In this essay, I will be discussing the three different types of insights that stood out to me the most in the reading this term thus far. The first type of insight is Anthropological Insight, which is talking to the values of an individual culture. Which I find in helps us see what impact the past’s values has had on us in the present. The Vagina Girls illustrated this well, it showed the values of the Apache people in regards to their woman. It showed that they preferred their woman silent and submissive, and they saw them as more of a prize to be conquered than people. For Aetiological Insight, which explains the origin of a custom handed down by an individual society, The White Buffalo Woman stood to me, and it answered the question of …show more content…
how such a bizarre ritual was created very well. Finally, the Metaphysical Insight which is the biggest question of all time that is still very much relevant to today, “what is our purpose”. What is the point of our existence. This story, The Emergence of the Fifth World, stood out to me the most about the ever-longing human desire to understand our place in the universe and understand why we exist. It also pointed out the love of violence that the human race inherently has, and our capacity for self-destruction. The Vagina Girls shows values of the Apache people, those being that they value woman more as objects to be conquered then as equals. It really stood out to me because of all the turmoil over this issue in the present. This short story is a great representation of an Anthropological Insight. It shows how the Apache people thought of woman as something to conquer. “This Apache tale is almost certainly a patriarchal myth of the taming of the female powers.” (World of Myth, 293) It also reinforces that the Apache’s idea of an ideal woman was one who always did what the man said and never acted wrong. “So it was that the boy-hero tamed the toothed vaginas so that they would always thereafer behave in a proper manner.” (World of Myth, 294) I found it interesting however that the man used a potion to overcome the toothed vaginas. Usually in stories like this the male is portrayed as very masculine, not sneaky. Another thing I found interesting is that the walking vaginas had teeth, this seems almost the perfect metaphor for woman that use sex as a weapon. I do wonder how the world was populated if these were the only people in existence with vaginas as the story suggests though. “They were the only beings on Earth that possessed vaginas.” One fun thing to note is that the Killer-of-Enemies seems to fit the archetypal role of the hero well. He came from a distant land in what I assume is his ordinary surroundings, hears about the vagina girls and is called to adventure. He meets the Kicking Monster, over comes the challenge that the Kicking Monster then becomes. Faces the ordeal of death by being eaten alive, overcomes that obstacle, and is then rewarded with giant submissive vaginas. The White Buffalo Woman is a great representation of the Aetiological Insite.
It walks us through how the Lakota Sioux got the ritual that gave them food every year. The White Buffalo Woman to the Lakota Sioux was a goddess of sorts, someone that taught them how to live right and what is and isn’t morally right. The White Buffalo Woman shows the Sioux tribe how to start the ritual. “She told the people to set up an altar of red earth within the medicine tent” (World of Myth, 133) She showed them the intricacies of the ritual. “She showed the people how to grasp the stem with the left hand and to hold the bowl with the right.” (World of Myth, 133) Then she showed them how to honor the Earth for its sacrifice. “The ritual of the pipe will please Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit.” (World of Myth, 133) Because she told them she would be back every season the Sioux repeated this ritual for generations. “But promised to come back in every cycle of ages.” This clearly lays out the origin of this ritual which the Sioux took place, thus fits the Aetiological Insight to the letter. However, I think there is more to this story than just how they got their customs. In this story, I think the White Buffalo Woman represents mother nature, while the tribe represents the populous of the world. It shows man's lust to conquer Mother Nature instead of live peacefully with it. “One reached out for her with lust in his heart.” (World of Myth, 132) Then after it shows that lusting over Mother …show more content…
Nature, or maybe the resources of Mother Nature can only end badly. “He Immediately burned up in a flash of lightning.” (World of Myth, 132) So I think that there is some Metaphysical Insight here as well. The emergence of the Fifth world shows mankind's lust for violence, while simultaneously pointing out are yearning for something more, and it shows the Metaphysical Insight, which simply put means to understand the meaning behind life.
This short story talks about violence being man's true nature, which is laid out perfectly in this sentence.” The United States will be destroyed, land and people, by atomic bombs and radioactivity.” (World of Myth, 80) For what is more poetic than for man to be destroyed by its greatest creation? It certainly is a poetic justice that man would be destroyed when left alone by its own devices because only man would be selfish enough to destroy all humanity for the casual reason of material gain. It tells us that only the holy and the just will survive this apocalypse, and that this is the fate of the world if we do not learn how to live as one people. “There is no shelter for evil.” “Those who take no part in the making or division by ideology are ready to resume life in another world, be they of Black, White, Red, or Yellow race.” (World of Myth, 80) However, it also shows us a light at the end of the tunnel, a utopia if you will. “It is being made by the humble people of the little nations, tribes, and racial minorities.” It shows us a place where people of all races live
harmoniously. All throughout humanity there has been repeated interests, thoughts, and obsessions. The three perspectives that I have expanded on today are timeless. They started long ago and will continue with humanity throughout time. This shows that as humans we have a nature about us to understand, explain and try to figure out the world around us and know our places, as in The Vagina Girls where the Killer-of-Enemies tames the Vagina Girls, showing that they viewed woman as objects to be conquered. Or how in The White Buffalo Woman, where we find out how the ancient hunting ritual began, and where they think they get their food from. And finally, how The Emergence of the Fifth World is showing the darker side of humanity, the side bent on self-destruction. The Vagina Girls, The White Buffalo Woman, The Emergence of the Fifth all have one thing in common: These stories help map humanity in its timeless tail and struggle to understand itself while fighting its own mortality. A need to construct then destroy, to build only to break? I don’t know, just an idea.
The first three chapters focus on women in agriculture and reproduction and in the process unveils how the “internalization of prescribed gender traits colored people’s reactions to the world around them (p. 25).” Unger spends a great deal of time discussing how Native Americans and enslaved Africans used reproduction as a means of resistance and autonomy in their status. Unger does not shy away from practices that uncomfortable like abortion and infanticide. Unger notes the practice of “prolonged lactation, Native American women, like their European counterparts, also practiced infanticide and abortion (25).” She discusses these topics with unbiased language and does so without using any judgmental tone or justification for such practices. Reproduction is discussed in terms of its effects on the
It is not out of line to expect Native Americans to live like their ancestors, and I agree with the way that O'Nell made the government look like the wrongdoers. She talks like "indians" are just part of stories or like they have not kept up with the times. This book points out many of the problems for native americans by bringing out problems in identity, culture, and depression dealing with the Flathead Tribe in Montana. The book is divided into three parts to accomplish this. Part 1 is about the American government's policies that were put on the reservations and how it affected the culture of the Flathead Tribe attached to that reservation. This is the base for is to come in the next two parts, which talk about how lonliness an pity tie into the identity and depression.
Significantly, Welch deconstructs the myth that Plains Indian women were just slaves and beasts of burden and presents them as fully rounded women, women who were crucial to the survival of the tribal community. In fact, it is the women who perform the day-to-day duties and rituals that enable cultural survival for the tribes of...
The rhetor for this text is Luther Standing Bear. He was born in 1868 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was raised as a Native American until the age on eleven when he was taken to Carlisle Indian Industrial School: an Indian boarding school. After graduating from the boarding school, he returned to his reservation and now realized the terrible conditions under which they were living. Standing Bear was then elected as chief of his tribe and it became his responsibility to induce change (Luther Standing Bear). The boarding schools, like the one he went to, were not a fair place to be. The Native American children were forced to go there and they were not taught how to live as a European American; they were taught low level jobs like how to mop and take out trash. Also, these school were very brutal with punishment and how the kids were treated. In the passage he states, “More than one tragedy has resulted when a young boy or girl has returned home again almost an utter stranger. I have seen these happenings with my own eyes and I know they can cause naught but suffering.” (Standing Bear 276). Standing Bear is fighting for the Indians to be taught by Indians. He does not want their young to lose the culture taught to them from the elders. Standing Bear also states, “The old people do not speak English and never will be English-speaking.” (Standing Bear 276). He is reinforcing the point that he believes that they
The three parts of Joseph Marshall’s The Lakota Way that are the most important are love, sacrifice, and bravery. All three are a part of an average person’s life and are virtues people admire, worldwide. Love, the most important of the virtues, is an emotion, that is shown in unique ways; it is shared between parent and child, between spouses, and between friends. Sacrifice is an action word, that comes from within yourself, just like love, people sacrifice in unique ways. The final important virtue is bravery; bravery is a big step, it shows how much courage one has, how much strength they can put into something horrifying, hard, or somber. These are values that are a part of Lakota culture, and they are respected and practiced everyday.
gain whilst simultaneously pressuring actual Native Americans to assimilate into western European society. This connects to the poem as a whole because it connects to the after effects of
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
She is commenting on how Native Americans lived before they were moved. They had a good life, as she writes, will a great sense of community, friendship and prosperity. No one in the tribe was left behind, no matter if they were not good hunters or gatherers. As long as you had a tribe to look after you, you will be alright. However, each stanza this pleasantness is interrupted by the white man. Even though what the Native Americans stand for is beautiful, they are removed and they are only allotted what the imperialists will give them. Here is a stanza to understand these concepts, “To each head of household—so long as you remember your tribal words for/ village you will recollect that the grasses still grow and the rivers still flow. So/ long as you teach your children these words they will remember as well. This /we cannot allow. One hundred and sixty acres allotted” (Da’). As we see with this quote, Da’ is pointing out how the new Americans exiled the Native people not only from their land, but their righteous ways of living, and the precious land that allowed them to be
In serious fiction, no act of violence exists for its own sake. Graham Green, in his short story “The Destructors,” reveals certain intangible needs met through one central act of violence.
The way that Tapahonso describes the whole ordeal in detail is critical in describing the events in the poem but also in the format of oral story-telling. The author is telling a story to a daughter. A story that must have been passed down for generations and for generations to come. It is a important story that must be told because it explains the history of the Navajos and how the use of turquoise become a part of the traditional regalia. The story also tells how Navajo fry-bread become famous and is now considered a traditional food for all native tribes. Tapahonso gives strength and hope in 1864 to the younger generation by giving them education of their history.
Dating back to Biblical times, violence and hate is nothing outlandishly new for humans. Violence is the primitivity of our nature and it runs fiery through human’s veins but is suppressed by longings for a collective society. Violence is alive and well, but it stalks waiting to come rushing forth in bursting outcry. It practices dormancy until it is awakened, awakened by other violence. Violence can only go forward, pushing into motion other violence. Which in reactions, catalysts even more violence. The past pushes forward the present, just as past atrocities allow for current violence. Violence is cause and effect in its nature, and in fiction and in real life, this can be observed. In the fictional novel, Dawn by Elie Wiesel violence is used in the response to the past.
Several points are evoked from this quotation. How foolish it is for people, all apart of the human race, to pin ourselves against one another is one. Senselessly, we fight over land and worldly possessions that, in the grand scheme of life, simply don't matter. We recklessly harm and take the lives of people who are no different than us. Driven by power, our incentive is greed. I am reminded of the Benjamin Franklin quote “There was never a good war, or a bad peace”. A quote which I first heard at school. This quote perfectly displays this possible connotation. Furthermore, another implication this Eugene
Looming at the point where these two stories encounter each other is a pair of screaming questions. 1) What does it mean to deny humanity? And 2) How can this definition of violence be reconciled with the assertion that literature/storytelling is violent when storytelling is a fabulously human phenomenon?
The main topic of this short poem is the connection between the extermination of the buffaloes, and the extermination of those that saw the buffalo, namely Indians. It also alludes to the Europeans that came to the Americas, charging across the country in the same fashion that the buffalo charges across the land, trampling and killing the luscious green pasture. The poem includes many poetry instruments such as metaphor, repetition, imagery, and alliteration.
...ess the beauty of such unique ceremony.” As he told the very story with deep tones, he would raise his hand clutching a green blade. He said the oldest native gave it to him and that in the exchange the blade gave off light. In return the captain gave his most personal affect, his fathers pocket watch. His time with the natives he said was the best time of his life. The captain believed that the Indians were untainted beings; he said he could feel a connection between the people and believed that their power was routed by a natural energy, native to the land. But the Captain's stories were hard to take in full, the man had a thirst and he drank regularly. No matter how much he drank the captain only needed three hours of sleep to right him. He would wake up perkier than a horny pig and scold us till we joined him. With the captain gone. God to save us…