Cultural Identity In Deer Dancer And Museum Indians

Cultural identity is important to various societies and heritages. In both Deer Dancer and Museum Indians, the authors illustrate how important culture is to the Native American society. The stories both display the importance of the culture by including themes such as sacrifice, imagery, and symbolism. Sacrifice is portrayed in both stories. In Museum Indians, the mother displays signs of sorrow as her daughter narrates the story. When the mother and daughter visit the dress their grandmother made, the narrator states, “we stand before the glass case as we would before a grave” to indicate the sorrow in their hearts. The dress was taken from their family just like society took aways Native American culture. She also states, when they visit the

In Deer Dancer, Harjo allows the reader to feel and see the story as if they are actually seeing a “deer dancer”. Harjo descriptively writes of a figure who “is a baby inside [a] girl, sealed up with a lick of hope and swimming into the praise of nations”. Harjo allows the reader to mentally picture the figure by stating that she wore a “stained red dress with tape on her heels”. However, the main character saw her more as a “deer who entered [her] dream in white dawn... the ancestor who never left.” In Museum Indians, author, Power lets the reader get a sense of the setting and characters in the story. The author discusses with the reader, Picassos piece of the the “blue man holding a blue guitar” and the characters leaving their “fingerprints on the glass, two sets of hands at different heights pressing against the barrier.” The imagery in Museum Indians gives the reader a sense of the sadness the characters felt throughout the story. In both pieces, the authors use imagery to allow the reader to go inside the story and experience the grief and sadness the characters felt from what society has infringed upon the Native American