In the following essay excerpt, Krupat explains that while Native American literature contains a lot of Postcolonial attributes and ideologies, it should not be classified as Postcolonial literature because Colonialism sstill exists in the Americas.

In the current climate of literary studies, it is tempting to think of contemporary Native American literatures as among the postcolonial literatures of the world. Certainly they share with other postcolonial texts the fact of having, in the words of the authors of The Empire Writes Back, "emerged in their present form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial Centre." Yet contemporary Native American literatures cannot quite be classed among the postcolonial literatures of the world for the simple reason that there is not yet a "post-" to the colonial status...