Matthew Martin

11 December 2012

“Where this road crosses the black road…”—The Middle Ground in Minority Literature

            In the interview with Hilda Neihardt, she reflects on a story told by Black Elk about the Sacred Hoop. In the story, everything on earth exists inside a hoop. Crossing from the East to the West is the black road of worldly difficulties. From the North to the South runs another road known as the Good Red Road of Spiritual Understanding. The point where the two roads intersect is considered holy and “bring[s] understanding to the difficulties of ordinary life” (101). When analyzed in the context of our daily lives, it can make us realize that we are always on one path or the other. We face worldly difficulties daily, but we also experience understanding and acceptance during those tumultuous moments. Reflecting on our semester, a recurring question in regards to the texts was whether or not the culture of the work in question was assimilating or resisting the dominant culture. Assimilating to the culture could easily be one road on Black Elk’s hoop while resisting the culture could be the other. Something I noticed about our texts was how the protagonists were torn between two different cultures, values or beliefs, notably those in Black Elk Speaks, Love Medicine, Bless Me, Ultima, and The Best Little Boy in the World. If visualizing Black Elk’s sacred hoop, the protagonists in those particular works were caught between two different roads.

            After reading Black Elk Speaks and the companion reader, I realized that there was a great amount that John Neihardt had left out in his original narrative. The reader received a lush history of Black Elk’s childhood and his young adult years, but there was a several decade gap between the end of the narrative and Black Elk’s death. The companion reader filled in the holes of his history. In 1904, Black Elk converted to Catholicism, thus abandoning his Lakota medicine rituals in lieu of the dominant culture’s religion. According to the companion reader, his conversion was a voluntary one as he began to notice the rituals and ceremonies he once performed were not curing the sick or bringing the rain or buffalo. However, looking at the history of the U.S. military taking over the Lakota’s land and the Jesuits establishing a mission in 1887, it is apparent that there was some outside force that was “whispering in his ear,” so to speak. After his conversion, he was still a Lakota holy man mostly by title, as his conversion caused him to question the purpose of the old rituals if they did not work. At one point he denounced his past and preached the way of Catholicism as being the one true path. Black Elk appeared to be caught between two dominating faiths in his life—his past and his present.

 Our first class objective (1a) focuses on the idea of forced or involuntary participation. Even though he insisted that he converted willingly, I still cannot ignore the suspicion that outside forces were influencing Black Elk when his land was being overtaken by the American military and Jesuits. It seemed an abrupt change of belief after a lifetime of experiencing visions and dreams that he believed would show him the way to protect his people. He also continued to live on the Pine Ridge Reservation and kept his name (along with the moniker of “Nick”). He may have appeared to be a Catholic and even spoke the word of God, but he was also still clinging to his Indian roots. His world was changing from the romanticized notion of Indians that we associate with movies and books portraying braves on horseback with bows and arrows to entire tribes being localized onto a small plot of reservation land. He was choiceless (as objective 1b says) in being forced to live on the reservation land, but he was not entirely voiceless. He adapted to the dominant culture by being a Catholic, but still kept true to his roots in different ways. I see Black Elk as a man torn between two powerful forces, attempting to live in both worlds and walk on both roads.

Love Medicine was similar, but not identical to Black Elk Speaks. The Indians were modern and lived on reservations, but the change that was starting to occur in Black Elk Speaks had already by the time Love Medicine’s earliest narrative had taken place. This was now a culture that had assimilated to the dominant culture in many ways, but still kept their ties with family and community (as our sixth class objective states). As with Black Elk Speaks, though, there were instances where the characters were torn between the dominant culture and their Indian roots. A particular passage that showed the dichotomy between the two cultures was “The Red Convertible.” In it, Lyman Lamartine tells about his brother, Henry, who came back from Vietnam and had suffered deep emotional damage. They had always wanted a red convertible (a true symbol of our dominant culture) and had split the cost of one before Henry went to war. When he came back, it was beginning rust and Lyman eventually convinced Henry to fix it. They drove it until Henry drove the car into the quarry and killed himself while Lyman escaped. This story stood out in my mind because the boys wanted to buy the car and Lyman even said that he was the first one on his reservation to have a convertible (181), so he was not only living on the reservation, but purchased a piece of the dominant culture, also. However from a discussion in class, I remember a classmate explaining that in Indian culture if a person drowns, their soul is left in a form of purgatory. This particular passage showed the two cultures in an important way—even though the two boys wanted to embrace the dominant culture by having the car, Henry ultimately is still part of Indian culture and he is between those two forces. In life he may have been accepting of the dominant culture, but in death his roots dictated his fate.

There were other instances of being caught between two different cultures in Love Medicine. My favorite was “The Tomahawk Factory” where the Indian workers were making the plastic toy versions of the once deadly weapons, which end up being “attractively framed symbol[s] of America’s past. Perfect for the home or office. A great addition to the sportsman’s den. All authentic designs and child-safe materials. Crafted under the auspices of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Anishinabe Enterprises, Inc, Hand produced by Tribal Members” (310). The once sacred and essential parts of Indian culture have now become mass produced decoration pieces for the dominant culture. Even though the symbols and their respective designs still mean something, their meaning is slowly dying as the Indian culture moves closer into modernity until one day, an arrowhead is just a rock or a dreamcatcher is merely a decoration piece in a bedroom. This particular passage focuses on Lyman Lamartine who seems to be caught between the two cultures. The factory produces the plastic versions of the once handmade tools, but at the same time their production is overlooked by tribe members, so the objects’ meaning is still being kept alive by those whose distant relatives helped create them. While embracing the dominant culture, he still clings to his past whenever he can.

The same can be said for Lipsha Morrissey in “Love Medicine.” He believes he has a sacred way of healing his friends and family, but he does not fully understand it. When he tries to help his grandparents by attempting to get geese hearts (but instead opts for going to the grocery store and buying turkey hearts instead) to make into a blessed concoction to help his grandparents through a rocky time in their marriage. Grandma Kashpaw made the hearts the way she knew how, but Grandpa ended up choking on them. Lipsha blamed himself for the incident, believing that had he used the geese hearts like he should have, Grandpa would still be alive. Lipsha said that “[t]hem geese, they mate for life. And I just think to myself, just what if I went out and got a pair? And just what if I fed some part—say the goose heart—of the female to Grandma and Grandpa ate the other heart? Wouldn’t that work? Maybe it’s all invisible, and then maybe again it’s magic. Love is a stony road” (242). Even though he lives in the modern world, he still believes in the ways of his people from past generations and he still revels in the mysterious parts of life. He followed a similar path as Black Elk. He lived in a changing world and adapted to modern changes, but still kept respect for his traditional culture, even if it was something he did not fully understand. Like Black Elk, he was at a crossing point of two roads.

Antonio in Bless Me, Ultima is also torn between two different sets of values. On one side are his parent’s traditional values. His mother wishes for him to become a pries when he gets older, and he embraces that lifestyle. At one point he pretends to be a priest before he goes in for confession and “hears” the other children’s sins and offers them penance. With the arrival of Ultima, though, Antonio finds his world shaken. He learns the ways of the curandera and the healing power of the herbs and plants that she uses to create her elixers and remedies. Antonio has two important experiences with Ultima: the first was when she cured the friend of the Marez family who was cursed by the witches and Antonio witnessed Ultima perform the “exorcism” of the evil spirit. The second was after Tenorio killed Narciso and Antonio caught a fever after collapsing in the snow. Ultima’s care helped him survive the intense fever. After he sees Ultima in action, Antonio often asks himself if everything he believes is true. He is torn between the beliefs of his parents, the Church, which Antonio realizes the ways and actions are not always meant to be understood. He is also torn between Ultima’s beliefs which he has seen in action. His entire narrative is a struggle to accept a belief system. He does not want to disappoint his parents because he is the one they are all depending on to do the right thing (since his brothers and sisters are mostly absent). Ultima living in the house makes things more difficult because Antonio is always faced with the decision to choose between the two paths that are present in his house. His friends do not make things any easier. Even though they are all learning about confession and the ways of the Church, they still tell stories about the Golden Carp, which has a striking resemblance to a story that Black Elk would have told in his narrative.

The most obvious course objective I noticed in Ultima was 6a, which states that “minority groups place more emphasis on ‘traditional’ or ‘community’ aspects of human society, such as extended or alternative families…” Antonio’s family was very traditional: they went to church, ate together, lived off of their own land, as well as land belonging to their immediate family. When Ultima came to live with them, they were still a traditional family, but now also brought in an element of an alternative family. The rest of his family did not seem to go through the same struggle that Antonio was going through. He had an enormous pressure upon him from his parents to become a priest. Ultima never seemed to pressure him into following her path—she would give him gifts from her herbal bag every once in a while, but never pressured Antonio. He still struggled to accept the “correct” path. At the end of the novel, he never did choose which path to take. He mourned Ultima who had a customary burial. I view Antonio as a person similar to Black Elk and some of the characters in Love Medicine. He will most likely embrace the dominant culture, but still keep true to his minority roots.

Our sixth course objective comes up again with The Best Little Boy in the World. Andrew Tobias’ upbringing was very traditional and mainstream: his parents own a place in the city and a place in the country where they would go every weekend. His father never cursed, and Andrew excelled in all of his subjects in school. Even though on the surface Andrew was part of the dominant culture, his homosexuality made him a minority in some way. Because of his family’s traditional background, he was not able to reveal the fact that he was gay for many years. He did not make it obvious in any way; he went on double dates, acted like a typical male, and had many other fronts that would not reveal to the world that he was gay. As with the characters from the post-midterm texts, Andrew was caught between two opposing forces—being openly gay and fearing that his parents and the rest of the world would view him differently, or repressing his secret and more than likely causing a great deal of psychological damage and living with the burden of never being able to be completely honest. Through his narrative, I noticed Andrew adapting and assimilating to the dominant “straight” culture by going on double dates and trying time and again to be attracted to females, with no avail. When he finally revealed his secret to his friend, Brook, he was resisting the straight culture, in a way. The subject came up in class about the dominant culture (and the country in general) being ignorant of homosexuality in late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Since this was before the AIDS crisis of the 1980’s, Andrew was caught between a generation that was ignorant of his orientation and a generation that would stigmatize him for being gay. It is no wonder that he kept his secret for so long. He did not know how anyone would react, since the world was still not comfortable with idea of someone being gay. Sadly, our world still has that type of ignorance, but it has improved a great amount since the publishing of Little Boy. I do not get the same sense of oppression as the slave narratives or the same oppression that our fourth class objective discusses, but Andrew was still faced with the same decision the objective brings up: “do you fight or join the culture that oppressed you?” Since his narrative was so far before the AIDS outbreak, it did not seem that Andrew was oppressed—he was merely living in a world that had not reached that point in developing an understanding of gay culture. He attempted to join the culture by attempting to show an attraction to women, but once he started being honest with himself and those around him, I did get a sense of resistance to the mainstream culture. In the end, it did not matter to his parents or his friends—he was still the same person he always was. It showed our dominant culture was accepting of the minority that existed within their own people.

Part of the struggle of the minority culture is the choice between two powerful forces—the dominant culture, or keeping true to their minority culture roots. The characters in the selected post-midterm texts were all involved in that struggle. Many tried living in a space that placate both cultures. In the end, though, most were either of one culture or the other. Black Elk stayed a Catholic until his death in 1950, and many in Love Medicine embraced modernity while only keeping a shadow of their past culture. Antonio never seemed to make a choice, but he was so young that the reader can speculate that he will make that important choice once he gets older. Andrew Tobias hid his homosexuality but eventually came out to his parents, thus resisting the dominant culture and embracing his minority status. Mallory Rogers ended her final exam with a statement that I wholeheartedly agree with: “no minority group entirely assimilates or is entirely oppressed[;] there are always those who will [choose] their own paths…” Each character struggles with that choice, but they will no doubt be content with the choice that they make.