birds. The dilemma experienced by Native-American writer Vizenor stemming from the conflict between the myth of an invented Indian and a reality related to peripherality, cultural denigration, displacement and suppression has led them to seek meaning in their own traditional oral narratives.