LITR 4332: American
Minority Literature
Sample Student
Final Exam Answers 2004
1. Native American Indian Literature & Culture
B. (creative option). Apply another course objective besides 3b to at least one Amerind origin story, American Indian Stories, and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Explain the significance of your chosen objective. Describe how it appears in the texts and in Amerind culture generally. Conclude with what you have learned through this essay about the objective and Amerind literature and culture.
Sample Answers
As stated in objective 6a. most minority groups place more emphasis on “traditional” or “community” aspects of human society than they do on the nuclear family, and they are also mistrustful of the state institutions. In the beginning of the class we were told that a quick check for what the minority groups were was to ask “When the cops show up do things get better or worse?” Where white Americans would say that the police were helpful, most minority groups would disagree. Likewise most white Americans do not keep in close connection with their extended family or feel a strong desire to hold onto community life. In all of the text on American Indian Culture there some distrust of police shown as well as a true since of community and extended family.
In Zitkala-Sa’s book American Indian Stories the reader gets a feel for the relationship that the American Indians have with one another in the story “The Legends.” There is much talk of an Uncle who passed away during a war, and as is their culture he has been made grate by the stories that have become legends and continue to be repeated for next generations. The young girl, as we learn in “My Mother,” looks up to her cousin, the daughter of her uncle, who is a few years older than her. In addition to the family bonds the girl writes about having luncheon with whom ever was passing by the house at the time of day (12). Also in the evenings she was asked by her mother to invite old men and women for dinner. “What do you seek, little grand-daughter?” was a common greeting among them. Not that they were actually related by blood, but that they cared for each other in a loving way. In “The Coffee Making” we see the young girl make coffee and provide a snack for a visitor. She is young and learning to be a good host, and he is a guest in her home. Both being sure not to offend, she makes him muddy warm water and unleavened bread, and he drinks it. It was the “law of our custom,” that “compelled him to partake in my insipid hospitality” (28). We get a clear picture of the family like community the Native Americans share on the reservation of Zitkala-Sa’s childhood.
Similarly, in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven the reader get to read about life on the reservations, but the community stories are less pronounced than the intimation of the law. The basket ball community is one that Victor really feels that he is a part of and fits in with. His companion Adrian and a group of friends idealize the boy Julius who has a great family legacy in reservation basketball. The legend sounded much different, but it was still present in Victors society. In the same sort story, “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore,” where the reader learns of the basketball tradition they also learn about the police officers. Victor narrates, “a tribal cop drove by and cruised down the road.” The cop is not explained in any other way, until the conversation between Victor and Adrian:
“Think they’ll catch them?”
“Always do.”
A few minutes later, the tribal cop drove by again, with Julius in the backseat.
Then the reader understands that for this group seeing a cop on a search for someone is not only nothing new, but it is unsettling. Reminiscent of the game “Cowboys and Indians” children often play, but it’s not a game.
Although tradition is cherished by this group they are also losing a great deal of their tradition on the reservations. In the article “Handsome Lake (Seneca)” one man has a vision where three messengers of the Creator appear in traditional Iroquoin dress and rebuke alcoholism, and instruct them to celebrate a Strawberry Festival, in celebration of their relationship to Earth. Dreams and visions are not uncommon to the culture, and this one seemed to be calling for the people on the reservation to go back to their old ways of living. There is now a movement taking place to preserve the traditions that the original Seneca tribal members felt they were forsaking (182). Now, the minority that has assimilated to an extent is longing for a return of their original attachments to culture and family traditions.
I admire their connection to family and community, and have to admit is seems unequally important to them as a minority group to seek family through community, and common cultural groups. It is common for me to think of Mexican Americans, and African Americans running from the law, but I had not placed Native Americans into this group of minorities that fear police. The poem that was read in our last class meeting “Immigrants in Our Own Land,” started my thought process in this direction. We as western thinkers swept in and stole their culture and tradion, so what else are we willing to take? Their fear is reasonable, and justified from what we have read. [THF]
To fight or to surrender completely are two choices that every minority culture has to make. Do minorities fight to retain their independence or do they lay down their heritage and become one with the dominant race? The American Indian does not address this question lightly. Throughout the Indian literature, the theme of Objective 4 bleeds through everything that they write. The Indian peoples believe strongly that they are a sovereign culture; independent from the white ways. Furthermore, they believe that they are the only true inheritors of this land, and eventually that the white will relinquish all the land and leave this country as it used to be. However, there is a blending between the Indian culture and the White Culture that must be realized. It is this blending that Objective 4 addresses and the texts that we have read highlights. . . .
I am hard pressed to hear of an African Britishmen, or a Mexican Russian. Instead these two minorities are listed simple as British, or Russian. Yet, in America, we are Mexican American, African American, and Asian American. We identify strongly with other cultures. We are French, Russian, Irish, Italian, Greek, before we are American. Deloria may be correct in thinking that White American assimilates aspects of other cultures to help identify them. Where as the Indian culture, and other minority cultures, merge aspect of the dominant culture to survive. However, somewhere in the middle we see blending of the minority and Dominant cultures. We see Indian cultures and identify with some aspects, just as Indian culture identifies with some of our cultural loves. Indian enthusiast would say that the Indian is the Indian and the White just wants to be Indian. However, In Sherman Alexie’s stories, the narrator took a white woman for a lover. He moved out of the reservation. He worked in a white man’s hotel. He survived in the white mans culture and attempted to fit in. He attempted to fit in with the white Cultural hippie. The subject of cultural morph-ism into a combined identity is a long and unfinished subject. One that I am sure will be debated for a long time. [RA]