Daniel Richter's Essay War And Culture

826 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Native american cultural assessment

In Daniel Richter’s essay War and Culture, he uses a mix of primary sources and his own comprehension of history, to formulate a general understanding of the native experience. In our experience watching The Black Robe we were able to analyze history through a chain of sources. There are many similarities to analyze from these sources. Harmony and balance is the root of many aspects in Native culture including: dependency on Europeans, warfare style, rituals and customs, mourning, population maintenance, and ultimately adoption-torture.
(The Black Robe 1) begins with gifts being presented to the Natives by the Europeans. This is the first instance of dependency we see in the film. The tools provided such as bowls and agriculture harvesting tools became important …show more content…

Their capture is strategic as they are the novel members of the tribe. Richter quotes (Paul le Jeune 8) in saying “The chief virtue of these poor pagans being cruelty”. From an outside perspective this is a very easy assumption to make when they are first brought into the Native community. The violence expressed towards the captive’s serves a purpose. “On a societal level, then, warfare helped the Iroquois deal with death in their ranks. On a personal, emotional level it performed similar functions”. “Iroquois culture directed mourners’ emotions into ritualized channels” (Richter 9).
Another source, Catherine Albanese American Indians’ Nature Religion focuses on harmony in Native Culture. Natives felt that “the world was a holy place; and so harmony with nature beings and natural forms was the controlling ethic… Ritual functioned to restore a lost harmony, like a great balancing act bringing the people back to right relation with the world” (Albanese 10). Similar to Richter’s observations, Albanese is aligned with The Black Robe quite well. The art of adoption-torture is one of balance and harmony within the

Show More
Related

  • Exploring Morality and Faith in Brian Moore’s Black Robe

    2982 Words  | 6 Pages

    The short excerpt from Black Robe included in the anthology comes from the beginning of Chapter 8 of the work. This passage, an approximate midpoint of the novel, serves to articulate the story’s tone, to introduce main characters and their relationships, and to present ideas that play are essential to the whole work’s main themes. The excerpt begins when Father Paul Laforgue, at this point alone, is in hiding from Iroquois who have at this point overtaken his meager camp. The first image Moore here invokes is that of a lynx as at creeps up upon the Savages who have taken custody of Laforgue’s meal as well as his treasured few belongings. The man watches from his hiding place, as the lynx, which Moore names the Father’s “surrogate”(p. 150), unknowingly tests the safety of Laforgue’s current situatio...

    Read More

  • Beyond 1492-Native Reactions to Invasion

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    The essay starts with the “Columbian Encounter between the cultures of two old worlds “ (98). These two old worlds were America and Europe. This discovery states that Native Americans contributed to the development and evolution of America’s history and culture. It gives the fact that indians only acted against europeans to defend their food, territory, and themselves.

    Read More

  • Native Americans In Horatio Greenough's Rescue

    517 Words  | 2 Pages

    Native Americans have always been interpreted as “savage beast”. We are told the stories of the Europeans coming to America and their encounter with the Native by teachers, movies, and history books. When looking at the art of people “interpreting” the Native American the idea is still quite similar. Horatio Greenough work, Rescue, shows the common idea seen by most.

    Read More

  • Summary Of George Tinker's American Indian Liberation

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    In George E. Tinker’s book, American Indian Liberation: A Theology of Sovereignty, the atrocities endured by many of the first peoples, Native American tribes, come into full view. Tinker argues that the colonization of these groups had and continues to have lasting effects on their culture and thus their theology. There is a delicate balance to their culture and their spiritual selves within their tightly knit communities prior to contact from the first European explorers. In fact, their culture and spiritual aspects are so intertwined that it is conceptually impossible to separate the two, as so many Euro-American analysts attempted. Tinker points to the differences between the European and the Native American cultures and mind sets as ultimately

    Read More

  • Domination to Reciprocity: The Evolution of Popular Culture

    1404 Words  | 3 Pages

    The imposition of European culture on Natives during the colonization of the New World entailed not only the desire to dominate/convert supposedly inferior Natives but also an accompanying fascination with their contradictory way of life. Europeans saw Native culture as uncivilized and comparable to a primitive state of European existence. Despite this view, Herder’s account in Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind reflects a Romantic European fascination with the natural and simplistic facets of Native culture. According to Herder, nature has favored Natives by providing them with “no idle fast of pleasing poisons, [nature] has p...

    Read More

  • The Colonies of Culture:The Postcolonial Self in Latin America and Africa

    2368 Words  | 5 Pages

    These culture of violence created a self in fear, a self that has been trained that it is under attack. The self of the indigenous person has been enslaved, labored, tortured and murdered, all due to the violent power colonialism and postcolonialism spread throughout the world.

    Read More

  • The Impact Of The Colonization Of Turtle Island

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    The American version of history blames the Native people for their ‘savage ' nature, for their failure to adhere to the ‘civilized norms ' of property ownership and individual rights that Christian people hold, and for their ‘brutality ' in defending themselves against the onslaught of non-Indian settlers. The message to Native people is simple: "If only you had been more like us, things might have been different for you.”

    Read More

  • Indian From The Inside Native American Culture Summary

    529 Words  | 2 Pages

    Pages one to sixty- nine in Indian From The Inside: Native American Philosophy and Cultural Renewal by Dennis McPherson and J. Douglas Rabb, provides the beginning of an in-depth analysis of Native American cultural philosophy. It also states the ways in which western perspective has played a role in our understanding of Native American culture and similarities between Western culture and Native American culture. The section of reading can be divided into three lenses. The first section focus is on the theoretical understanding of self in respect to the space around us. The second section provides a historical background into the relationship between Native Americans and British colonial power. The last section focus is on the affiliation of otherworldliness that exist between

    Read More

  • Genocide Ride

    2616 Words  | 6 Pages

    Genocide is a prominent obstruction to First nation and Aboriginal Culture. Throughout history it has proved to be a topic of terror and a harsh reality that no way of life should feel they must come to terms with. Rather, genocide is a repulsive divertissement that feeds the needs of the traditionalistic supremacist. These movements prey off of the fear that they acquire, and the terror that they procure.

    Read More

  • American History

    434 Words  | 1 Pages

    Early American history began in the collision of European, West African, and Native American peoples in North America. Europeans “discovered” America by accident, then created empires out of the conquest of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans. Yet conquest and enslavement were accompanied by centuries of cultural interaction—interaction that spelled disaster for Africans and Native Americans and triumph for Europeans, to be sure, but interaction that transformed all three peoples in the process.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Peace Came In The Form Of A Women

    1385 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • War and Memory in Irene Zabytko?s ?Home Soil?, Bruce Weigl?s ?Song of Napalm?, and Wilfred Owen?s ?Dulce et Decorum Est?

    755 Words  | 2 Pages

    Bullets flying through the air right over me, my knees are shaking, and my feet are numb. I see familiar faces all around me dodging the explosives illuminating the air like lightning. Unfortunately, numerous familiar faces seem to disappear into the trenches. I try to run from the noise, but my mind keeps causing me to re-illustrate the painful memories left behind.

    Read More

  • A Critical Review of The Míkmaw Concordat by James Henderson

    1582 Words  | 4 Pages

    In compiling this text, Henderson uses the stories and histories gathered from Mi’kmaq families and elders, blending them with European documentation of the events and peoples discussed which have been critically analyzed us...

    Read More

  • John Barker Ancestral Lines Summary

    1547 Words  | 4 Pages

    In John Barker’s Ancestral Lines, the author analyzes the Maisin people and their culture centered around customs passed from previous generations, as well as global issues that impact their way of living. As a result of Barker’s research, readers are able to understand how third world people can exist in an rapid increasing integrated system of globalization and relate it not only to their own society, but others like the Maisin; how a small group of indigenous people, who are accustomed to a modest regimen of labor, social exceptions, and traditions, can stand up to a hegemonic power and the changes that the world brings. During his time with these people the author was able to document many culture practices, while utilizing a variety of

    Read More

  • Effects Of Colonialism In Africa

    833 Words  | 2 Pages

    Project, Harvard. The State of the Native Nations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 221-222.

    Read More

More about Daniel Richter's Essay War And Culture

Open Document