War Dances By Sherman Alexie

By 1940, Native Americans had experienced many changes and counter-changes in their legal status in the United States. Over the course of the nineteenth century, most tribes lost part or all of their ancestral lands and were forced to live on reservations. Following the American Civil War, the federal government abrogated most of the tribes’ remaining sovereignty and required communal lands to be allotted to individuals. The twentieth century also saw great changes for Native Americans, such as the Citizenship Act and the Indian New Deal. Alison R. Bernstein examines how the Second World War affected the status and lives of Native Americans in American Indians and World War II: Toward a New Era in Indian Affairs. Bernstein argues

In Anna Lee Walters’s story The Warriors, Walters represents a story about Native American’s cultures and traditions. The main character of her story is a Pawnee man, Uncle Ralph. He is a typical Native American and struggles with alcoholism. The Pawnee’s culture he brings to home every time deeply influences his two nieces. He usually tells Pawnee stories and teaches Pawnee language and songs to two sisters. As a whole, the author splits Pawnee culture to two aspects, customs and beliefs. In order to analyze the effect of Pawnee’s culture in tribes and families, Walter states the influence of Pawnee’s local color by describing how Uncle Ralph gets along with two sisters and the beliefs of Pawnee people live as stars after death.

Every individual has traditions passed down from their ancestors. This is important because it influences how families share their historical background to preserve certain values to teach succeeding generation. N. Scott Momaday has Native American roots inspiring him to write about his indigenous history and Maxine Hong Kingston, a first-generation Chinese American who was inspired by the struggles of her emigrant family. Kingston and Momaday manipulate language by using, metaphors, similes, and a unique style of writing to reflect on oral traditions. The purpose of Kingston’s passage is to reflect upon her ancestor’s mistake to establish her values as an American

The American desire to culturally assimilate Native American people into establishing American customs went down in history during the 1700s. Famous author Zitkala-Sa, tells her brave experience of Americanization as a child through a series of stories in “Impressions of an Indian Childhood.” Zitkala-Sa, described her journey into an American missionary where they cleansed her of her identity. In “Impressions of an Indian Childhood,” Zitkala-Sa uses imagery in order to convey the cruel nature of early American cultural transformation among Indian individuals.

Throughout the 1925-1975 period, the Native American population of the United States has faced many obstacles. Just a few years before, they had been suppressed by the federal government’s “Anti-Long Hair” policy for all Native American males. This would set the stage for future cultural restraint on the Indians. However, they continued to fight for equality. All through this time period, the experience of the Native American culture has been a struggle for equality in their homeland.

From the first mention of Native Americans in American history, they are characterized as “savages” and “less intelligent” human beings. This characterization has remained predominate throughout American history, however in colonial times, this characterization had a larger emphasis in how Americans view Indians. Although this the way in which Americans viewed Native Americans, Native Americans, on the other hand, viewed Americans as “white [racially superior]” (Svingen). In today’s modern day and age, we understand the complexity when it comes to stereotyping certain ethnic groups. In regards to Native Americans in a post-World War II setting, labeling and stereotyping such ethnic group emphasizes the importance to integrate individuals of

In the 19th century, U.S. citizens wanted Native Americans to be a part of mainstream culture, creating a dramatic, dark, and sad part of this proud nation’s past. Many methods were used to assimilate Native Americans; while some were more intense than others, they were all immoral. For example, the ways in which they were assimilated were fatal at times. Also, when the Native American population of the 19th century is compared to the population today, there is a large difference in numbers. Indeed, this is a dark part of history, and it is sad to look back on. Over all, the forced assimilation of the Native Americans into European culture caused disadvantages to their well-being, cultural diversity, and American reputation.

As we know, the first Americans to inhabit what is now the United States was not the Europeans, but instead Native Americans. Part of our great nation’s history involves history that is not always so great. Our country has endured many wars, struggles, economic and agricultural hardship and history that many would call shameful. However, the United States has evolved over hundreds of years and has transcended its very existence and influenced every corner of the globe, because of those past hardships our country has grown into what is now the most diverse, opportunistic and free country the world has ever known. In this essay, I will discuss the Apache Indians long and proud culture in conjunction with their own personal struggles as a Native American tribe in North America.

“My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain...There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory.,” Chief Seattle Speech of 1854. The culture of the Native American people has been deteriorating ever since the Europeans arrived in the Americas. The impactful and immense loss of lifestyle that they faced is one that can never be recovered, what the United States has given them are generations of trauma and blatant suffering. However, the U.S. did not stop there, a multitude of cultures have been broken to help keep America pure. For instance, one of the most significant cultures that have been dismantled by the U.S. other than the Natives and their music were the languages and music of the African slaves. The apparent likeness of these two cultures in the ways in which their deconstruction impacted them is in more of an abundance, such as the dominating influence of the Christian religion and the gravely vital role of maintaining what little heritage they could through language. In contrast to this, the two groups had an opposing difference pertaining to how the Natives and slaves tried to compensate the immense loss of their culture through the generations.

This is a broad and very vague history of what American Indians have had to deal with over the course of American history, and it cannot in any way be a fair explanation to the amount of grief and suffering this group has been exposed to over the years. It is sad to admit that their suffering is not quite over, and in modern American, what is left of the proud culture is threatened as many of the traditions and customs become antiquated. Icons and traditional symbols become nothing more that exotic, trendy images to be printed on items for modern day’s hip youth.

For centuries, Native Americans have struggled to find their identity. This began with the arrival of explorers and colonists, then peaked with the creation of Indian boarding schools. Schools such as Carlisle, who sought to “kill the Indian, [and] save the man” (qtd. in Trennert). In these schools Native American children were stripped of their culture, and forced to abide by the white man’s ways. This resulted in generations of Native American who were forced to live between two worlds, without belonging to either. The world they were born into had been taken from them and the new, white-washed world wouldn’t have them. Even after the removal of such schools, the effect remained. This is true of the Native Americans in Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. These characters have had their sense of self stripped away by invasive white culture. However, by telling stories they are able to slowly reclaim their Indian identity.

In That Guy Wolf Dancing, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn tells a nonfiction story of Philip Big Pipe’s life as a twenty-something Native American from the Santee Sioux or Mdewakanton Dakota tribe that is just trying to find his way in the world. At the hospital where Philip works part time, the “old-young woman” he works with dies and unexpectedly leaves Philip in her will. She left him an incredibly sacred buckskin shirt and war stick that was most likely stolen from a Native American hung at New Ulm after the Santee War with the United States. The sudden change in the old-young woman’s will causes a lot of legal drama that Philip consequently becomes tangled up in. Along with the various legal battles that Philip goes through, he also experiences the death of several other friends, an unexpected relationship, and constantly being oppressed because of his culture. By the use of marginalization and violence, Cook-Lynn portrays how oppression has negatively changed and shaped the lives of Native Americans through the example of Philip in her novella That Guy Wolf Dancing.

An old Indian man is found underneath a cottonwood tree where Leon, the protagonist, discovers him. Originally the reader did not know the dead man was a Native American man, but after facial descriptions of the man when Leon was painting his face, which was part of an Indian ritual, gave obvious examples of his ethnicity. Leon and his

The dire situation of the Native American community is presented strongly thought the story as factors of racism, depression and alcoholism are mentioned. The Native Americans in the stories are fully aware of their situation, they know things are bad, as a powerful quote in the story was,” Whatever happened to the tribal ties, the sense of community? The only real thing he shared with anybody was a bottle and broken dreams” (Sherman 74). The broken dreams part stuck with me about the situation of living in an environment that is plagued with hardships. The struggle between dreams and the reality of alcoholism came down hard, as the broken dreams are what lead this individual to alcoholism. The Native Americans in the stories have a lot going up against them including racism, as that is still part of their lives. There is outright racism like racist people, and police officers mentioned, but there is also less outright racist sentiment. Take for example,” Chicano teacher ran up to us. “Hey,” he said. “What’s that boy been drinking? I know all about these Indian kids. They start drinking real young.” Sharing dark skin doesn’t necessarily make two men brothers”(Alexie 178). I found this quote interesting because I do not believe the Chicano teacher had hateful sentiment, but he was prejudicial and believing the stereotypes of Native Americans. The Chicano teacher made his Native American students feel insecure, and even though they shared the same skin color he still managed to see Native Americans as inferior, he was still having prejudicial sentiments. He did not have empathy, and even if you do not understand Native American struggle, you still need to have compassion for them as

It is easy to see that current events and issues of the world around them have had an impact on authors and what they have written from the stories in this time period. The Native American authors wrote stories describing life during and after white man came to America. We read Oratory’s by two Native American’s COCHISE and CHARLOT. They gave heart-wrenching speeches, giving great details into the history of the tribes and the devastating effect the white man had on them. Author Zitkala Sa gave us a powerful interpretation of her life as a Indian and how the white’s coming to America affected her life.