LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature

Poetry Presentation, spring 2006

“I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the United States Government” by Chrystos

Course Objectives: 

Objective 1a. “Involuntary (or forced) participation”…

Objective 1b. “Voiceless and choiceless”

Objective 4  “Assimilation or resistance”

Chrystos is of mixed-blood ancestry but identifies with her father, who was of Menominee ancestry.  She considers herself an “Urban Indian” due to her upbringing in San Francisco.  Not only is she of Native American descent but she is also a lesbian, which gains her the wonderful “triple minority” name tag for our class purposes. Chrystos identifies with the victims of violence and gives them a voice. In a number of political poems she talks about society's maltreatment of those unable or unwilling to fit in.  (http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/chrystos.html)

My interpretation:  In keeping with Objective 1, she seems to be fighting back against those who oppressed her people.  She is using the English language, which so many Native Americans could not do, to speak out against the harm done to her people (involuntary/forced participation.  She is not voiceless or choiceless and uses her power to give voice.  Those who signed treaties are no longer alive and have not been for generations, yet the effect of those treaties continues to haunt their culture.

Read the poem

I believe this poem also fits into Objective 4 (assimilation or resistance), because the Indians have been forced to assimilate or stay on the reservation.  They were given the option of signing treaties vs. the option of total annihilation.  Since the culture was unable to resist in the past, Chrystos is resisting in the present. 

How can you relate the Native American “immigration” to that of the African Americans (through objectives 1 and 4)?  Though Chrystos was raised in the city and not a reservation, how do you think she would relate the two?  

“No one wants to go there”- they don’t want to join the United States, the US (as in us) that is against them.  (Us vs. Them)

“We revoke your immigration papers/ your assimilation soap suds”- Citizens of the United States need to go home, they are the real immigrants. 

“We who are alive now/ have signed no treaties”- Really conveys how past decisions have affected the future.  Just because that generation dies off, doesn’t mean the law/ treaty/ dies.

“McDonalds”- the most recognized symbol next to Santa Clause

“lousy food, ugly clothes, bad meat, nobody we know”, “no elders, no relatives”- no culture or tradition, when compared to Native American culture.  Our lives are so busy that we do not make the proper amount of time for family and we do not respect our elders.

“Go so far away”-what we did to the Indians.

Something to think about: Is every man born free, even the Native American born in a reservation and the African American born of slave parents?