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Relationship between culture and identity
Relationship between culture and identity
How culture influences children's experiences and lives
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Adrian C. Louis’ novel, Skins, is a caricature of Native American Reservation life. In broad sweeping strokes, Louis paints a picture of impoverished, overweight, drunk Indians. His protagonist, Lt. Rudy Yellow Shirt, serves as a ‘could-be’ hero who falls into an increasingly criminal lifestyle as he tries to avenge his people. Through the life of Rudy, the plights of Native American people are detailed over and over again. Louis embraces stereotypes in his characterizations of both Native Americans and whites.
We grow on stories. Stories we tell, stories we hear. The private and the public one just like our stories and the others’. As social animals, these stories we hear and tell link us. Thomas King’s book, The Truth About Stories: A Native narrative, tells us all kind of stories.
For any lover of classic Western films, it is only natural that the Indians are the bad guys of the story every single time. However, the characters of the novel, especially the young and innocent ones, felt the after effects of the negative stigma surrounding their culture due to cowboy versus Indian culture. Thomas King knows the power of this
Jackson Jackson is a homeless Spokane Indian that happened upon his Grandmothers Indian dance regalia at a pawn shop. Jackson continuously throughout the story displays internal struggles and conflicts (the struggle that shapes the plot in the story) between battling alcoholism and making poor behavior choices that work against his quest to earn money to retrieve the regalia to reclaim a part of his family heritage. Jackson has an internal desire to want to do right, but his poor choices that he exhibits contribute to his persona to solidify his choice to embrace social alienation. The poor choice’s Jackson makes alienate him from society but also drives his desire to belong to a group. Indians are often displaced, which is a common theme that is shared among Indians is their loss of land, heritage, culture and independence. Examining Jackson’s antics, his associations
One’s perspective is affected by their environment, their surroundings, and the culture they choose to adapt. Due to everybody’s unique cultural identity, we are all different, however, to others, one might be viewed as simple-minded or alien, as shown in “An Indian Father’s Plea”. An example from the essay would be “...I can't understand why you have already labeled him a ‘slow learner’ ”. The son was stereotyped because he is different, darker, and unlike the other ‘white’ children. Both part of distinct culture, the Indians and white people, were educated and nourished differently.
“If we want to live at peace with ourselves, we need to tell our stories” (3). In Richard Wagamese’s novel, “Indian Horse”, a man named Saul Indian Horse is introduced and he tells his story. He faces a lot of hardships on his journey, including racism, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. He is exposed to violence multiple times. Saul’s experiences help readers understand what it is like as an Indigenous person growing up in Canada.
This is especially important as True Son learned in his youth that only Whites are devilish enough to scalp Women and Children. True Son is conflicted on whether to be proud of his Indian chief or to feel compassion for the little girl who lost her life to True Son’s family. This ignites the biggest psychological issue for True Son, an identity crisis. Feeling less and less like an Indian at heart, True Son hasn’t yet fully turned to the Whites. He’s stuck in a grey area where he doesn’t know who he his and what he stands for.
The novel illustrates True Son's struggle with his dual identity as a white-raised Native American and the tension it creates between both cultural groups, ultimately causing him to become an enemy to both and leaving him to question where his true loyalty and sense of self lies. True Son’s struggle with his identity is obvious in his own conflict between his two cultural devotions. He was raised as a member of the Lenni Lenape tribe and
The primal instinct of human beings is still felt unconsciously in modern day. The inner workings of modern society’s human psyche and the tribal mentality of the early colonial Native Americans, clash and create conflict. The tribal mentality that Sebastian Junger describes in his novel Tribe seems to be inescapable once experienced. Junger explores the mindset of the Native American and portrays it as irresistible.
The book focuses on a young boy named Arnold Spirit who shows persistence and bravery as he defies all odds and strides towards a happier more successful life than his parents and ancestors before him. Arnold is a bright, inspiring young boy who grows up with little fortune and is destined to continue down the path of a poor, misunderstood Indian. However, his fate changes for the better when a spark lights the fire inside of him to strive to pursue a better, more flourishing life as he makes an extraordinary decision to transfer to an all-white school for a worthier education. However, the drastic change of schools puts a burden on his family to get him to school as well as leads to extreme bullying from not just kids at his new school but also from his fellow Indians in his hometown. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I learned that it doesn 't matter what your situation is and what you are expected to accomplish in your lifetime or what standards have already been set for you because you can be whoever you want to be with hard work, ambition, and confidence.
In The Light in the Forest by Conrad Richter the main character is True Son, and he primarily struggles in a man versus society conflict, he is taken from his Indian family to join with his real family which he does not remember. When True Son was first taken from his Indian family and reunited with his real family he acted like an Indian, looked like an Indian and talked in the Indian language. His white family wanted him to change and act like a normal white man, look like a white man, and talk in English. True Son has lived with the Indian since he was four and was used to their ways of life. When his white family wanted him to change the way he acted, it was not very easy.
In his book the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie portrays a teenage boy, Arnold Spirit (junior) living in white man’s world, and he must struggle to overcome racism and stereotypes if he must achieve his dreams. In the book, Junior faces a myriad of misfortunes at his former school in ‘the rez’ (reservation), which occurs as he struggles to escape from racial and stereotypical expectations about Indians. For Junior he must weigh between accepting what is expected of him as an Indian or fight against those forces and proof his peers and teachers wrong. Therefore, from the time Junior is in school at reservation up to the time he decides to attend a neighboring school in Rearden, we see a teenager who is facing tough consequences for attempting to go against the racial stereotypes.
Many people are influenced into finding their own identity. Our values, morals, and beliefs are followed by our life choices we make in becoming who we are. In the stories, “Arm Wrestling With My Father”, by Brad Manning and “Looking For Work” by Gary Soto share relationships where they are unable to find themselves. In the story “Arm Wrestling With My Father”, Manning reviews his relationship with his father. Also, in “Looking For Work”, by Soto tells a story about a nine-year old Mexican American boy who isn’t interested in his family’s culture.
When his second grade teacher calls him “indian, indian, indian,” Victor says, “Yes, I am. I am Indian. Indian, I am” (Alexei 173). The conversation portrays parallelism in that Victor’s repetition echoes the way his teacher repeats “Indian”. Alexei’s use of a capitalization change portrays Victor’s desire to identify as Indian while the white community tries to assimilate him.
In all the different tribes, none of the women are seen as less than the men, however in European culture at the time, the women were seen as weak and lesser beings. Gunn Allen tackles this issue using ethos logos and pathos by appealing to the readers through logic, emotion and her personal experiences. With Ethos Gunn Allen makes herself a credible source by mentioning that she is a “half breed American Indian woman. ”(83) making her story worth paying attention to rather than if it were a story by an outsider who truly has nothing to do with the American Indian women.
