Travelling through Native American Literature

"Educated" Stereotypes

2009-12-04T22:51:00.000-08:00

After reading The Light People I thought it was really interesting to note how people automatically assume that because a person has a high academic degree, their beliefs are not affected by stereotypes. This was evidenced through the fact that an anthropologist found a leg and automatically assumed it was a leg from a person from an ancient Native American civilization.

This got me thinking about how something similar has actually happened before through “Holmberg’s mistake.” While conducting his research on indigenous people, Holmberg developed a sheltered image of Native Americans as simplified individuals who lacked agency and who had remained been unchanged in a millennia. Holmberg’s outside perspective blinded his ability to recognize the complexity of the culture and history of Native Americans. Holmberg’s views affected the structure of academia because Holmberg published Nomads of the Longbow, in 1950 that reported his experience and findings which quickly became “an iconic and influential text” as well as “one of the main sources for the outside world’s image of South American Indians.” The view presented in Holmberg’s book was accepted world wide as a sort of gospel in the field of academic anthropology which shaped the understanding of Anglo-Americans of the Native Americans.

Protesting

2009-11-21T03:10:00.000-08:00

The new 32% tuition increase in all University of California campuses will have many negative effects. Many students will be unable to pay for the upcoming tuition fees and will therefore not be able to enroll. A student activist was protesting the fact that this fee increase can be regarded as discriminatory because it will prevent many minority and low income students to be able to attend college. Although, I am not completely convinced that the policy is discriminatory, I do agree that it has major implications on the number of minority students that will be able to afford enrolling in a UC. It may not necessarily majorly affect the students who are attending now, but it will definitely affect their younger siblings. Moreover, I heard how some UCD students were arrested for taking over Mrak Hall. I saw the S.W.A.T. team helicopter circulating the building and think that calling them was an exaggeration on behalf of the authorities. The protest in Mrak Hall made me question what were the benefits of taking over a building. I know that it draws more attention to the matter from the public, but I would like to hear what are some other benefits or consequences for this.

Thoughts on Movie

2009-11-07T05:56:00.000-08:00

It was really interesting watching the movie of Native American history during class. I think it is good to view American history through the Native American’s eyes. Throught the movie, there were a couple facts that stood out to me. First, I was surprised to hear that Native Americans also had a civil rights movement during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. In the California K-12 educational system, you primarily hear about the Black and Chicano civil rights movements yet nothing is mentioned about the Native American civil rights movement. Another fact that caught my eye, was when I saw the image of a news paper article that said, “Indians taking City Jobs.” This quote is an example of how the dominant white American society has always used the excuse that minority groups are “taking their jobs away” in order to justify their discrimination towards them. Moreover, there was a part in the movie in which Kent Frizell, from the Department of Justice, was describing how Native Americans and the federal government came to a temporary agreement in the Wounded Knee site. In this part, he mentions how he allowed a few Natives to ride in his helicopter in return for riding on the Natives “ponies.” The tone in which he mentioned this was a belittling one. He mentioned this in order to point out how supreme the white mans technology in comparison to that of the Natives. Furthermore, Frizzell points out how he was giving a 10 day deadline to resolve the conflict in Wounded Knee. He attributes this time constraint to the fact that “adventure seekers, and college students” were going to start showing up in masses in a few weeks. His explanation demonstrates how he viewed the Native American activists as mere adventure seekers and believed that those who joined in the struggle were just trying to be rebellious.

Joining the Dead

2009-10-16T19:38:00.000-07:00

When I first read Fredy Chicangana's, "We Still Have Life On This Earth," I thought that the speaker was a Native American man who was attending a celebration in memory of his dead ancestors. However, after our class discussion I realized that the speaker may be a recently deceased person who is viewing the celebration in memory of his own death and the death of others. In one line in the poem the speaker says,"We laugh and get drunk unhurriedly." The word "unhurriedly" implies that the speaker has an eternity to spend because he is no longer concerned with the limitations of time. In another line, the speaker says that he and others "penetrate the depths of this earth" which signifies that he is dead and buried beneath the earth. Afterwards, the speaker reveals that he is in the "warm navel that carries [them] and takes [them] to memory." The speaker is talking about being part of the dead. The "warm" feeling comes from being buried in the depths of the earth and the "navel" refers to the small whole that was dug to bury his lifeless remains in the enormous body of mother nature. He is being carried "to memory" because he will no longer be identified with his physical body but will live forever in the memory of those who knew him. One can deduct that the speaker is recently deceased because he refers to the dead as a different group when he says, "the space inhabited by our dead." He does not identify himself with the dead yet because he is just joining his ancestors that have been dead for a longer period. This poem can have different speakers depending on how you approach it.

Who Understands Who?

2009-10-10T00:49:00.000-07:00

In Linda Noel’s “Understanding Each Other,” the narrator is a woman while the speaker who is in quotes is a man whom was in a committed relationship with the woman. At first, the man mentions that the narrator is “too wild” but she does “not drink raw whisky” he means that she is not wild in the sense of being promiscuous or particularly social with others, he is referring to the woman’s free spirit and strong personality. He goes onto say that “when the salmon season returns [the woman] stand[s] among river willow shadow humming, all the time believing fish can understand why [she] is there.” The woman can identity with the salmon traveling against the current, which symbolizes how she can identify with people who are fighting against adversities in the world. After the man’s quote, the woman points out how the man “left her to marry one whose dreams are laced in perfume and dishwater suds.” This means that the man was preferred to be with a more passive woman. This other woman is not in though with nature because she is surrounded by artificial things such as “perfume” and “dishwater suds.” Overall, it seems like both the narrator and the speaker understand each other and have accepted their differences. The fact that the narrator chooses to say “So he left me” implies that she is not bewildered as to why he left her. Equally important is what the narrator did not say. She did not deny any of the speaker’s assumptions about her personality which implies that the might be true, therefore he also understands her.

How I chose the blog title

2009-10-10T00:40:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog is inspired by Antonio Muchado’s famous poem, “Caminante”. This poem talks about creating a road as one travels. This can be applied to the process of reading Native American literature because one can imagine oneself as a traveler who is venturing into the unknown when reading a piece of Native American literature. As one continues to “travel” through the literature, one starts to understand the deeper meaning it holds. The particular understanding of the literature is a “road” that one creates. I used this analogy as the title of my blog page because my blogs are based on my personal interpretations of the pieces of Native American literature that I derive after “traveling” through the literature.