The perpetuation of the Lakota people reveals the American religious experiences through the stratification of social inequality through the eyes of Lame Deer. Lame Deer provides a personal narrative that landscapes native religion through social injustice inflicted on the Sioux nation. His stories provide a personal interpretation of what it is to be Native American or Indian living in the white man's world. Lame Deer Seeker of Visions, provides the context of religion from the journey of the Medicine Man. Being Indian embodies myth, ritual, and symbolism of religious tradition as a way of cultural and individual identity.
“Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder,” the title of the novel says it all. Renowned author Kent Nerburn draws us deep into the world of a Lakota elder set in the majestic spaces of the western Dakotas. As the story unfolds, the elder known as only, Dan, speaks ardently about the power of silence and the difference between land and property. Dan speaks about the white people’s urge to claim the Indian heritage.
The way that they are represented in the novel provides an insight into modern day native American culture unparalleled by any history book. The way women, children, men, religious figures, and senior citizens are represented in the book allow readers to see the way native Americans interact with others. These interactions allow us to see how native
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.
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.
Years of being mistreated and living in poverty from generations to generations, engraves the harsh memories into the Indians from the early ages of childhood. Alexie provides the reader with brutal memories that Wright and Sherman, record company agents, have of the harming of the Indians: “Wright looked at Coyote Springs. He saw their Indian faces. He saw the faces of millions of Indians, beaten, scarred by smallpox and frostbite, split open by bayonets and bullets. He looked at his own white hands and saw the blood stains there” (244).
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.
Sherman Alexie’s two stories “Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian” and “Toughest Indian in the World” share a common theme of self-control under the main topic of cultural identity. In both passages, it talks about how Indians can't show too much of what they are capable of or they would or would have been punished in the past. Showing potential or not going with the flow that the whites have created can prove fatal to the Indians. So, to stay safe, Indians need a lot of self-control to keeps themselves from showing the whites their true potential.self-discipline to keeps themselves from showing the whites their true potential. One example of this would be when he talks about how his father talks about salmon a lot and says "Even after all these years, they'll smell salmon on you, the dead salmon, and that will make white people dangerous."
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).
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.
The Round House by Louise Erdrich and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie both examine the relationship between Indians on a reservation and their non-Indian neighbors. Throughout these novels, Indian and non-Indian relationships are punctuated with systems of white supremacy, which manifest both in non-Indians’ ideological belief in their supremacy, and in the material disparity between Indian and non-Indian communities. In The Round House, white superiority is primarily expressed in ideological measure, while The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian focuses largely on the material sphere, but the themes are not mutually exclusive. The Round House focuses primarily on the convoluted relationship between Indians and non-Indian neighbors.
Sherman Alexie writes the story “Indian Education” using a deadpan tone to build and connect the years of the narrator 's life together in an ironic way. Alexie is able to utilize irony through the use of separate, short sections within the story. The rapid presentation of events, simple thoughts, and poetic points made within the story enable the reader to make quick connections about the narrator’s life to draw more complex realizations. The art that Alexie uses to write this very short story is poetic in nature through the meaning and structure of his writing. By the fact that the reader can draw deeper conclusions about the narrator 's life from Alexie’s writing is evident that his writing is poetic.
Expectations often impose an inescapable reality. In the short story “Indian Education” by Sherman Alexie, Victor often struggles with Indian and American expectations during school. Alexie utilizes parallelism in the construction of each vignette, introducing a memoir of tension and concluding with a statement about Victor’s difficulties, to explore the conflict between cultures’ expectations and realities. Alexei initially uses parallelism to commence each vignette with cultural tension. In second grade, Victor undergoes a conflict with his missionary teacher, who coerced Victor into taking an advanced spelling test and cutting his braids.
In Thomas King 's autobiographical novel, The Truth About Stories takes a narrative approach in telling the story of the Native American, as well as Thomas King 's. The stories within the book root from the obstacles that the Thomas King had to face during his years in high school and his post-university life. These stories are told in a matter that uses rhetorical devices such as personal anecdotes & comparisons. "You 'll Never Believe What Happened" Is Always a Great Way to Start is about the importance, potential, and dangers of stories, specifically those of creation stories and how they can shape a culture, with the aim to share King 's urgency for social change with his readers King 's informal tone, lighthearted jokes, and effort to make his writing follow the style of native oral tradition as closely as possible, all help the reader understand the type of narrative he believes would be most beneficial for the foundation of a society. His unique style allows for the use of personal anecdotes and requires that he breaks the proverbial fourth wall to communicate with the reader directly, to create the conversational feel of the oral tradition.
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).
