This article examines competing views of representation and authorship regarding Native American communities in a variety of projects supported by the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), including the American Guide series and state-sponsored works. The author begins by briefly contextualizing the FWP's Native American projects within the shifting federal environment as a result of the Indian Reorganization Act. This article then turns to representations of Native communities within the American Guide series and discusses how editors relied on social sciences, particularly anthropology, to create what they considered "accurate" representations of Native American culture. The author also examines a selection of proposed acculturation studies and oral history projects sponsored by the FWP which concern culture change and persistence among various communities. This article concludes with an exploration of how individual fieldworkers used the Writers' Project as an opportunity to craft counter-narratives regarding Native communities, and how these acts of authoring shaped the community's own sense of history. (Contains 65 endnotes.)