More handpicked essays just for you.
Racism in american literature
Native american before european colonization
Indigenous people of europe impact
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
“Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock,” Sherman Alexie, the author, depicts a very rare, but normal image of a Native American family. Victor, the narrator, father beat a National Guard solider during an anti-Vietnam war rally. The incident was documented, seeing that his father a Native American. In result of this incident, Victor’s father was imprisoned for two years. After being released from being imprisoned, the first thing his father did was go back to Woodstock, where he says he was he was the only Indian to see Jimi Hendrix’s famous performance of the “Star-Spangled Banner”.
Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.
I think this quote plays a key role in Lanada Boyer’s article when getting her point across in her article; that Natives are a strong group of individuals, capable of overcoming any atrocity that the white man has created. The aforementioned quotation sparked a feeling of gratitude and a sense of belonging. Boyer used captivating words that allowed myself to be put into her shoes and subsequently experience (afar) the hardships that ‘relocation and termination’ program caused. Furthermore, in the midst of a bustling city complied of foreign people and technologies, in which Indians from the reservations had never seen nor used, unity was formed between these Natives. Unity is vital in the world for survival.
In his novel Fools Crow, James Welch depicts the historical conflict in ideals and territory between the native Pikuni tribes and the Napikwans, or whites, in the Montana plains. Through perspectives of different members of the Lone Eaters and their personal progression, Welch presents the dichotomy of acting for the good of the community versus acting for personal gain and wealth. No narratives more accurately describe this internal struggle than the ones provided through Fools Crow’s and Fast Horse’s experiences. Since both start from the same relatively low status, each of their trajectories through the novel explicitly show how different
Petalesharo’s writing reflected the treatment of Native Americans during the 1800s. Being a Native American himself, Petalesharo was able to give perspective on a point in history typically viewed from a white man’s opinion. The excerpt “Petalesharo” explains how the Native American was able “to prevent young women captured by other tribes from being sacrificed”, making Petalesharo well liked by the Americans (588). Petalesharo gave the “Speech of the Pawnee Chief” infront of Americans to convey the differences between Native Americans and Americans through emotion, logic, and credibility, which showed how the two groups will never be the same, but still can coexist in the world together.
Sherman Alexie’s What You Pawn I Will Redeem, examines a number of topics affecting the American Indian community through the narrator of the story, Jackson Jackson. Jackson Jackson uses a particular rhetoric to appeal to logos, ethos, and pathos. The story follows a clear plot line and resolution, such as tales of knights in shining armor, contributing to it’s logical consistency. Meanwhile, the story’s narrative is nearly script-like in fashion, allowing the audience to observe scenes as bystanders rather than search for credibility of the character.
Many aspects of today’s America are governed by the logic of scarcity, as there is not enough wealth and jobs to go around, causing many people to struggle in competition to gain needed resources. Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel, Ceremony, showcases the pernicious effects the scarcity logic has on Native Americans, who are cast aside and forgotten in unfertile reservations. Silko contrasts the logics of scarcity in her book with harmony by sampling poems that pertain to the Native American culture. In the Arrowboy poem at the end of the book, sampled during the book’s climax, the main character, Tayo, comes to face the “witchery” of harmful logics and has the chance to combat and overcome them, succeeding in doing so by later sharing his
Gloria Bird VS Sherman Alexie Gloria Bird’s Turtle Lake and Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” are two stories written by Native American authors. When reading these two stories, one would not make any type of connection between them. Both are unique in their own way, but if he or she looks a little closer the similarities and differences become clear. To begin, both of the stories are distinct in their own way.
The novel Reservation Blues, written by Sherman Alexie reveals different struggles encountered by the Native Americans on the Spokane Indian Reservation through the use of history, traditions, and values. Thomas Builds-the-Fire, a pureblood Indian, forms a band with his childhood acquaintances Victor Joseph and Junior Polatkin called Coyote Springs. Alexie uses a variety of scenes and personal encounters between characters and their dialogue to portray the meaning of tribal identity throughout the novel. A cultures goal is to prove their identity and be superior to one another; The American culture has achieved dominance through white hegemony while the Spokane American Indian tribe is in a battle of oppression struggling to preserve their tribal identity. Spokane Native Americans are very passionate about their tribal identities yet are envious of the power that the white hegemony holds against them, leading them to their depression.
Red Jacket’s speech in Sagoyewatha exposes white brutality upon Native Americans; white men have not only stripped them of their lands, but they also forced them to practice a different religion. Red Jacket also points out that Native Americans welcomed the newcomers with open arms, and in return they experienced hatred, torture, and violence. The land Native Americans worked hard on to build was now assumed by whites to be
Merrell’s article proves the point that the lives of the Native Americans drastically changed just as the Europeans had. In order to survive, the Native Americans and Europeans had to work for the greater good. Throughout the article, these ideas are explained in more detail and uncover that the Indians were put into a new world just as the Europeans were, whether they wanted change or
In Life Among the Piutes, sarah winnemucca hopkins describes what happens when soldiers came to their reservation based off what white settlers tell the government. The most shocking instance of this happened when Winnemucca encountered a group of soldier who told her the white settlers accused the natives of stealing cattle, “the soldiers rode up to their [meaning the Piute’s] encampment and fired into it, and killed almost all the people that were there… after the soldiers had killed but all bur some little children and babies… the soldiers took them too… and set the camp on fire and threw them into the flames to see them burned alive”(78). This is an abhorrent act that is unthinkable in a functioning society. The natives had done nothing but want to hold some shred of land from the settlers who had taken everything from them and are exterminated like vermin. This was something that stayed hidden from many white settlers because of its barbarism and by exposing it Winnemucca truly educates the reader, past and present, on how natives are
Native Americans flourished in North America, but over time white settlers came and started invading their territory. Native Americans were constantly being thrown and pushed off their land. Sorrowfully this continued as the Americans looked for new opportunities and land in the West. When the whites came to the west, it changed the Native American’s lives forever. The Native Americans had to adapt to the whites, which was difficult for them.
The speech that was read by Chief Red Jacket to defend the religious beliefs of his people is a powerful piece of literature that is underrated. The speech describes the feelings that were caused by the religious intolerance from the Americans. Currently, the United States have started to appreciate the impacts of the Native Americans and other minorities in history. However, a piece of history that has been quite hidden is the religious intolerance of Native Americans. Chief Red Jacket utilizes repetition, pathos, and rhetorical questions to convince the Americans to tolerate the religion of the Native Americans.
They are often labeled as uncivilized barbarians, which is a solely false accusation against them. This paper aims to address the similarities between Native American beliefs and the beliefs of other cultures based on The Iroquois Creation Story in order to defeat the stereotype that Natives are regularly defined by. Native Americans are commonly considered uncivilized, savage, and barbarian. Nevertheless, in reality the Natives are not characterized by any of those negative traits, but rather they inhabit positive characteristics such as being wise, polite, tolerant, civilized, harmonious with nature, etc. They have had a prodigious impact on the Puritans
