Monday, 9 April: conclude selections from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Web highlight (research reports or final exams regarding American Indian literature): Rhonda Fisher

A common theme regarding American Indian literature has to do with the idea of loss and survival. Native Americans have been forced to endure numerous losses since the European “discovery of America” and continue to develop survival tactics as a means to cope with these losses. I have chosen to analyze some of the previous final exam essays relating to the concept of loss and survival – Course Objective 3b – focusing on Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

Objective 3b. Native American Indian alternative narrative: “Loss and Survival” – Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to become American, the Indians were once “the Americans” but lost most of their land along with many of their people. Yet Native Americans defy the myth of “the vanishing Indian” choosing to “survive,” sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return.

The following essays are taken from the 2005 Final Exam answers.

Narratives of Ethnicity:  Native Americans and Mexican-Americans

In response to the devastating losses experienced by the native populations, the Native American narratives carry a common theme of “loss and survival.”  In […] light of devastating losses of land, population, wildlife, these people struggle with the future and their own survival.  Reservation narratives such as told by Sherman Alexie in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven are stereotypical of reservation life. […] Sherman Alexie does not write in an autobiographical voice like Zitkala-Sa, but he is not any less of an activist for the survival of Native American traditions.  On the reservation, his characters maintain their traditional culture through storytelling.  He tells a story about Victor, who tells stories about storytellers.  Thomas is a storyteller, as is his father.  The elders on the reservation tell stories.  The way to survive is to keep traditions alive. [JH]

Native and Mexican Americans as Minority Cultures

The Native Indians were forced to move, while the dominant society took over power and control, taking away from them their culture’s way of life, by killing the buffalos [and] moving them to reservations.  The Indians, although they were the first “Americans,” were forced to give up their land and way of life and eventually had no choice.  The Indians tried to hold on to their beliefs, while adapting to a mode of survival in a land overtaken by the Europeans.  Many Indians hoped the dominant society would destroy itself and the buffaloes would return to roam the land.

The Indians had an oral tradition of story telling with myths and legends, capturing the origins and creations of the universe.  The emergence and the earth-diver stories are symbolic of the Indians relation to the earth.  Their oral stories held that animal figures dove into the ocean and would create.  In addition, the trickster story is popular with the Native American culture.  The Indians lived in close relation with the earth and animals and these become apparent in the symbols and myths of their heritage.

Although the Indians were forced into a position of minority, their hope for their people continued.  In Sherman Alexie’s, The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in Heaven, when Victor talks of the “salmon coming back,” [he] represents the Indians belief that they would survive.  Learning to read and write would give them the means to write of their experiences of loss and survival in such books as American Indian Stories, as well as [to have] poems published in Unsettling America.  Even after they lost their [way] of living with the earth, the Indians would try to hold on as best they could to their heritage and beliefs.  The Indians, through the oral tradition, are great oracle poets, and through this medium carried their feeling of loss and strength to carry on, despite opposition from the dominant society.  They would not forget [their] past! [JM]

Playing the Name Game and Creating a Global Framework

There are many characters in Alexie’s book who deal with loss. Take, for […] example, the man [who] loses his job on his birthday and succumbs for the first time to the temptation to drink. When forced to deal with such a great loss, the man felt like he was out of options, and the bar felt like the only comforting environment after leaving work for the last time. Ironically, this particular story helps break down the notion (perpetuated by many) that American Indians and alcoholism [go] hand in hand. This story of a man who loses his job and loses hope humanizes a group with whom most people have minimal contact. This and other stories in Alexie’s book painfully tell the story of the daily struggles American Indians face when confronting loss and attempting to survive. [JC]

In conclusion, there are certain common losses endured and survival tactics employed by the Native Americans which are acknowledged in the student essays above. They include the following:

Losses:                                                                                 Survival Tactics:

land / geographic location                                                    Maintaining Native American traditions                            

population                                                                              Maintaining heritage

wildlife                                                                                    storytelling

employment / livelihood                                                        literacy

hope

way of life