Thursday, April 19, 2012

Synthesis Questions for Exam


1.     In sociology and political science, the notion of social identity is connected with how we identify ourselves as members of particular groups—such as Nation, Social class, Subculture, Ethnicity, Gender, Employment, and so forth. In this sense sociologists and historians speak of a national identity of a particular country, and feminist and queer theorists speak of gender identity. Identity remains a troublesome issue for contemporary Native Americans. Many of the texts we have read contain protagonists trying to understand, come to terms with, and create/establish an identity. They struggle to understand who they are and what their relationship will be to the tribe and to the community/world outside of the reservation. With this in mind, evaluate what the course texts have to say about identity. What tensions exist? What issues are raised? What conclusions can be reached?
2.     Many native writers deal with the troublesome issue of race. How do the authors studied in this course negotiate race as 1) the government defines it (blood quantum); 2) the way that Natives themselves think of race; 3) the way that the dominant culture in America envisions race; 4) the way the Academy discusses race; 5) the way we as individuals understand race.
3.     Part of the tension in both writing about cultural experiences and in reading works from different cultures lies in the use and identification of genre. Genre studies rely on a structuralist approach to literary criticism. When studying a genre in this way, we examine the structural elements that combine in the telling of a story and find patterns in collections of stories. When these elements (or codes) begin to carry inherent information, a genre emerges. Writers use genres to communicate with readers; conversely, readers classify what they read according to genres. What are the advantages and disadvantages in viewing the works we have read from the perspective of genre?
4.     So much of understanding has to do with our ability to relate to things. If we can find something we can identify with then we often like it, value it, or even privilege it. Evaluate your own preferences in terms of what texts you like best and which ones you don’t. Assess how your preferences have affected your interpretation of the works you have read and your understanding of the Native experience.
5.     When we read literature of other cultures, we become acutely aware of how much we have depended on our past reading experiences, not only on what we learned in formal coursework but on what we have internalized during our own informal socialization as fundamental assumptions about human nature, the physical world, causation, and a host of other metaphysical beliefs. To open a discussion of any single Native American text is to immediately invoke a tangled web of issues that, in fact, will never become entirely sorted out in the limited time available in the classroom. Too often our strategy with the unfamiliar is to provide spurious contexts of Universality or of Otherness; both are merely masks for our own values, the first disguising their positive assertion, the second their projection as exact opposites. With this in mind, assess what general assertions we (you and the class) have made about the Native American experience from the texts we have read. Examine how our assertions may be limited and what other possibilities for interpretation may exist.
6.     Since contact, Native American people have been struggling to regain power that has been taken in increments.  If the Native American experience is an attempt to regain power and that power is not offered by the dominant culture, what does it say that these authors take on the language and tools of the colonizer? Do you think that these works are forms of resistance or mechanisms of enforcing/reinscribing the dominant culture?
7.     According to Gayatari Spivak, those who are the “subaltern” (those colonized) have been denied a voice; they are unable to speak. With this in mind, explore how the authors we have read attempt to subvert dominant, Western language conventions, augmenting them with nontraditional elements and forms. Consider the tension here that all of these are written in English, the language of the dominant culture. Is it possible that these writers as members of the subaltern are able to speak? Have their voices been subsumed into the dominant language? What answers can you provide based on the texts? What tensions can you locate?
8.     We live in a world of intense, complicated, and diverse relationships among billions of people. Throughout most of its history our species has lived in small, scattered communities of foragers and hunters. Questions about the ways in which humans have multiplied on the earth and come to relate to one another in such a variety of ways are fundamental to historical investigation. With this in mind, how do the authors we have read address the complexity of cultures coming in contact with one another?
9.     What we now perceive as the identity of the United States of America is certainly complex and difficult to articulate. Some would say it calls to mind words like freedom, democracy, fairness, and equality. Others might say that it also demands adjectives like arrogant, manipulative, hypocritical, violent, and selfish. Perhaps Native Americans, more than any other group of Americans, are in a position to add insight into the discussion. The history of interaction between Indian people and Euroamericans, from one perspective, can be seen as the founding fabric of this contemporary nation, and the issues that Native American people have faced (and continue to face) because of colonization provide a lens through which we can examine both Native American reality/identity and American reality/identity. With this in mind, what portrait of a United States identity do the texts we have read paint? Why is this portrait significant? How has this portrait contributed to understanding our nationhood? (Note: I am not excluding the interaction of other peoples, especially African Americans, but I am focusing on Native/Euroamerican interaction for the purposes of this class).
10.  When we read things in an academic setting we often seek mastery over texts. This seems natural after all: teachers call on us in class; we take exams that demand mastery; we receive “rewards” for overcoming “problems” in texts and finding solutions. But, on one level, seeking mastery involves limiting what we read—restricting the range of possible meanings, imposing a value structure, establishing binary oppositions, pulling what is ultimately unknowable into a containable framework. Of course, this is also the process of colonization: exercising control over what is “Other” and imposing organizational or technological “superiority” over a native population. To what extent has your reading and our classroom discussions been acts of colonization? How is it possible to get around this dilemma? What gestures, actions, ways of reading, or possibilities for exploring the world do the authors we have read suggest that may be helping in teaching and reading Native American literature in a noncolonizing way?

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Spirits


Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Ecce homo spiritus

We're going to see part of Cave of Forgotten Dreams in class tomorrow. Think about your spiritual ideas, the Sacred Tree, and about how you see ancient and contemporary spirituality: http://www.ifcfilms.com/videos/cave-of-forgotten-dreams-2




Thursday, February 23, 2012

Eves, incarnations, oracular divinations

Loving this medium because it is ever-moving, ever-living, very much like the Sacred Tree, whose teaching shows "the path to love, compassion, generosity, patience, wisdom, justice, courage, respect, humility and many other wonderful gifts."

For those who haven't seen it, Pan's Labyrinth  


Also, see The Fountain







Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Questions for Writing and Discussion in Class: Lone Ranger and Tonto (Alexie)




Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven Discussion Questions for Class

GROUP ONE 
1. What parallels can you draw between the American Indian life depicted in this book and what you may have learned in other contexts about societies in transition or cultures that have been colonized?

2. What view of justice towards American Indians is depicted in "The Trail of Thomas Builds-the-Fire"? What events does Thomas testify about? How effective is this chapter in engaging the themes of the book? 

3. Alexie has been quoted saying, "Everything is a matter of perception." How has this book influenced your perception of American Indian experience as it is lived today? From your background knowledge, do you believe this book is representative of American Indian tribes in general?

4. Attempting to hold onto cultural traditions while assimilating into the modern world appears to be the challenge for American Indians as well as many non-Indians. What insight does Alexie offer?  Does he suggest that only the individual can determine the answer? Provide examples from the book to support your perception.

5. In the story "A Drug Called Tradition," the narrator talks about skeletons that represent the past and the future. How does he describe these skeletons and how must a young Indian relate to them?  What is he saying about tradition in this selection?


 GROUP TWO
6. Humor and despair intermingle throughout the stories. What are some examples of this intermingling that impressed you as especially important? What is the point of this ambivalence?

7. The narrator's mother asks him to write a "good story" because she wants readers to know "that good things always happen to Indians, too." (p. 140) What story does he tell? Why do you think he concludes with "Believe me, there is just barely enough goodness in all of this"?

8. Junior graduates as valedictorian of a non-reservation farm town school. He comments that back on the reservation his former classmates graduate, but a few can't read and others are given  "attendance diplomas." The bright students who graduate from the reservation school, he says, are  "shaken, frightened, because they don't know what comes next." (p. 180) How would you explain their fear even though they have been successful in their school?

9. In the Fun House chapter, Aunt Nezzy made "a full-length beaded dress that was too heavy for anyone to wear" (76).  She then stated, "When a woman comes along who can carry the weight of this dress on her back, then we will have found the one who will save us all." From your readings in other subjects, to what mythic or heroic archetypes can you compare the challenge of wearing Aunt Nezzy's dress?

10. After reading The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, what significance and symbolism  can you derive from his title choice for this collection?  How do these two pop-culture icons of the title-the lone Ranger and Tonto, television partners who battle crime-connect with the recurring themes of the book?


GROUP THREE
11. Despite repeated references to self-destruction, racism, poverty, alcoholism, despair, and domestic violence, how do these American Indians keep hope alive?

12. In "The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore," the author notes:  "But it's almost like Indians can easily survive the big stuff. Mass murder, loss of language and land rights. It's the small things that hurt the most. The waitress who wouldn't take an order, Tonto, the Washington Redskins." (49).  How do you react to this statement? To what extent can you relate it to your own observations or experiences?

13. How surprised were you by Victor's treatment of a fellow Indian in the selection titled  "Amusements"?  How do you explain his behavior?

14. How does Junior's relationship with his white girlfriend in Seattle reveal his conflicts and fears about his place in society beyond the reservation?

15. In "Someone Kept Saying Powwow," Junior describes Norma as "a cultural lifeguard." After he revealed to her how he had joined with others to mistreat a struggling black basketball player during college, why was she finally able to forgive him?  Where else in the collection does the theme of forgiveness play a role?


GROUP FOUR
16. In the book’s opening story, as Victor’s uncles, Adolph and Arnold, fight in the yard, and someone shouts that they might kill each other. But the narrator writes,  “Nobody disagreed and nobody moved to change the situation. Witnesses. They were all witnesses and nothing more. For hundreds of years, Indians were witnesses to crimes of an epic scale” [3]. What are the crimes Native Americans have witnessed? What effects do these crimes have on the circumstances and behavior of the characters in Alexie’s stories?

17. In the story, “A Drug Called Tradition,” how does tradition function like a drug for Native Americans? What does it offer them? What does it let them dream of?

18. The narrator of “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore” observes, “It’s hard to be optimistic on the reservation. When a glass sits on a table here, people don’t wonder if it’s half filled or half empty. They just hope it’s good beer” [49]. Why is this mixture of humor and despair so effective in expressing the mood of life on the reservation? Where else do such moments occur in the collection?

19. In “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” Thomas Builds-the-Fire  has a dream in which he is told to go to Spokane and wait for a vision. What does his vision turn out to be?

20. What kind of transition exists between the first two chapters “Every Little Hurricane” and “A Drug Called Tradition”? What “tradition” (or traditions) is Alexie drawing our attention to ( ie - family traditions, social traditions?), and how is this tradition like a drug ? What effect has “tradition” had in Victor’s life, as well as the people on the Spokane Reservation in general—positive, negative?