Reader: Amanda Mooring

Respondent: Karen Solsaa

Recorder: Will Frith

"Lakota Sister / Cherokee Mother,".

by Victora Lena Manyarrows

Unsettling America, 286-287

Victoria Lena Mannyarrows is a true definition of the term "double minority" which can be found in Objective 2a. Mannyarrows describes herself as a "Tsalagi/Eastern Cherokee/Italian lesbian woman". She can also be classified as the "new American" who crosses, combines or confuses ethnic or gender identities (Objective 4a). Mannyarrows was born in North Dakota, but currently resides in the San Francisco bay area where she has worked as a social worker, community organizer, writer, artist and administrator in community arts, education, health and social service programs. Not only is she a writer but also a photographer and storyteller. She works with the Woodcraft Circle Organization as a mentor helping to keep the rich Native American oral tradition alive. They train young members of the community the ways of Native American storytelling. Also in 1995, she received an award from the ASTRAEA FOUNDATION Lesbian Writers Fund. The award granted 11,000 to Victoria Mannyarrows and 4 other emerging lesbian authors. She is also one of the authors in the anthology entitled Visit Teepee Town which is the first anthology dedicated to postmodern Native poetry and poetics. She is also a contributor to Indigenous Women which is an official publication of the Indigenous Women's Network, a continental and pacific network of women who are actively involved in work in their communities.

Style

** Free verse

Objectives In the Poem

Objective 3

** in concern with the "Cultural Group's relation to time" - The daughter (Manyarrows) is traditional culture (reconnecting with her past) while her mother represents the Modern culture (forgetting the past)

Objective 4

**assimilation or resistance – the mother assimilates

"She learned to deride, deny"

"Trying to become a modern woman"

Tells her daughter she is not hers but something she "acquired"

the daughter resists

She is "the daughter of her (mother's) people

She has the warrior spirit and the straight hair

Discussion questions

1. The last four lines "trying to become a modern woman not a mountain woman

an Indian woman that no one could understand"? What do you take from this?

Ginger: She would look different from her peers.

Dr. White: The stories that her mother would have told her, her trickster stories, would be different than those of the dominant culture

Amanda: I read in a book that Cherokees don't drink milk. It would be hard to understand why you don't fit into the dominant culture if you don't know these things about your culture

2. Does anyone know the meaning or find significance in the title? For example, the meaning of Lakota?

Amanda: LAKOTA means --The largest and westernmost of the Sioux peoples, made up of seven groups. The Teton became nomadic buffalo hunters after migrating westward in the 18th century and figured prominently in the resistance to white encroachment on the northern Great Plains.

And CHEROKEE --An Appalachian tribe of Indians, formerly inhabiting the region about the head waters of the Tennessee River. They are now mostly settled in the Indian Territory, and have become one of the most civilized of the Indian Tribes.

Dr. White: The Lakota also is where we derive North and South Dakota.

Karen: I could understand why the daughter would want to return to her heritage. If she could not fit into the dominant culture, she could go back to her Indian heritage. It's an awakening to her identity.

3. Is there anything else anyone wants to say about the poem?

Claudine: I see this poem as the classic mother-daughter conflict. She doesn't want to do what her mother does or be what her mother is because she is a teenager. It is the classic model.

Maria: Usually the younger generation assimilates and the parent clings to their heritage. It seems like the roles are reversed

Dr. White: The Baby Boomer generation turned to their ethnic identities and there was a pride awakening (in the 60's and 70's)

I wanted to point out the example of acculturation – the co-existence in the second stanza. The "creation story", "trickster", and "exchanged in a hospital bed" show the elements from two different cultures. It shows two different culture intermingled, unconsciously.