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Everyone has been in a situation where they’ve judged someone before ever even getting to know and understand them. Many Native Americans feel that they are often misjudged, and this is often reflected in their literature, as in Rachel A. Qitsualik’s “Skraeling”. Qitsualik’s story involves racism and discrimination. In “Skraeling”, Qitsualik shows the reader that the Vikings, Tunit, and Inuit had no basis for the prejudice between them. Siaq refused to return to the Inuit because she no longer felt as though she’d belonged.
The lines following line 44 are given in the tone of Salman Rudshie. He gives readers the tone that Americans are poor at adapting to the world, and they must learn from modern migrants who “make a new imaginative relationship with the world, because of the loss of familiar habits”. Rudshie’s critical tone goes on in lines 59-62, using the analogy of forcing industrial and commercial habits on foreign ground is synonymous if ‘the mind were a cookie-cutter and the land wer
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.
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.
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.
"An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe," by Benjamin Madley is a significant piece in explaining Native American history. It helps shed a light on a dark chapter in American history that has been often overlooked by many. Madley's book provides a detailed account of the systematic extermination of the Native American population in California from the 1840s through the 1870s. By delving into the factors that fueled this genocide, such as greed for land and resources, white supremacist ideology, and state-sanctioned violence, Benjamin Madley examines the disturbing atrocities committed against Indigenous communities. His research draws from a wide range of sources, including archival materials and primary
Writer Sherman Alexie has a knack of intertwining his own problematic biographical experience with his unique stories and no more than “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” demonstrates that. Alexie laced a story about an Indian man living in Spokane who reflects back on his struggles in life from a previous relationship, alcoholism, racism and even the isolation he’s dealt with by living off the reservation. Alexie has the ability to use symbolism throughout his tale by associating the title’s infamy of two different ethnic characters and interlinking it with the narrator experience between trying to fit into a more society apart from his own cultural background. However, within the words themselves, Alexie has created themes that surround despair around his character however he illuminates on resilience and alcoholism throughout this tale.
The setting takes place in a suburban neighborhood like an area in the United States around the 1950's to 1960's. The mentalities of the people in the citizens reflect conformist tendencies of the community because they are negatively judgmental when they notice the girls in the story. The A&P store and customers of the story shape the time and setting to establish what is taking the place of the setting during that time. The A&P supermarket was arguably American's premier grocery store during the 1960s. Therefore, setting the scene of the A&P supermarket highlights the era of the 1960s.
“Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress”, chapter one of “A People’s History of the United States”, written by professor and historian Howard Zinn, concentrates on a different perspective of major events in American history. It begins with the native Bahamian tribe of Arawaks welcoming the Spanish to their shores with gifts and kindness, only then for the reader to be disturbed by a log from Columbus himself – “They willingly traded everything they owned… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” (Zinn pg.1) In the work, Zinn continues explaining the unnecessary evils Columbus and his men committed unto the unsuspecting natives.
In the novel, Shell Shaker, it is evident to the reader the importance and influence of race on the plot line. LeAnne Howe uses her characters and their stories to critique notions of racism against Native Americans, but also to challenge those notions by representing Choctaws in a different light. LeAnne Howe’s critique of racism towards Native Americans can best be seen in the storyline of the D’Amato brothers and the Casino of the Sun. The article Indian Casinos captures the racism and extreme measures of inequality that many Native Americans experience through the works of casinos taking place in their home. The article also states how the casinos revenue is then controlled by non-Indian corporate financiers (Indian Casinos, 1).
The misrepresentation of Native Americans in The Professor’s House is a prime example of how early American literature chooses to romanticize the southwest. Willa Cather chooses to do so through the characters Father Duchene, Tom Outland, and Godfrey St. Peters. These characters together create a false narrative of Natives that exists outside of the novel. The problematic characterization of Natives starts with Duchene, is lived by Outland, and is preserved by St. Peters. Although the novel pays little attention to Natives in the novel, the little it does share is enough to understand Cather’s intention.
Once European men stepped foot onto what is now known as North America, the lives of the Native Americans were forever changed. The Indians suffered centuries of torment and ridicule from the settlers in America. Despite the reservations made for the Natives, there are still cultural issues occurring within America. In Sherman Alexie’s, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the tragic lives of Native Americans in modern society are depicted in a collection of short stories taking place in the Spokane Reservation in Washington state. Throughout the collection, a prominent and reoccurring melancholic theme of racism against Native Americans and their struggle to cope with such behavior from their counterpart in this modern day and age is shown.
Science journalist, Charles C. Mann, had successfully achieved his argumentative purpose about the “Coming of Age in the Dawnland.” Mann’s overall purpose of writing this argumentative was to show readers that there’s more to than just being called or being stereotyped as a savage- a cynical being. These beings are stereotyped into being called Indians, or Native Americans (as they are shorthand names), but they would rather be identified by their own tribe name. Charles Mann had talked about only one person in general but others as well without naming them. Mann had talked about an Indian named Tisquantum, but he, himself, does not want to be recognized as one; to be more recognized as the “first and foremost as a citizen of Patuxet,”(Mann 24).
Sedaris describes two handwritten signs from Halloween night. The first is attached to a “coffee can full of gumdrops” telling trick or treater “Don’t be Greedy.” The second graces young Sedaris’s bag of candy. “My Candy. Keep out.”
