"DEAR JOHN WAYNE"

by Louise Erdrich

READER: Ginger Cridland

RESPONDENT: Dianna Ruiz

RECORDER: Amanda Mooring

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION:

Louise Erdrich was born 1954 in Little Falls Minnesota: Erdrich grew up in Walpeton, North Dakota. She was a member of the Mountain Band of Chippewa. Her grandfather was for many years tribal chair of the reservation where her parents taught in the Bureau of Indian Affairs School.

She attended Dartmouth College, earning a degree in anthology in 1976 as well as a prize for fiction and poetry, including the American Academy of Poets Prize. She studied creative writing a John Hopkins University and go her masters in 1979. The following year, she returned to Dartmouth as a writer-in-residence.

Her works have appeared in New England Review and Redbook as well as such anthologies of Native American writing as Earth Power Coming and That's What She Said: Contemporary Poetry and Fiction by Native American Women. She has published two collections of poems, Jacklight (1984) and Baptism of Desire (1989). Her novel Love Medicine 1984 won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Beet Queen (1986), Track (1988), The Bingo Palace (1994), and Tales of Burning Love (1996) extended the histories of families dealt with in Love Medicine.

I In 1991, Erdrich and her then husband, Michael Dorris, a professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth, published The Crown of Columbus, a collaborative novel about Christopher Columbus's discovery of American. They pledged to donate a part of their royalties to American Indian charities.

http:www.bedfordsmartins.com/litlinks/fiction/erdrich.htm

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

A. Objective 1a: Involuntary Participation in Dominant Culture

B. Objective 1b: Voiceless and choice less

C. Objective 3b: Native American Narrative: loss and Survival

MY INTERPRETATION:

Dear John Wayne presents the reaction of young Indians to a John Wayne Western at a drive-in movie. The drive-in is packed with patrons and mosquitoes. (medaphor). On the screen, the Indians are spotted by the lookout: they attack the settlers "who die beautifully" all this takes place under the watchful eyes of the bear.

With this on screen portrayal of the white settlers braving in savagery who identifies with the heroes in films and magazines, as the audience is intended to do. The problem is that the Indians in the audience are not the intended audience . The audience is supposed to identify with John Wayne as the great white hope. But to this audience there is a contradiction.

The clouds and sky around and on the screen give way to a close up of John Wayne's facial features, which are pitted and scared "Like the land that was once flesh. Each rut, Each scar makes a promise".(ll.19)

As they are getting off the hood of their Pontiac and Wayne's huge close-up yields to credits and the movie is over they hear:

Come on boys, we got them

Where we want them, drunk,running

They'll give us what we want, what we need.(ll.38-40)

As they get back into their car, "we are back in our skins", ( ll. 35 ). This return to everyday existence suggests an end to the brief community imagined in lines 15-16.

Into the history they brought us all here

Together: this wide screen beneath the sign of the bear. ( ll. 15-16 )

This history could be read as assumed in the movie (brave settlers ruthlessly attacked by the Indians) or that revisionist history furthered by Erdich. Regardless of which one you prefer it seems that, "back in [their] skins," the audience members are less likely to be duped into identifying with John Wayne's disease: Everything we see belongs to us (ll. 23). The idea of taking everything (western expansion), the disease was an epidemic. Which I feel is what Erdich means by the last line where she refers to " a strange wood inside of everything we see, burning, doubling, splitting, out of its skin. (ll. 41-42)

QUESTIONS FOR THE CLASS:

1. What do you think Erdrich meant by "horizon of teeth" ?

2. What do you think the referral of the bear mean?

CLASS RESPONSE:

Horizon of teeth was represented by close-up of John Wayne face on the screen. (Charlie)

Teeth were reprentative of SAC missiles (Dr. White)

The bear was the star constellation of Auras major . (Maria)

Author from a culture where the bear was holy to them. (Ginger)

Asked how can you know what you own? (Diane)

American Indian worship land-how can whites understand the land like them.

Western expansion and John Wayne's disease being an epidemic "what we see belongs to us" (Ginger)

John Wayne made a pro-Vietnam movie " Green Berets" and was active in favor of the war. (Dr. White)

He resembled a moral certainty. Represented the cowboys and world war II movies.

People wanted this certainty in Vietnam.

"Sad that it was all the Native American and it has all been destroyed!" (Liz)

"When was it written?" (Sheri)

Many American Indians write still about how Indians are portrayed in movies.(Dr. White)

White men even played American Indians in John Wayne movies. They didn't have a voice/choice even in that aspect. (Charlie)

Dartmouth was founded as an American Indian College. (Dr. White)