Black Elk discussion: Corey Porter

Black Elk’s Story

“…if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it… (1)”

Obj. 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.)

·        survival though the oral tradition:

“As I sit here, I can feel in this man beside me a strong desire to know the things of the Other World. He has been sent to learn what I know, and I will teach him (xxv).”

            “There is so much to teach you. What I know was given to me for men and it is true and beautiful. Soon I shall be under the grass and it will be lost. You were sent to save it, and you must come back so that I can teach you (xxvii).”

·        though retelling/appropriation:

            “The nature of that duty as he conceived it will be apparent to readers who approach the book in no condescending mood as of a civilized person more or less curious about the ‘savage’ mind, but with the humble desire of one groping human being to understand another and perhaps to learn a little more in a world where so very little can be known (xx).”

            As Black Elk states, “Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children? (2)”

And…

“Then I was standing on the highest

mountain of them all,

And round about beneath me was

the whole hoop of the world.

And while I stood there, I saw more

than I can tell and I understood

more than I saw;

For I was seeing in a sacred manner

the shapes of all things in the spirit,

And the shape of all shapes as they must

live together like one being.

And I saw that the sacred hoop of my

people was one of many hoops

That made one circle, wide as daylight

and as starlight.

And in the center grew one mighty

flowering tree sheltering all the children

of one mother and one father.

And I saw that it was holy.”

Also

Obj. 4

To register the minority dilemma of assimilation or resistance—i. e., do you fight or join the culture that oppressed you? What balance do minorities strike between economic benefits and personal or cultural sacrifices? In general, immigrants assimilate, while minorities (esp. African Americans) remain distinct.

·        The photo on the cover: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in England, 1887.

·        p.10 Fire Thunder, p.12 Black Elk

·        p.63

Leftover notes from previous classes

This info-bit won't resolve all our questions last week regarding the literary value of Push, but anyway . . . . On this week's Sunday night episode of the game show Jeopardy!, the title of our novel Push was the question to an answer (in Jeopardy mode).

The category was "One-Word Imperatives."

The Answer was something like, "The title of a 1999 novel by Sapphire, or a command you hear in a delivery room."

Push 

Tuskegee Airmen Win Congressional Gold Medal

POSTED: 11:37 am CST March 1, 2006

UPDATED: 12:12 pm CST March 1, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Tuskegee Airmen, the first group of black American fighter pilots, will receive the Congressional Gold Medal under a bill passed in the House on Tuesday.

The bill, which passed 400-0, would be the airmen's second congressional recognition. Both chambers passed a resolution honoring the pilots last year.

"They have fought not really just for black folks. They fought for a better America. They fought for a better world," said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., the sponsor of the bill. "They were pioneers not only in fighting the war but showing and giving self-esteem to so many younger people."

About 1,000 black pilots were trained to fly and maintain combat airplanes at the Tuskegee, Ala., air base during World War II. Facing strong discrimination in the segregated military, the airmen flew bomber escorts. They were credited with never losing a bomber and with shooting down more than 100 enemy aircraft. Military officials estimate about 200 of the Tuskegee Airmen are alive today.

The bill requires House and Senate leaders to present a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award of the House, collectively to the Tuskegee Airmen. About 300 individuals and groups, including civil rights activist Rosa Parks and Olympian Jesse Owens, have received the honor since 1776.

A similar bill passed in the Senate last October.

Last year the House voted to tighten rules on such congressional awards - specifically eliminating the ability of groups to win the Gold Medal. That bill died in the Senate.

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

Black Elk discussion: Anuruddha Ellakalla

- Black Elk Speaks -

Black Elk Speaks echoes the voice of Native Americans. Even though they could have a large “native” voice, there are no people to listen them. Therefore, they are voiceless.   They have great visions of social ethics and spiritual values, but they are choiceless. Black Elk, the speaker of the book and the leader of the Lakota Sioux nations, tells his heroic but sad stories about their nation.  According to Black Elk, he has three missions as a leader.  At the early age of his life, he is a great warrior. Later, he becomes a medicine man. At the end, he dies as Catholic man.  However, the first portion of his stories is about his adventures as a young boy and a young warrior. He says:

"My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow? So many other men have lived and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills” (1).

In his story, Black Elk presents Native Americans' voices:

“He had no right to go in there, because all that country was ours. Also the Wasichus had made a treaty with Red Cloud (1868) that said it would be ours as long as grass should grow and water flow. Later I learned too that Pahuska had found there much of the yellow metal that makes the Wasichus crazy; and that is what made the bad trouble, just as it did before, when the hundred were rubbed out” (60).

“The soldiers killed as many women and children and men as they could while the people were running toward a bluff. . . . These people were in their own country and were doing no harm. They only wanted to be let alone” (69).

“We were in our own country all the time, and we only wanted to be let alone” (80).

“Those Wasichus had come to kill our mothers and us, and it was our country” (96).

The Native Americans are voiceless and choiceless. Although they change their religious beliefs to merge into the American dream, they claim to a great spiritual belief system. Black Elk says, to them the sky is “a father” and the earth “a mother” and “all living things with feet or wings or roots” are “their children” (2). These living things are in a hoop. The “hoop so large that everything is in it - all two-leggeds like us, four-leggeds, the fishes of the streams, the wings of the air, and all green things that grow. Everything is together in this great hoop” (a web quotation).  Although their human bodies belong to the earth, their souls are thoroughly connected to the divine souls:

Question: If America allowed Native Americans’ voices and choices to be heard, do you think it would harm Americans’ common dream?

Can the dominant culture and American Indian culture coexist on equal terms? 

Furthermore, Native Americans can fly somewhat similar to the African American. Black Elk says:

“Then they turned and left the ground like arrows slanting upward from the bow. When I got up to follow, my legs did not hurt me any more and I was very light. I went outside the tepee, and yonder where the men with flaming spears were going, a little cloud was coming very fast. It came and stooped and took me and turned back to where it came from, flying fast. And when I looked down I could see my mother and my father yonder, and I felt sorry to be leaving them.” (17- 18)

Question: How do you compare the Native Americans’ flying with the African Americans’ flying?

“Now I knew the sixth Grandfather was about to speak, he who was the Earth, and I saw that he was very old, but more as men are old. His hair was long and white, his face was all in wrinkles and his eyes were deep and dim. I stared at him, for it seemed I knew him somehow; and as I stared, he slowly changed, for he was growing backwards into youth, and when he had become a boy, I knew that he was myself with all the years that would be mine at last.” (23)

Question: Do you think Native American Indians believe in a rebirth concept?

What comparisons or differences with Buddhist rebirth?

Introduce American Indian Literature

Proceed to special qualities and status, but start with "minority status" according to our definitions

Objective 1

To define the “minority concept" as a power relationship modeled by some ethnic groups’ historical relation to the dominant American culture.

1a. “Involuntary (or forced) participation”

(Unlike the dominant immigrant culture, ethnic minorities did not choose to come to America or join its dominant culture. Thus the original "social contract" of Native Americans and African Americans contrasts with that of European Americans, Asian Americans, or most Latin Americans, and the consequences of "choice" or "no choice" echo down the generations.)

1b.  “Voiceless and choiceless”

(Contrast the dominant culture’s self-determination or choice through self-expression or voice, as in "The Declaration of Independence.")

Contrast minority with "immigrant story."

Though voluntary immigrants may be discriminated against or exploited for a generation or two, eventually voluntary immigrants become assimilated, Americanized, and inseparable from mainstream or everyday Americans in terms of appearance, language, opportunities.

The groups that remain minorities are those groups that do not fit the pattern of voluntary immigration:

African Americans

Native Americans

Mexican Americans as both minority and immigrant

For most people, the applicability of this non-voluntary or non-immigrant definition is even more obvious for American Indians than it is for African Americans.

One difference emerges: dominant culture tends to like or admire American Indians. Student in last version of this course announced, "Bubbas like Indians," and cited American Indian designs and decals associated with redneck pickup trucks.

Attitude exposes ambivalence on part of dominant culture

Simultaneously admires and destroys

Apess: talents? Murder?

Dominant culture admires the Indian who's gone, ignores the Indian who survives

Maybe the Indian drives a pickup truck, or redneck Bubba is part Indian

My own developing attitude toward American Indians as a subject of knowledge:

Most people don't know much of anything about American Indians. Therefore, if you know anything at all, it's easy to feel as though you know a lot. Early in my career, I became something of a local expert in my teaching areas--

Now I see I was pretty bogus. It's easy to foist off a few familiar attitudes as real knowledge, especially if you tell people something like they want to hear. Most of these bogus trends are to "romanticize" the American Indian . . . .

Doing actual research cured me of some vanity--

Early American Literature