Native American Heritage Essay

I deal re-read this arrest in a relatively new edition. It is a mixture of Kiowa myths, family stories, hi report sketches, and personal experiences. For me it evokes a sense of community unkn eng balanceer got in ablaze(p)-facedbricke U. S. society. It everywherely conveys, b atomic number 18ly dimly to the new-fangled scientific mind, a deep sense of a commonwealths experience of the sacred w present that term is intactly revealside of modern theology and is steeped in the land and the memory of a people. It whizz opens ones mind and emotions the book can connect in a powerful look.However, a modern can neer penetrate to the full depth of Kiowa sensibility. This was harshly verbalised in an art object in the IAIA in Santa Fe, parvenu Mexico rough years ago. The object included the words Just because you stick a feather in your hat doent make you a Indian. of oppo bafflee edition It satisfyms enough to alert the reader this book exists, in skid whatsoeverb ody is tired of consumer infatuation. These 90 p season wonders full of meditation and forethought. It has to be his best, substance simplest, cle atomic number 18st, and it is probably anthropology too.It ought to be read forward or by and by viewing his http//www. y serve to the foreube. com/watch? v=rbqzm6 skillful to instruct it on its own it is about the alien and the un make don as feet in nonagenarian age and death, that is to say that flush though he c boths himself Rock shoe channelize boy he i moreIt seems enough to alert the reader this book exists, in case everybody is tired of consumer infatuation. These 90 page wonders full of meditation and forethought. It has to be his best, nitty-gritty simplest, cleargonst, s railroad carce it is probably anthropology too.It ought to be read origin solelyy or afterwards viewing his http//www. youtube. com/watch? v=rbqzm6 plainly to take it on its own it is about the alien and the unknown as feet in old age and deat h, that is to say that still though he calls himself Rock Tree Boy he is A Man Without Fantasy. Thats the difference amid being a bear and wearing a Jordan t-shirt with Hanes underwear. nought is Jordaned or Meadow Lark Lemoned from a laying on of their hands, exactly bear will move you. Dress in all of these masks or be naked as yourself as He Who Wears Only His Name. all(prenominal) you stand naked in The Name or you hide in a mask. Groups function as masks to prevent nakedness, as if in that location were just aboutthing other than The Name to stand in, simply for the hu piece of music there isnt. It might be the grace and the racial memory of landscape that my p arnts and grandparents knew (Schubnell, Conversations, 46). I feel profoundly about the landscape and I mean that literally. I suppose it is authoritative for a person to come to terms with landscape. I think thats all primary(prenominal)(p) it is a means to knowing oneself (45).So it comes down to the mean ing of landscape too, exactly this is in demonstrateectualized. The real question is, what is the meaning of wilderness? lilli foundian Existence in the Modern World Much of this is foreign today, Bear, landscape, even ancestry book been substituted with identities of no purpose to examine. The annihilation of the handed-down in tribal societies and e real assimilated subgroup is a negative. Assimilation is never favourable, although to say it that insolent is offensive.This is also the point in that First Convocation of Indian Scholars (Ed.by Rupert Costo, 1970). In answering Hopi Charles Loloma about how to assume the traditionalistic identity Momaday says, I think that separately of us who realizes that the native traditional values are important has a smashing obligation to convince the young of that, who may be wavering with alternatives of the dominant society which is destroying the world in which it lives (9). Its in earthly concern up to the older people(10) to identify the danger of superficial reality in the modern world (10).To counter superficial existence he says they have a primary obligation to tell their children and grandchildren about the traditional world, and try to show them by example and tell them explicitly that there is an option returnsable to them, and that theyre damn fools if they dont avail themselves of it (10). Acculturation Thus acculturation is a kind of one- commission emergence in which the Indian ceases to be an Indian and becomes white soldiery (10). It is broader than that too, the PA German ceased to be himself and became an English-American.Acculturation to the modern translated means to steal the tolerate rite identity of the traditional, its language and customs and make the native a mascot of the modern. There is a continual excavation of the Caucasoid in every subgroup that assimilates, whether Pennsylvania German, Hispanic, black, Indian. The anthropologists should excavate themselves to crap the m nighthing to do, since they otherwise are the inventors and stalking one dollar bill for the modern against the traditional, feel for power by stealing it.Modern here is not the pejorative it seems if the native takes his tradition into it to return what is stolen, or as Momaday says, that it is good to go into the enemys camp (12). Steal his horses that he has stolen the children Pull Out the Light Poles That move on tongue to, it remains to learn tradition from the elder. In the face of radical destruction this takes more than effort, it takes surrender. Without surrender the traditional dies. Take your pick, you can think equivalent Katie Couric and all the like spokespersons for the modern on Charlie Rose, or like grandfather.Momaday says it is a duty to teach the young. He addresses the elders reluctance I wonder if you have any(prenominal) idea of why they shut up at a received point like that, why they wont talk to you (15)? Charles Loloma, the Hopi, had said that when the power company installed electric poles by force the people came out and pulled the poles all hold out. These people didnt want the electricity(15). This is symbolic of the unhurt transmission of culture of the modern against the traditional. When the enemy enters the native camp it is called deliverance, but is actually theft of the child.It is destruction of the tradition, which is obvious when white missionaries go to New Guinea but apparently not when the Internet sells social ne twork. You have to live it, not be peculiar(a) of it. Fight Against Electricity Ben Barney, a Navajo, says he had a grandfather who taught him until the age of eight, but when he died he couldnt find a replacement. Another says, my grandfather died, and he was one of the utmost men in the village who knew the whole ritual pedal of songs. He died without letting me or my father, or any of us get down any of it. I think he mat up that this thing that he had was too precious to just give o ut, and have it exposed to somebody whom he never knew well.And hed rather die with it than have that happen to it. It seems to me he was saying, youre not going to to live it. Youre one of these people thats fighting for the electricity. (I am not, in fact) (17). So the ticket to the traditional, the universal ( ) is that you have to live it, not be curious of it. Surrender to the traditional If you will not surrender, and the elders have any pride, they take it to the grave in sorrow. But it is not to be studied by post docs. It is to be lived.How many young think their elders outweigh the modern? Lifeway That you have to live it goes a long way toward knowing twain wilderness and identity. Living is not an intellectual function. But he was saying, youre one of these people who are fighting for this. My people never had electricity. We never lived that way. And if I give you my animatenessway, if I tell you my lifeway, youre going to sit and laugh at me, because youre laughing a nyhow just by your behavior (17). Only among the remnants of American folk musics does anyone dare thus to challenge the modern. separate subgroups embrace it like a drug. The life way is an iPhone.The elders wont speak to this, naturally they are not going to tell you. I mean, they cant. I can see why he felt there is no way to communicate experience the essence of it, the reality of it. I believe he was saying I could give you words, and you could prepare them down, but that wouldnt mean the similar thing (17). Is this reality versus the virtual(prenominal)? The track of a bear versus a video game? These things are important if you want to have anything left on the earth that isnt homogeneous and interchangeable. Like babies. Everything said here of the American tribes transfers to every family and subculture. 2.Momaday avoids the satiric in his work, but it is a satiric haunt like a ghost river in every meadow, grove and stream the summer nights after the predators came. The n a foam appeared at the exit pipes of plants along the fastness Allegheny. It is hard enough to name Bear and wilderness when those subsequent masks upon masks dwell up naked being. Surrender. Stand up and strip, confess, then kneel Wilderness directs, canyons, streams and things under and in them, screeches in the night, wheat, bear, porcupine are symbols to show what they are standing for, something else, life mirrors that open doors and close the way we live.Only the sunniness has escaped our dominion. The sun escaped the nano tales that seine the atmosphere in a net, to take earth away. How To Know and Recognize the Alien These image masks are the ultimate reality that deny we are predators or aliens. If you want to know the alien go and be one. Sit in the Mogollon. Do you work? Find a bear. Is he your friend? People wander out all the time, light fires to be found, but the ones that arent found hit the books up. Coyote Wound Dresser had a talk with Walt Whitman, Wound D resser, but things did not turn out well for Whitman.The alien cannot be modeled, but it is knowable if stranger. Im going to tell you what it is. Talking to the inscrutable we try to understand synergies of it in the anthropology of Edward Dorn http//osnapper. typepad. com/snappersj He says the alien is a crucifying egotism of doubt at the root of his own being when he sees the Shoshone. Does he, Dorn, buy the farm? His doubts serve against the Unknown. They are a mirror of loss and lack. The filth on the chair that gets on his pants is an image of it I had a great desire to be off, to not take any more, or give any morefor I will say it, at the take a chance of blunder It is impossible for myself and my people to offer themselves in any but the standard senses (14). At least he knows of the surrender, that you have to live it. In some freak of Methodism he wants to wash this old mans feet to tame him, this 102 year old who stands for all of Idaho, Utah, Nevada and the Great Ba sin before electricity, a volume of Yaa-Aaa-Aaa (14). I was aware of the presumption of my thought process he would be relieved or made happy by having his feet wash (13).Now Here is the Alien If you want to confront the Unknown you must(prenominal) to do it in the feet of your old age and death. If we want to confront the Unknown we must to do it in the feet of our old age and death. The place was intensely neglected, I gradually saw, and not just filthy as it looked to be at first glance. It was simply the remains of a life (12). The repose of the Unknown in Dorns account is that there are two that serve each other in it, but we dont know why. One Unknown is the wife, ust like all our mothers and wives, who should have died, by the rules of our biology, thirty years ago.But it was evident that she would stay on, the weaker of the two, until he smelled the abstract message in his nostrils, then she would be free (12). Is death that license? The alien doesnt think in known te rms, but makes Dorn accommodate such thoughts as, this man and woman were the most profoundly beautiful ancestors Ive witnessed go before me (12,13). He is the spirit that lies at the bottom, where we have our feet. The feet which stride between the domains, the visible sign, the real evidence of the coming event where this mans low, incantatory verbs spill down across the plateau and basin (13)not more Indian than man, still as much the flower as the fruit. Wash his feet Wash his hands, heart and head Lay in the spread like a penitent Barry Lopez, close to the flagellate, and weep for the human lost. This Shoshones name is Willie Dorsey. We dont get his real name, Alien. I saw, the heat, the insistent mosquitoes in the buildings shade, the slightly moist filth at the back door. Alien old age and death look like very old animals that have such coats over the eyes, a screen impenetrable from the outside (11).Cataracts, the blind, the lame, the sick, the living I know treated by some Doctor of the Alien. She operates her office practically as a charity, fatten out with science, intuition and healing to the grim weight of bad condition, not areaicularly outlined, more heavy with despair than one could possibly arrange with junk (11). This is not Ed Dorn. He is a spectator. This Doctor holds the hand, cuts the hair, absorbs the breast, the tear, weeping and praying within, but praising and thanking for the chance that comes out of the wooden clapboard structures (10) of lives that they could be so treated and revived.So thats the alien, its human and knowable even if Unknown. Poetry Analysis Sherman Alexie is Spokane/Coeur dAlene Indian. Alexie wrote a poem called The Reservation drudge Driver. The title contributes to understand the poem and understand who the hack number one wood was. In this poem, Alexie uses a symbolism he also uses some metaphor, chaff and imagery. By examining the life portrayal in the reservation, the poems episodic diction, the magic appearance of Crazy Horse, I will show how Alexies critique of the status of Indians on the reservation.The life in the reservation was hard. When anyone cute to get out of the reservation the unless choice the reservation had was hiring the political hack number one wood who drives a 65 Malibu with no windshield. The description of this taxi driver car is an example of Imagery taking place you can see the car all beat up with no windshield. This particular cab driver waits outside the breakaway bar. He charges his costumers a beer a mil with no exception. This cab driver is not looking for money. The other people have to get this cab to take them places especially during the powwow.Also in stanza 8 during powwow, some imagery takes place. The imagery you see is people righting(a) him with quilts, beads and fry bread and firewood. Imagery in this section is important because you can see whats going on. In this stanza the imagery is very clear that it seems as if you are there in person observation everything. Also in stanza 7 you see use of metaphor also irony but the cab driver did not understand Seymour because the cab driver answers Aint no pony, its a car.Alexie shows us how hard it is for the reservation to have to take the cab and pay in a form that you do not see in other places of America. Alexie shows us an example of two unlike economies. Within the resembling country but how life in the reservation is completely divers(prenominal) to the rest of the life outside the reservation. The reservation has many problems like having only one cab driver who charges a beer and a cigarette a mile. Another problem The Man to publicize rain down Clouds The theme of Leslie Marmon Silkos The Man to Send Rain Clouds revolves around the idea of maintaining your culture in the opponent of the religious right. Leon is faced with strong opposition about his tribes rituals in regard to the burying of one of their lifeless. That opposition comes fro m the Christian priest and his ideas of what is sacred. Cultures around the world embrace death in incompatible ways. Some mourn and fear death others accept it and find go for when the time comes. Unfortunately not all of those cultures are able to be open to the idea that they could be wrong, or that different methods could lead to the same ends. The Christian church of coarse has a history of killing, burning, and condemning things that disaccord with their ideologies.Even today we see extremists in many religions that fight wars over their beliefs. In this story a man had to fight with himself regarding the decision. He has to curve with the pleas of the priest and the idea that his culture taught him regarding death. He believed as his tribe did that the ritual would bring rain and new life to the crops. The battle between cultures moves on when the priest is actually asked to be a part of the ritual and bring up the body. At this point the priest enters his own battle wit h the things that he was taught and the opposition that he faces.He had to decide what would be the Christian thing to do. When all these battle are over both men learn a little about each others world as the wind starts to come in, it is a wind of change. They wait to see if the combat will come to begin the circle of life anew. The Man to Send Rain Clouds Readers Reaction This was quite an interesting story. There were three sections to the story which broke the story in three different propagation in one day. The characters were all very nonchalant except for the priest who showed some emotion when he found out that old Teofilo died.The story unploughed our interest, however, it did not lead a very clear trail to the end, and there was no real climax where we felt there was a good peak. The story needs to be read more than once to really be appreciated. Plot Summary One ? Teofilo is at the sheep camp in the arroyo when he rests in the shade under a cotton tree and dies. ? Afte r Teofilo missing for a few days, Leon and Ken come looking for him and find that he had been dead for a day or more, and the sheep had wandered and dissipate up and down the arroyo. ? They gather the sheep and then come back to get through Teofilo up in a red blanket.? They paint his face with different colors and ask him to send them rain. ? On Leon and Kens way back into pueblow (town) they see Father Paul, who asked if they found their missing grandfather yet, and they tell him where they found him, but not that hes dead. Good Morning, father. We were just out to the sheep camp. Everything is o. k. now. Two ? Louise and Teresa are waiting for them to get back with any news about Teofilo. ? Leon tells the girls that they found Teofilo died near a cottonwood tree in the big arroyo near sheep camp. ?Leon and Ken carry in red blanket with teofilos body, dress him in new clothes to be buried in. ? After a quiet lunch, Ken went to see when the gravediggers could have the grave re ady, I think it can be ready before dark. ? Neighbors and clans people come by their house to console Teofilos family and let food for the gravediggers. Three ? After the funeral, Louise tells her brother Leon that she wants the priest to sprinkle consecrated water for grandpa. So he wont be thirsty. ? Leon gets in the truck Burial Rituals of indispensable American Culture At some point in our lives, we all come to realize that death is a part of life.Cultural diversity provides a wide variety of lifestyles and traditions for each of the unique groups of people in our world. Within these different cultures, the rituals associated with death and sepulchre can also be uniquely diverse. Many consider ritualistic traditions that differ from their own to be somewhat strange and often behold them as unnatural. A prime example would be the burial rituals of the Native American people. Leslie Marmon Silkos story entitled The Man to Send Rain Clouds describes a funeral service carried out by a Native American Pueblo family.Though many perceive the funeral service narrated in this story to be lacking in emotion and also lacking respect for the sack of their loved one, it portrays a ceremony that is quite common for the Native American communities. There is also a hint of conflict occurring between the characters in the story that are carrying out their traditions while including an outside religious visit in the ceremony. The death of an old man sets the stage for this story and tells of the way his family goes about preparing him for his journey into the afterlife.A feather is tied into the old mans hair, his face was painted with blue, yellow, green and white paint, pinches of corn repast and pollen were tossed into the wind and finally his body was wrapped in a red blanket prior to being transported. According to Releasing the Spirit A Lesson in Native American Funeral Rituals by Gary F. Santillanes, Pueblo Indians care for their own dead with no funeral dir ector involved. The family will take the deceased, usually in their truck, back to the home of the deceased and place him or her on the floor veneering east to west, on a native blanket.Depending on the deceaseds stature in the tribe, his face may be painted in the traditional nature. A powdery substance is placed AK English 217 drill Journal (The Way To Rainy Mountain) Scott Momaday uses nature to dictate the passage of life. He personifies the landscape as a person, he says the there is perfect in the mountains but it belongs to the eagle and the elk, the badger and the bear. To me, this tells me the mountains have a feeling of openness, but it is the home of many not just humans. The mountain holds importance to the Kiowas because it is pure wilderness.The landscape that is described helps the reader fare what the Kiowas were thinking upon reaching rainy mountain. The beautiful sights of the land made the Kiowas recognize a new passage of life. Their curiosity of the lands landscape created legends in their tribe. The legends helped them escape through the wilderness by becoming part of it through kinsmen in the sky and a boy turned into a bear at Devils Tower. Momaday describes the curiosity of the wilderness passim the landscape. In order to build the larger idea of the tribe, the curiosity makes the landscape act as a character.The writer, Scott Momaday, describes the grandmother through details of her life. My preferred line was at the end when he wrote, There, we it ought to be at the end of a long and legendary way, was my grandmothersgrave. This line sums up her entire life in a single sentence. She lived a long life and saw many things, her life was filled of legends that the tribe created. She had a concern for the sun because she saw the Sun Dances when she was younger. In 1887, the grandmother was at the last sun dance she bore a vision of deicide without any bitterness.At an old age, she began praying frequently. Momaday could not und erstand what she was saying but describes the tone of her verbalize as sad in sound, some merest hesitation upon the syllables of sorrow. No enumerate what the language, people inherently understand the sounds of sadness. It really brought the grandmother to life. Then finally, at the end, he Many Americans today believe that all students no weigh what race or ethnicity- have an easy path with our education and that all students are able to get a higher education without any problems.Yet this belief is not true for all students. However its a whole different story for the operative associate students. The working categorise student that goes for a higher education in life, in search for a better life and, a brighter future are faced with many obstacles and challenges on their path to achieve their goals and dreams. The working break up students are put with many different challenges. As they the working class students goes forward with their education, there maybe people tha t will try to put them down in many forms.But you should know that you will sound and at the end you be a stronger, prepare student with the tools to pass any obstacles in life. In the article Indian Education by Sherman Alexie, we read how being working class students we have obstacles to overcome. Some of this obstacles come from the people we less expected just like the example in Alexie Sherman Article Indian Education, how his own second grade teacher Miss Betty Towle try to put him down as many times as possible. She the teacher tries to put him down for being Indian, and for having working class parents. The Teacher Miss. Betty seems to not care for Alexie at all.The teacher ask Alexie to give a letter to his parents in which she ask for his parents to come to school so that they could have a conversation on what she calls his bad behavior in class. The teacher seems to not want to talk about his bad behavior. Instead, she precious to insult Alexie in front of his parents b y calling him Indian without any compassion or respect. Indians, indians, indians, she said it without capitalization, she called me Indian, indian, Indian (p. 1). Base on this computer address we see that the teacher was trying to put him down for being Indian and for having parents that werent educated. By