The Native American Poet: Poem Analysis

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The Native American poet dreams of the past because of his inability to live in a hostile American environment. For Indians, born and raised in reservations, American society becomes a place of dislocation and exile: the lights, the cars, the deadened glares tear my heart and close my mind I see me walking in sleep down streets, down streets gray with cement and glaring glass and oily wind, armed with a pint of wine I cheated my children to buy I am lonely for hills I am lonely for myself (Ortiz 1976: 37-38).
Ortiz criticizes aspects of European civilization brought to his native land by the invaders: “streets gray with cement / glaring glass and oil wind”, he laments the aggressive attempts of the colonizers to destroy ecology and nature and cause damage to the “botanic, animal and human worlds” (Schein …show more content…

Observing the exploitation and destruction of Indian territories for a long time by American capitalists just to achieve profit, Ortiz longs for a pre-colonial past where his indigenous people lived in harmony with nature. On this basis, Ortiz’s poetry, according to Gregg Graber, serves “to provide context as well understanding of the racism that exists against Indians, the continued pressure by corporate America to exploit the remaining Indian lands, and the role that many Indian cultures could fill in saving the people and the land if allowed” (Graber 2000: 19). In The Indians Won, Ortiz overcomes his feelings of nostalgia for a lost past and discusses the plight of his people who were isolated for a long time in reservations or what he calls "jail-houses". Ortiz points out that even when his own people were released they found themselves in “a bigger jail”—that being modern American society (Ortiz 1981:

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