Bird Songs Don T Lie By Gorden Lee Johnson

Antonio Gutierrez Professor Nolan ENG-001A-1199 English Composition 4/25/2024 Bird Songs Don't Lie: Writings from the Rez Bird Songs Don't Lie: Writings from the Rez is a book written by Gorden Lee Johnson. Gordon Lee Johnson is a Cahuellia/Pala Native and lives on the Pala Reservation. He has gone to UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego. Additionally, he has studied philosophy, literature, film, communications, journalism, and creative writing while completing a master’s in fine arts of creative writing. Additionally, he currently resides in Paloa, which gives him that sense of reality in his writings. Moreover, Johnson's creative writings are based on a fictional area in southern California where we follow multiple fictional characters

You see him write about the struggles of his Native character, which many Native Americans still deal with. Further, with closer inspection of the title we can see that Bird Songs Don’t Lie refers to how Bird sings the truth and how he writes it. Moreover, writing from the rez signifies he has gotten inspiration from local Natives he has met on the reservation, making his stories more authentic. Since then, the story is about how fictional past and present Natives struggle to live on the reservations. A Part of Reservation Life is part of the first half of the story. It starts off with Johnson transitioning back to when he was around seven and the cattle grazed the countryside along with chickens. He establishes the setting as a time when he was younger, when it was more rural and simple. He recalls a vivid memory of going down a road with his uncle and seeing a boy named GiGi or Gino carrying a rabbit and bringing the rabbit to his house. This image was ingrained in his head and was what he believed the reservation was about. To add on, this is a phenomenal juxtaposition of how Native men hundreds of years ago were hunting and bringing in the game to cook and how that still lives on. This reinforces the idea of how strong and important those families' bonds are. Additionally, seeing that boy being a proud hunter and bringing a small game home inspired Johnson to be like that young boy. He was too young, but after a few years, he was able to explore the Pala reservation with his cousins to hunt. His cousins would let Johnson practice and shoot beer cans with it. However, when he was around eight he got a lever-action BB gun and practiced with it. Johnson would later go down near the river and stalk lizards, where he would raise his BB gun and hunt them. Furthermore, Johnson talks about his father who was on a college rifle team and was quite the shot; moreover, adding