Summary: My later chapters analyze how late twentieth-century American Indian authors have either appropriated, revised, or rejected the dominant images of the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee in order to define contemporary Native identities. I first look at Spokane/Coeur d'Alene author Sherman Alexie's body of poetry and fiction to investigate how Alexie—whose own ancestors did not participate in the Ghost Dance—employs dominant images of the Ghost Dance to construct pan-tribal resistance. I next analyze how Dakota author Susan Power—whose tribal ancestors were both participants in the Ghost Dance and victims of the Wounded Knee massacre—uncouples dance from tragedy by focusing instead on the Grass Dance, a war dance that promulgates tribal memory of heroism and resistance. This project, then, expands the study of ethnic representation and tribal identity in American Indian literature by highlighting how Native writers transform dominant images of the 1890 Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee massacre into new tribal stories of survival and resistance.