Chancers
Gerald Robert Vizenor
University of Oklahoma Press
Centered on the volatile issue of the repatriation of  Native American skeletal remains, CHANCERS follows a group of student  Solar Dancers who set out to resurrect Native remains housed in the  Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California,  Berkeley.    Possessed by the demonic wiindigoo, a mythic monster, the Solar  Dancers, in a gruesome ritual, sacrifice faculty and administrators  associated with the collection and storage of Native remains.  The  Dancers replace stored Native skulls with those of the academics, and  the resurrected Natives become the Chancers.    The Round Dancers, humane and erotic trickster figures, are natural  opponents of the morbid Solar Dancers.  The war between the two groups  comes to a comic conclusion at a graduation ceremony attended by  Pocahontas, Phoebe Hearst, Alfred Kroeber, the anthropologist, Ishi,  the Native who actually lived and worked in the university museum, and  many Chancers.