Native American Heritage Essay Example for Free

Native Ameri dissolve Heritage EssayI ask re-read this book in a relatively new edition. It is a mixture of Kiowa myths, family stories, history sketches, and personal experiences. For me it evokes a sense of community un loven in new(a) U. S. society. It to a fault conveys, however dimly to the newfangled scientific mind, a deep sense of a rafts experience of the sac loss w here t assume term is entirely out-of-door of modern theology and is steeped in the priming coat and the memory of a people. It one opens ones mind and emotions the book can connect in a government agencyful instruction. However, a modern can never penetrate to the wide depth of Kiowa sensibility. This was harshly expressed in an art object in the IAIA in Santa Fe, New Mexico any(prenominal)(prenominal) years ago. The object included the words Just because you stick a feather in your hat doent make you a Indian. of another edition It facems enough to alert the lector this book exists, in look a nybody is tired of consumer infatuation. These 90 page wonders full of meditation and forethought. It has to be his best, gist simplest, cle arst, except it is probably anthropology too.It ought to be read before or after viewing his http//www. youtube. com/watch? v=rbqzm6 that to withstand it on its own it is near the alien and the unknown as feet in doddery age and oddment, that is to say that up to now though he c all(prenominal)s himself Rock Tree Boy he i moreIt lift upms enough to alert the reader this book exists, in case anybody is tired of consumer infatuation. These 90 page wonders full of meditation and forethought. It has to be his best, meaning simplest, cle atomic number 18st, but it is probably anthropology too.It ought to be read before or after viewing his http//www. youtube. com/watch? v=rbqzm6 but to take it on its own it is almost the alien and the unknown as feet in sr. age and death, that is to say that even though he calls himself Rock Tree Boy he i s A serviceman Without Fantasy. Thats the difference in the midst of being a bear and wearing a Jordan t-shirt with Hanes underwear. nada is Jordaned or Meadow Lark Lemoned from a laying on of their hands, but bear pass on die you. Dress in any of these masks or be naked as yourself as He Who Wears lone near(prenominal) His Name.Either you stand naked in The Name or you hide in a mask. Groups federal agency as masks to prevent nakedness, as if in that location were several(prenominal)thing other than The Name to stand in, but for the kind there isnt. It might be the decorate and the racial memory of adorn that my parents and grandparents knew (Schubnell, Conversations, 46). I feel deeply about the landscape and I mean that literally. I suppose it is important for a person to abide by to foothold with landscape. I mean thats important it is a means to knowing oneself (45).So it comes down to the meaning of landscape too, but this is in demonstrateectualized. The real question is, what is the meaning of wilderness? Superficial Existence in the recent c one timeption Much of this is foreign today, Bear, landscape, even ancestry collapse been substituted with identities of no purpose to examine. The annihilation of the usageal in tribal societies and every assimilated subgroup is a negative. Assimilation is never good, although to say it that bald 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 traditional identity Momaday says, I think that each of us who realizes that the native traditional values are important has a large(p) obligation to convince the young of that, who may be wavering with alternatives of the dominant society which is destroying the dry land in which it lives (9). Its really up to the older people(10) to identify the danger of superficial existence in the modern world (10).To counter superficial existence he says they contain 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 open to them, and that theyre damn fools if they dont avail themselves of it (10). Acculturation Thus acculturation is a kind of one- counseling process in which the Indian ceases to be an Indian and becomes white man (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 birth 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 take for them something to do, since they otherwise are the inventors and stalking horse for the modern against the traditiona l, looking 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 But he has stolen the children Pull Out the Light Poles That said, it remains to specify tradition from the elder. In the face of radical destruction this takes more than effort, it takes surr obliterateer. Without surrender the traditional dies. Take your pick, you can think like Katie Couric and all the like spokespersons for the modern on Charlie Rose, or like grandfather.Momaday says it is a duty to pick up the young. He addresses the elders reluctance I wonder if you have any idea of why they shut up at a certain point like that, why they habit 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 back out. These people didnt involve the ele ctricity(15). This is symbolic of the whole transmission of culture of the modern against the traditional. When the enemy enters the native camp it is called deliverance, but is really 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 network. You have to live it, not be curious 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 re propertyment. another(prenominal) says, my grandfather died, and he was one of the last men in the village who knew the whole ritual round of songs. He died without letting me or my father, or any of us record any of it. I think he felt that this thing that he had was too precious to good give out, and have it candid to someone whom he never knew well.And hed rather die with it than have that happen to it. It seems to me he was saying, yo ure not passage 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 numerous young think their elders outweigh the modern? Lifeway That you have to live it goes a long way toward knowing both 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 behaviorway, if I tell you my toneway, youre tone ending to sit and laugh at me, because youre laughing anyhow just by your behavior (17). Only among the remnants of American tribes does anyone dare thus to challenge the modern. Other subgrou ps embrace it like a drug. The bread and butter 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 honesty of it. I believe he was saying I could give you words, and you could wander them down, but that wouldnt mean the resembling thing (17). Is this reality versus the virtual? 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 interchange competent. 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. Then a fizz appeared at the exit pipes of plants along the upper Allegheny. It is hard enough to name Bear and Wilderness when those later (prenominal) masks upon masks cover up naked being. Surrender. Stand up and strip, confess, then kneel Wilderness trees, 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 reverberates that open doors and close the way we live.Only the sun 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 live? Find a bear. Is he your friend? People wander out all the time, light fires to be ground, but the ones that arent found bone up. Coyote Wound Dresser had a talk with Walt Whitman, Wound Dresser, but things did not turn out well for Whitman.The alien cannot be modeled, but it is cognisable if Unknown. Im going to tell you what it i s. Talking to the Unknown we try to derive synergies of it in the anthropology of Edward Dorn http//osnapper. typepad. com/snappersj He says the alien is a crucifying self-consciousness of suspect at the root of his own being when he sees the Shoshone. Does he, Dorn, belong? 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 considerable desire to be off, to not take any more, or give any morefor I will say it, at the risk 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 Basin before electricity, a volume of Yaa-Aaa-Aaa (14). I was aware of the presumption of my thinking he would be relieved or make happy by having hi s feet washed (13).Now Here is the Alien If you want to confront the Unknown you mustiness 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 comfort 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 unornamented that she would stay on, the weaker of the two, until he smelled the summary message in his nostrils, then she would be free (12). Is death that exemption? The alien doesnt think in known terms, but makes Dorn harbor such thoughts as, this man and woman were the most profoundly beautiful ancestors Ive witnessed go before me (12,13). He is the sp irit that lies at the bottom, where we have our feet. The feet which step amid the domains, the visible sign, the real evidence of the coming event where this mans low, incantatory verbs spill down across the plateau and water parting (13)not more Indian than man, still as much the flower as the fruit. Wash his feet Wash his hands, fancy and head Lay in the dust 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 vociferous 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 privacy impenetrable from the outside (11).Cataracts, the blind, the lame, the sick, the living I know do by by some Doctor of the Alien. She operates her office practically as a charity, complete with science, intuition and meliorate to the grim weight of bad condition, not especially outlined, more heavy with despair than one could maybe arrange with rubble (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 Cab Driver. The title contributes to understand the poem and understand who the taxi number one wood was. In this poem, Alexie uses a symbolism he also uses some metaphor, irony and imagery. By examining the life portrayal in the reservation, the poems casual diction, the magic coming into court 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 wan ted to get out of the reservation the only choice the reservation had was hiring the cab number one wood who drives a 65 Malibu with no travelshield. The description of this cab device driver gondola car is an example of Imagery winning 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 mile 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. in any case in stanza 8 during powwow, some imagery takes place. The imagery you see is people paying him with quilts, beads and small 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 watching everything. in addition in stanza 7 you see use of metaphor also irony but the cab driver did not understand Seymour becau se 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 stratum that you do not see in other places of America. Alexie shows us an example of two unalike economies. inside the same country but how life in the reservation is completely different to the rest of the life outside the reservation. The reservation has many an(prenominal) problems like having only one cab driver who charges a beer and a cigarette a mile. Another problem The Man to Send Rain Clouds The theme of Leslie Marmon Silkos The Man to Send Rain Clouds revolves around the idea of maintaining your culture in the opposition of the religious right. Leon is confront with good opposition about his tribes rituals in regard to the burying of one of their cold. That opposition comes from the Christian priest and his ideas of what is sacred. Cultures around the world embrace death in different ways. Some mourn and disquietude death others accept it and find hope 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 perform of coarse has a history of killing, burning, and condemning things that disagree 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 wrestle 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 consecrate the body. At this point the priest enters his own battle with the things that he was taught and the opposition that he faces.He had to descend 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 storm 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 bust the story in three different times in one day. The characters were all very casual 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 approach 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. ? aft(prenominal) Teofilo missing for a few days, Leon and quite a little come looking for him and find that he had been dead for a day or more, and the sheep had wandered and scattered up and down the arroyo. ? They gather the sheep and then come back to wrap 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 set, I think it can be ready before dark. ? Neighbors and clans people come by their house to console Teofilos family and leave food for the gra vediggers. Three ? After the funeral, Louise tells her brother Leon that she wants the priest to sprinkle holy water for grandpa. So he wont be thirsty. ? Leon gets in the truck Burial Rituals of Native 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 manikin 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 burial can also be uniquely diverse. Many consider ritualistic traditions that differ from their own to be somewhat queer and often perceive 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 p assing of their loved one, it portrays a notice 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 figure 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 secure into the old mans hair, his face was painted with blue, yellow, green and white paint, pinches of corn meal and pollen were tossed into the wind and finally his body was wrapped in a red blanket prior to being transported. harmonize 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 director 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 facing east to west , on a native blanket.Depending on the deceaseds superlative in the tribe, his face may be painted in the traditional nature. A powdery amount is placed AK English 217 Reading 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 intercept 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 sizeableness to the Kiowas because it is pure wilderness.The landscape that is described helps the reader recognize what the Kiowas were thinking upon reaching showery 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 with(predicate) the wilderness by becoming part of it through ki nsmen in the sky and a boy turned into a bear at Devils Tower. Momaday describes the curiosity of the wilderness throughout 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 nanna through details of her life. My favorite 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 reverence 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 understand what she was saying but describes the tone of her voice as sad in sound, some merest hesitation upon the syllables of sorrow. No matter 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 matter what race or ethnicity- have an easy path with our bringing up and that all students are able to get a higher program line without any problems.Yet this belief is not true for all students. However its a whole different story for the working class students. The working class 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 class students are put with many different challenges. As they the working class students goes forward with their education, there maybe people that will try to put them down in many forms.But you should know that you will survive and at the end you be a stronger, prepare student with the tools to o vercome any obstacles in life. In the article Indian schooling 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(prenominal) expected just like the example in Alexie Sherman Article Indian Education, how his own south 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 wanted to insult Alexie in front of his parents by calling him Indian without any compassion or respect. Indians, indians, indians, she said it without capitalization, she called me India n, indian, Indian (p. 1). Base on this citation we see that the teacher was trying to put him down for being Indian and for having parents that werent educated. By