Buffalo Bill, the pawn shop, and the museum of Native American Culture are three central images in Alexie’s poem, “Evolution.” In the poem Evolution, the author Sherman Alexie demonstrated methodical dilapidation of the Native American population as well as indecent exploitation of their ways of life. Alexie’s use of Buffalo Bill is important because it exemplifies metaphors and responses from both White Americans and Native Americans. Buffalo Bill starts a pawn shop close to the boundary of an Indian reservation, around a street from an alcohol shop. The location of the shop is a significant image since it's located immediately across the boundary from the liquor shop, which is open around the clock (Alexie, 1992). The location was advantageously …show more content…
Alexie sought to illustrate that the Native Americans pawn all their belongings and properties including television sets, videocassette recorders and ultimately their own traditional garments. Additionally, it is suggested that immediately after the Native Americans received their money and exited the pawn shops, they would rush to liquor stores to purchase …show more content…
Once Buffalo Bill seized all the properties and belongings of the Native Americans such as land and traditional garments, he established a museum and demanded that the Indians pay five dollars per head for their visit to the museum (Alexie, 1992). This picture represents the numerous occasions when the Native Americans’ way of life has been illegitimately depicted by the non-Native American communities. These cultures are often depicted by individuals or communities that bear no decency or connection to the Native Americans. In fact, they do this with an interest in financial benefits without any advantage to the Native Indians. Similarly, the Museum of Native American Culture also illustrates the methodical deprivation and oppression of the Native Americans. This is an uncommon, however, a strong type of oppression. The mass media and the government are the present central force of the subjugation and quieting of the Native American communities. It can be concluded that it is the contemporary Buffalo Bill and whereas it is not evident what preventions should be put in place to stop this, it is important for the Native American people to repossess their identity and demonstrate to the universe who they actually
The depiction of Native Americans to the current day youth in the United States is a colorful fantasy used to cover up an unwarranted past. Native people are dressed from head to toe in feathers and paint while dancing around fires. They attempt to make good relations with European settlers but were then taken advantage of their “hippie” ways. However, this dramatized view is particularly portrayed through media and mainstream culture. It is also the one perspective every person remembers because they grew up being taught these views. Yet, Colin Calloway the author of First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, wishes to bring forth contradicting ideas. He doesn’t wish to disprove history; he only wishes to rewrite it.
The article, “Native Reactions to the invasion of America”, is written by a well-known historian, James Axtell to inform the readers about the tragedy that took place in the Native American history. All through the article, Axtell summarizes the life of the Native Americans after Columbus acquainted America to the world. Axtell launches his essay by pointing out how Christopher Columbus’s image changed in the eyes of the public over the past century. In 1892, Columbus’s work and admirations overshadowed the tears and sorrows of the Native Americans. However, in 1992, Columbus’s undeserved limelight shifted to the Native Americans when the society rediscovered the history’s unheard voices and became much more evident about the horrific tragedy of the Natives Indians.
Sherman Alexie writes in his story, What You Pawn I Will Redeem about a homeless Salish Indian named Jackson Jackson. Alexie takes readers on Jackson’s journey to acquire enough money to purchase back his grandmother’s stolen powwow regalia. Throughout the story, Jackson’s relationships with other charters ultimately define his own character. Alexie, a well know Native American author tells an all too common tale of poverty and substance abuse in the Native American community through his character Jackson. The major character flaw of Jackson is his kindness, which ultimately becomes his greatest asset when fate allows him to purchase back his grandmother’s powwow regalia from a pawn broker for only five dollars.
American Indians shaped their critique of modern America through their exposure to and experience with “civilized,” non-Indian American people. Because these Euro-Americans considered traditional Indian lifestyle savage, they sought to assimilate the Indians into their civilized culture. With the increase in industrialization, transportation systems, and the desire for valuable resources (such as coal, gold, etc.) on Indian-occupied land, modern Americans had an excuse for “the advancement of the human race” (9). Euro-Americans moved Indians onto reservations, controlled their education and practice of religion, depleted their land, and erased many of their freedoms. The national result of this “conquest of Indian communities” was a steady decrease of Indian populations and drastic increase in non-Indian populations during the nineteenth century (9). It is natural that many American Indians felt fearful that their culture and people were slowly vanishing. Modern America to American Indians meant the destruction of their cultural pride and demise of their way of life.
The systematic racism and discrimination in America has long lasting effects that began back when Europeans first stepped foot on American soil is still visible today but only not written into the law. This racism has lead to very specific consequences on the Native people in today’s modern world, and while the racism is maybe not as obvious it is still very present. These modern Native peoples fight against the feeling of community as a Native person, and feeling entirely alone and not a part of it. The poem “The Reservation” by Susan Cloud and “The Real Indian Leans Against” by Chrystos examine the different effects and different settings of how their cultures survived but also how so much was lost for them within their own identity.
Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era edited by Frederick E. Hoxie is a book which begins with an introduction into the life of Charles Eastman and a brief overview of the history of Native Americans and their fight for justice and equal rights, it then continues by describing the different ways and avenues of speaking for Indian rights and what the activists did. This leads logically into the primary sources which “talk back” to the society which had overrun their own. The primary sources immerse the reader into another way of thinking and cause them to realize what our societal growth and even foundation has caused to those who were the true natives. The primary sources also expand on the main themes of the book which are outlines in the introduction. They are first and most importantly talking back to the “pale faces”, Indian education, religion, American Indian policy, the image of the Indians presented in America. The other chapters in the book further expanded on these ideas. These themes will be further discussed in the following chapters along with a review of this
This story and its lessons are still significant in today’s world, and from them, we are able to learn many important values. The American Indian helps us deal with pressing problems and understand worldwide evils, especially terrorism. “The American Indian” continually focuses on the notion of
Similarly, in Alexie's "Evolution", the Native Americans pawn off their entire culture to Buffalo Bill, who represents whites who generalize and stereotype Natives, so that, in the end, even the most significant pieces of who they are are gone. They start by giving up unimportant things for money, such as electronics. However, this quickly escalates to culturally important items, such as a cherished buckskin outfit. When the Natives are tricked into trading these treasures, it rids them of their identity and shows they have little cultural-pride, a result of damaging dehumanization. Not only do irreplaceable material items get pawned off, but pieces of themselves are traded too. Finally, when the Natives have given up nearly everything, they pawn “[their] heart[s]” and “Buffalo Bill takes that for twenty bucks” (Alexie 12). A heart is a piece of a person that allows them to live and feel happy; no one can be prideful without a it. Sadly, it is taken by whites as any other item suggesting that it is
In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will discuss the major themes of the book and why the author wrote it, it will describe Native American society, its values and its beliefs and how they changed and it will show how Native Americans views other non-Natives.
Native American’s place in United States history is not as simple as the story of innocent peace loving people forced off their lands by racist white Americans in a never-ending quest to quench their thirst for more land. Accordingly, attempts to simplify the indigenous experience to nothing more than victims of white aggression during the colonial period, and beyond, does an injustice to Native American history. As a result, historians hoping to shed light on the true history of native people during this period have brought new perceptive to the role Indians played in their own history. Consequently, the theme of power and whom controlled it over the course of Native American/European contact is being presented in new ways. Examining the evolving
Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene tribal member who grew up in the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He is a preeminent Native American poet, novelist, performer and filmmaker. Alexie is given high praise for his works which depicts contemporary Native
It was approaching dusk as the conspicuous line of dark vans entered the reservation. These vehicles served the purpose of furnishing transportation for about 30 members of a Cleveland area youth group, whose mission was “to bring good news to the badlands';. In short, the group was ministering to the Indian children of the Pine Ridge Reservation, which was in close vicinity to the natural wonder found in the foothills of “the badlands';. The trip became a tradition for my church and I traveled there on three separate occasions. Each year, the team received a welcoming that could be described as anything but inviting. In fact, the first year the trip fell on the Fourth of July and as we drove in, our vehicles were bombarded with fireworks. I could never really grasp why we were so despised. After all, our intentions were commendable. The matter became clearer after I read Zitkala-sa’s “American Indian Stories';. Within this text, a Native American expresses her beliefs that actions similar to ours serve merely in altering culture.
Wasting no time, Alexie literally begins his short story with this contradictory stereotype. Alexie expresses of William: “He was an enrolled member of the Spokane Indian tribe, but he was also a full recognized member of the notebook-computer tribe and the security-checkpoint tribe and the rental-car tribe, and the hotel-shuttle-bus tribe and the cell-phone-roaming-charge-tribe” (Alexie 53), highlighting the supposedly contrary lives and depictions of these two “types” of people, both categorizations of which William falls under. Any stereotyping of him that is imposed by the reader is quickly arrested with our interpersonal experience with William that Alexie provides us, allowing us to literally read his
In conclusion, Sherman Alexie created a story to demonstrate the stereotypes people have created for Native Americans. The author is able to do this by creating characters that present both the negative and positive stereotypes that have been given to Native Americans. Alexie has a Native American background. By writing a short story that depicts the life of an Indian, the reader also gets a glimpse of the stereotypes encountered by Alexie. From this short story readers are able to learn the importance of having an identity while also seeing how stereotypes are used by many people. In the end of the story, both Victor and Thomas are able to have an understanding of each other as the can finally relate with each other through Victor's father.
Analysis #1- The poem title was Evolution, written by Sherman Alexie in 1992. “Evolution” means the gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form, which is the same idea presented in this poem. Some of the literary devices employed were irony, paradox, symbol, personification and pun. The poem begins with an epigraph. “Buffalo Bills opens a pawn shop on the reservation right across the border from the liquor store and he stays open 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week” (1-3). This epigraph symbolizes about a person named William Frederick Cody who was a soldier and hunter. He arrives at the reservation and opened a pawnshop and started collecting unredeemed items from Indians in exchange for money. This poem also had some poetic devices like irony,