Out of the Ashes: “This is What it Means to say Phoenix, Arizona”
For many decades, the myth and stereotypes surrounding native American Culture has long been only viewed through, Hollywood portrayals, religious, educational studies. It has long remained controversial topic and has raised just as many questions concerning Indians and the cultural life of Native Americans as it has answered. Sherman Alexie’s story serves to both reinforce those stereotypes and shatter them all together. In “This is What it Means to say Phoenix, Arizona” Sherman Alexie uses the third person limited omniscient narrative to offer a semi- autobiographical tale through the characters Victor Joseph and Thomas-Builds-the-Fire, he seamlessly fuses the art of Native
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Brill’s in her essay remarks on this by writing “a boy named Victor -- one of several characters who, along with Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Junior, are loosely based on Alexie” (n.p.). While Junior is only briefly mentioned in this story, Victor and Thomas struggle throughout the storyline lays somewhere between being polar opposites, and being two peas in a pod. Victor Joseph the name alone speaks volumes in regards to Alexie, who was born Sherman Joseph Alexie has openly said Victor is a representation of himself. In Brill’s in essay she remarks on this alter ego by writing “a boy named Victor -- one of several characters who, along with Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Junior, are loosely based on Alexie” (n.p.). While Victor seems to represent not only Alexie but the adoption of western influences on Native Americans were as Thomas Builds-The-Fire is a story-teller. Whose stories often go ignored, and Victor and others find him annoying. “”That’s like being a dentist in a town where everybody has false teeth’”(61) But the honesty may be that , Thomas Builds-the-Fire represents the Spokane Indian’s as a whole. Both Victor and Thomas being a link to the past and the traditions they are losing, giving a deeper insight into his relationship and providing frame for the internal conflict with Alexie and his personal struggle with the tradition of American Indians and western
The story “Smoke Signal” written by Sherman Alexie and directed by Chris Eyre, published on June 26, 1998, is about the relationship between father and son and search for forgiveness through the reflection of the Native American culture. Sherman Alexie is a Native American poet and filmmaker and was born on a Reservation at Wellpinit, Washington. The story reflects Sherman’s childhood by showing how he was growing up in a reservation and his beliefs as a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene tribal member. The main idea of the film is that forgiveness is find through a journey. Sherman Alexie use metaphors and allusion with words such as fire and smoke, Sherman use this figure of speech to show and set in motion flashbacks throughout the story where it expresses
The film, “In the White Man’s Image” and Sally Jenkins’ narrative, “The Real All Americans” both discussed the controversial issues and historical significance of nineteenth century social policies dealing with cultural integration of Native Americans, yet while “In the White Man’s Image” covered the broad consequences of such policies, it was Jenkins’ narrow focus on the daily lives of students involved that was able to fully convey the complexities of this devastating social policy. Jenkins’ recreated the experiences of students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, bringing the reader along with her as students were stripped of culture, language, and family to be remade into a crude imitation of white society. “...Now, after having had my hair cut, a new thought came into my head. I felt I was no more Indian…” (Jenkins, pg 75). Richard Henry Pratt, the creator of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School that became the inspiration and model for many similar institutions across the nation, intended to save a people from complete destruction, yet the unforeseen consequences of his ...
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.
These stories have a continued overlapping influence in American Fiction and have remained a part of the American imagination; causing Americans to not trust Native Americans and treat them as they were not human just like African Americans. In conclusion to all these articles, Mary Rowlandson and John Smith set the perception for Native Americans due to their Captivity Narratives.
Culture has the power and ability to give someone spiritual and emotional distinction which shapes one's identity. Without culture, society would be less and less diverse. Culture is what gives this earth warmth and color that expands across miles and miles. The author of “The School Days of an Indian Girl”, Zitkala Sa, incorporates the ideals of Native American culture into her writing. Similarly, Sherman Alexie sheds light onto the hardships he struggled through growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in a chapter titled “Indian Education”.
Native American literature from the Southeastern United States is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the various tribes that have historically called that region home. While the tribes most integrally associated with the Southeastern U.S. in the American popular mind--the FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole)--were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) from their ancestral territories in the American South, descendents of those tribes have created compelling literary works that have kept alive their tribal identities and histories by incorporating traditional themes and narrative elements. While reflecting profound awareness of the value of the Native American past, these literary works have also revealed knowing perspectives on the meaning of the modern world in the lives of contemporary Native Americans.
Victor and Thomas grew up together. After the fire, Thomas was raised by his grandmother (Monique Mojica). Victor was raised by his father Arnold and his mother Arlene (Tantoo Cardinal) in a family that was falling apart. After the fire, Arnold turned to alcohol to bury the guilt of accidentally killing the Builds-the-Fire parents by burning down their house by accident. Arnold’s drinking was out of hand. Arnold’s alcohol ended up causing him to abuse his family. He hit both Arlene and Victor. Arlene was also a drinker, but she realized that their drinking became a problem and told Arnold to stop drinking. Refusing the order, Arnold chose to leave his wife and son and move to Phoenix, AZ. For the next ten years, no one was to hear from him ever again.
McNickle, D'Arcy. "A Different World." Native American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology. Ed. Vizenor, Gerald. United States of America: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, 1995, 111-119.
Nevertheless, in the author’s note, Dunbar-Ortiz promises to provide a unique perspective that she did not gain from secondary texts, sources, or even her own formal education but rather from outside the academy. Furthermore, in her introduction, she claims her work to “be a history of the United States from an Indigenous peoples’ perspective but there is no such thing as a collective Indigenous peoples’ perspective (13).” She states in the next paragraph that her focus is to discuss the colonist settler state, but the previous statement raises flags for how and why she attempts to write it through an Indigenous perspective. Dunbar-Ortiz appears to anchor herself in this Indian identity but at the same time raises question about Indigenous perspective. Dunbar-Ortiz must be careful not to assume that just because her mother was “most likely Cherokee,” her voice automatically resonates and serves as an Indigenous perspective. These confusing and contradictory statements do raise interesting questions about Indigenous identity that Dunbar-Ortiz should have further examined. Are
In Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals a recurring topic of discussion is frybread. Made of simple ingredients such as flour, water, and baking powder, frybread has become a delicacy of the people on the Couer D’Alene Indian Reservation. Its popularity is due to the poverty of the Couer D’Alene Indians and how cheap it is to make. Frybread is also a very stereotypical Native American food that plays a part in Thomas’s turning into a “real Indian.” Frybread is symbolic of Native American culture as a result of colonialism because it shows the decline in their standard of living.
“Smoke Signals” is a movie that describes living conditions for Native Americans. Victor and Thomas are the main characters in the movie. Victor is a tough Indian guy who is hard to handle, even though he has a special attitude towards his mother. Thomas is a nerd, who is smart, and he enjoys telling stories to anyone. Victor’s father, Arnold Joseph, causes a fire accidently on Independence Day in 1976 on the reservation in Idaho in which Thomas’s parents died, but he miraculously saved Tomas from the fire. Even though Victor hates his father because of father’s addiction to alcohol, he manages to forgive him at the end of the movie.
Victor knew he was a Native American that lived on the reservation. However, as he has grown up, it seems he has forgotten the tribal ties of the Native Americans. The people of that culture consider everyone in the tribe to be family and they are not ashamed of who they are and where they come from. Towards the end of the fictional narrative it is said, “Victor was ashamed of himself. Whatever happened to the tribal ties, the sense of community? The only real thing he shared with anybody was a bottle and broken dreams. He owed Thomas something, anything” (519). At the end of the story, Victor has finally realize that he is acting self absorbed. He realizes that this is not who he wants to be and he should not be ashamed to talk to Thomas Builds-a-Fire. Remembering his tribal ties, Victor gives half of his father 's ashes to Thomas. By doing that, Victor is thanking Thomas in his own way. Victor said, “listen, and handed Thomas the cardboard box which contained half of his father. “I want you to have this” (519). Individuals on the reservation thought Thomas was just a madman with weird stories. But in reality he was always true to his tribal identity and has even taught Victor how to get back to that. For example Thomas says, “I’m going to travel to Spokane Falls one last time and toss these ashes into the water. And your father will rise like a salmon, leap over the bridge, over me, and find his way
Overall, Alexie clearly faced much difficulty adjusting to the white culture as a Native American growing up, and expresses this through Victor in his essay, “Indian Education.” He goes through all of the stages of his childhood in comparison with his white counterparts. Racism and bullying are both evident throughout the whole essay. The frustration Alexie got from this is clear through the negativity and humor presented in the experiences he had to face, both on and off of the American Indian reservation. It is evident that Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
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.
Through connecting with his former best friend, Victor was able travel to Phoenix to reclaim his father’s ashes and belongings. During the trip we see Thomas and Victor reminisce about their former days as friends, and although at the end they both agreed that they could not be friends, they gained a deeper understanding of each other. Even though Victor could not say it, deep down, he knew that his best friend was in fact Thomas.