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Native American Societies’ Ways of Life
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Native American Societies’ Ways of Life
Native american social structures
Native American social problems
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Thomas Melles K. Dirck Freshman Honor English, Period 6 2 September 2016 Dreams lead everywhere Dreams are what people live for yet, in life, dreams are almost never lived. In The Absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian written by Sherman Alexie the main character Junior tries to follow his dreams. Dreams are what people should strive for but yet many do not even try to follow them. Junior’s sister and Sherman Alexie both were following their dreams to “save their lives”. Junior has a sister in the book who is lived in their basement and was not following her dreams, while in “Superman and Me” Sherman Alexie writes about how he is trying to follow his dreams to save his life.
Junior is a young American Indian who had grown up on a reservation in the western United States. As he grew older, he realized that living on the reservation would lead him nowhere. His only chance of hope at a better life is to leave “the Rez”. Sherman Alexie perfectly captures the culture of an American Indian in his novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, by introducing white culture by sending Junior to Reardan High School. Junior’s experience in Reardan allows him to draw conclusions about his own culture and Alexie has surely done research on American Indian culture.
When I was reading Sherman Alexie’s books, Blasphemy and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I found that Alexie likes to adjust his way of writing dramatically based on his audience and the story(s) that he is trying to tell. For example, when he wrote Blasphemy he was writing to an audience that consisted more of adults that would’ve been in their early 20’s or older, based on the complexity of how this book is set up. Alexie made it so that this book was many stories of Indians, not just him or family, but a lot of people. There are some that don’t make any sense and you really have to pick it apart to understand his subtle references. His approach to writing The Absolutely True… is more for young adults, maybe 12-19 year olds,
In the book The Absolutely True Diaries of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie tells the story of Arnold, a boy who grows up on a reservation and changes schools to go to a school off the rez. He left the reservation to have a better chance at life. These are the similarities and differences between Arnolds life on the reservation and his life at reardan high school First there are many similarities between the rez and rearden. At both schools he was a basketball player.
Sherman Alexie’s “Indian Education” describes his personal experience as a Native American in the American school system while growing up in the 1970s. In this historical period, many white Americans discriminated against those of different races and ethnicities. In this short story, Alexie attempts to open the eyes of white Americans who do not realize what Native Americans and other groups go through to inform them of the hardships he encountered all his life by utilizing stereotyping and the organization of his writing. The intended audience of "Indian Education" is white Americans who either did not realize or were negligent of the troubles Native Americans were enduring.
In the absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian, we read about the Spokane reservation and the life of a junior who struggles due to his birth defect and generational trauma, as well as the problems I will write about in this essay. These challenges are recurring issues throughout Native American history since the first colonizers and are deeply rooted in the history of Native American oppression. This essay explores three major issues faced by the junior and his family in the book – poverty, alcoholism, and racism – and how they trace back to historical discrimination. Poverty is a huge issue and causes a lot of depression on the Spokane reservation as well as almost every other reservation; it affects many people living on reservations
Within Chapter 5 of Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian the main focus is on Juniour realizing he has to leave to find more hope. Firstly, Juniour gets suspended for hitting Mr.P with a book unintentionally. Secondly, a week into the suspension, Mr. P comes for a visit and although what junior did wasn't very pleasant, he forgave juniour anyway. After listening to Mr. P speak about him and his sister, Juniour begins to think about his sister Mary hiding in the basement and his dad sitting alone in his room watching tv.
Sherman Alexie’s novel title, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian illustrate that school at the Spokane reservation was responsible for the persecution of Indian cultures. Mr. P, the geometry teacher, revealed in his conversation with Junior, “We beat them. That’s how we were taught to teach you” (Alexie 35). Junior was informed of this when he came to visit Junior after he was suspended. Mr. P further exposed the school intention by saying, “We were trying to kill Indian culture” (Alexie 35).
In Sherman Alexie’s collection of stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, Alexie captivates his readers through the stories he tells revealing the lives of modern day Native Americans on the reservation through his characters. In general, many overlook the idea that Native Americans are oppressed and discriminated against. But in this book, Alexie describes the struggles of Native Americans’ emotional lives and the discrimination they face which make the readers more aware of the lives of Native Americans and in turn makes the stories more believable. Most American readers do not know about these problems and encounter them for the first time while reading this book. Through the use of figurative language, Alexie keeps his
In a few scenes of the the grades one through twelve the short story “Indian Education,” by the Native American author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie is able to show us what it is like growing up in the white, American culture. Sherman Alexie is able to give us a glimpse of the differences of what it means to be in a non-white student area that is struggling due to the effects of colonization. Even though it has been many years since the European explores “found” North America, the settlers and government continued to expand into Indian territories. The Native Americans gradually saw their land and culture diminishing as they were relocated to reservations. The feelings of oppression become obvious through the eyes of Victor, a young boy.
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.
Overcoming a challenge, not giving up, and not being afraid of change are a few themes demonstrated in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Perhaps the most prominent theme derived from the novel is defying the odds, or in other words rising above the expectations of others. Junior Spirit exemplifies this theme throughout the entirety of the book. As Junior is an Indian, he almost expects that he will never leave the reservation, become an alcoholic, and live in poverty like the other Indians on the reservation—only if he sits around and does not endeavor to change his fate. When Junior shares the backstory of his parents, he says that his mother and father came from “poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people” (11).
By the 1880, Native Indians had experienced a wealth of disturbing and upsetting tribulations within American history. Indian culture had been met with violence by non-minority Anglos, had weathered removal policies, and the American government established living areas within states that provided a land of reservation. Racism prevented many natives from acquiring work outside of their reservations, so families suffered through poverty and hunger. While Native’s struggled financially and physically, their culture held strong; their way of life was taught to generations of Indian children. The typical reservation teachings involved learning native tribe history as well as their spoken written and language.
In the past century the immigration crisis is becoming a growing issue. According to the UN Refugee Agency (2017), the main immigrant flow was departed from Africa and Asia, and the year 2015 became critical, seeing that it was the peak of immigrant arrival: since that time, the variety of countries, representatives of which continue to migrant to Spain, is fluctuating constantly from hundreds to thousands of people. The two stances as the two sides of this crisis: the Spanish government and the immigrant society, and, what is more beneficial for one of them, creates problems to another one. To be more specific, the political actions that are leading to expenses for the living conditions of immigrants and the immigration law projects on one hand, or the rise of unemployment and the question of safety because of indifference, on the other.
In Sherman Alexie’s short stories (and poems), there usually three central themes that the story rotates. In this paper, I will be exploring how he (Alexie) explores the themes losing culture, a cycle of regret, and using drugs (mainly alcohol) to escape. In Indian Education, the short story, Alexie seems to show that whenever young Victor tries to express himself through his culture, he is punished. Take the section “First Grade” for example. In first grade, Junior (the main character and narrator) says that “The little warrior in me roared to life that day..” and makes comparisons to traditional Native American warriors, such as describing the brusies on the other boy’s face as “war paint” or how Junior chants “it’s a good day to die”, which is phrase typically associated with Crazy Horse, who was a Native American chief.