LITR 4332: American Minority Literature

A'Tousha Ricks

This Land, Their Land

            Loss and destruction are concepts that tell a portion of the Native American tale.  Objective 3b’s first consideration is interested in this idea as “the Indians were once ‘the Americans’ [who] lost most of their land along with many of their people.”  America was not an empty an uninhabited plane, filled only with plants and vegetation.  Rather, it was a land rich in resources and flourishing with a wonderful population.  This population was the Native American. 

            When Europeans enacted westward expansion, and entered into what would later become The United States of America; they came into contact with indigenous cultures who had established ways of existence.  As the first “Americans” met with foreign invaders, destruction ensued.  In How America was Discovered, Handsome Lake spoke about the damage to his people after contact with invaders. “Soon a great flock of ships came over the ocean and white men came swarming into the country bringing with them cards, money, fiddles, whiskey, and corruption” (Handsome Lake 183).  His inside perspective, on outside domination, gives insight into the Native American demolition story and the taking of their lands.  

            However, the narrative of the Native American does not end in detriment.  Despite dire circumstances, the “indigenous American” lived.  Objective 3b later defends this theory: “Yet Native Americans defy the myth of ‘the vanishing Indian,’ choosing to ‘survive,’ sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself.”  Thus, as the Indian people watched what first belonged to them being destroyed; they clung to their values of old and survived their ordeal.  They survived and they hoped.  Sherman Alexie illuminates the surviving Native American in his compilation of short stories: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven.  He states that his people are “the Indians, the eternal survivors” (Alexie 11).  Alexie, and others like him, continually fight and survive upon this land that was once theirs.  

            Loss of land surfaces again in the Mexican American narrative.  “In some ways, the Mexican American experience reflects that of the Indians, in so far as they, too, were forced out of their homeland, especially those who lived in what is now Texas” (JM 2002).  Westward-thinking dominators yanked a large chunk of Mexico in the Mexican-American War.  What was first Mexico, is now southwestern America.  “Involuntary participation,” Objective 1b, speaks directly to the loss of Mexican land as “unlike the dominant immigrant culture, [they] did not choose to come to America.”  Instead, The United States forced itself upon the indigenous people of Mexico, and snatched a large portion of their country. Hence, Mexico was sectioned and became America.