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?
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