No, Lizzie, she isn't that important. You've been reading the press about her that her own people put out. If you critically go through page after page of Google search results you see (-YouTube) cut and paste accolades on sites selling her work or having her perform, but no original content written about her. There is very little critical or scholarly mention of her, in regard to her American Indian "authentic music" or spirituality. There is an article from 2007 in The Journal of New York Folklore that mostly again parrots remarks from music sites about Shenandoah's music. She participated in writing a children's book called Skywoman: Legends of the Iroquois and the "about the author" part of the overview (supplied by the author or publisher) says she "has also been recognized by the First Americans in the Arts Foundation, for preserving traditional values in the field of contemporary music." It sounds good until you realize that the tiny little First Americans.org site is dead, ranked 15,043,467 of existing web sites without a single hit in the Alexa index.

Look at it this way. Just because one is an American Indian, the product of your creative work could be said to be "Indian X" - Indian literature, Indian music, Indian art, whatever. But Martin Cruz Smith, who is Pueblo and Yaqui, doesn't write "American Indian literature," he writes popular fiction, American murder mysteries. He's a very successful American writer. He's not in a niche that includes any reference to his American Indian roots. The fact that though Shenandoah emphasizes her American Indian roots, you don't don't find American Indian scholars discussing her in any context. She doesn't register because she is a New Age niche performer.

My master's degree is in American Indian Literature. There is a lot of writing going on in the field that covers literature, arts, music, politics, and philosophy, and a lot of fighting about who is and isn't a "real" Indian. That fact that no one is fighting about her means she's off the radar. The fact that I don't write any more reviews about American Indian criticism and literature is because of all of the fighting, and you have to have some skin in that game to be fought over. She doesn't.

SRS