Analysis Of The Book ' Black Elk '

The Lakota, an Indian group of the Great Plains, established their community in the Black Hills in the late eighteenth century (9). This group is an example of an Indian community that got severely oppressed through imperialistic American actions and policy, as the Americans failed to recognize the Lakota’s sovereignty and ownership of the Black Hills. Jeffrey Ostler, author of The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, shows that the Lakota exemplified the trends and subsequent challenges that Indians faced in America. These challenges included the plurality of groups, a shared colonial experience, dynamic change, external structural forces, and historical agency.

The Black Hills are an isolated mountain range rising 3000 to 4000 feet above the surrounding plains of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana (Sundstrom et al. 1996). The importance of this land to the Sioux Nation goes beyond dedication to the place they have lived in for generations. The Lakota creation story itself incorporates the Black Hills in particular as central to their identity as a people. The Black Hills are not only regarded as the birthplace of Sioux culture in religious songs and legends, but as the first place created on Earth—literally the heart of the Earth, which is seen as Mother. Sioux spiritual lore utilizes metaphor both to explain and to embody the thing signified—the Black Hills are the heart of the Earth, and that concept is

At the beginning of Black Elk Speaks, Black Elk and John Neihardt smoke the peace pipe then Black Elk begins his story. When Black Elk was still pretty young he and his tribe were involved in the Hundred slain war, and Black Elk also begins to hear strange voices. Later on Black Elk falls very ill, then two warriors come from the sky and bring Black Elk to the Flaming rainbow tepee, while he was there his six grandfathers gave him six very special gifts. After Black Elk got the gifts he was taught the horse dance, when Black Elk returned from his vision he went to see his cousin Crazy horse, later on Crazy Horse would be murdered by being stabbed in the back by a soldier. By this time most of the indians were forced to live on the reservations but one band of Lakotas escaped from the reservation and traveled north to Canada where Sitting Bull’s band was. The winters in Canada were too harsh for the Sioux so they reluctantly moved back to the reservation where they were given hardly anything. With Black Elk’s people losing hope he teaches them the dances he learned in his visions. When Black Elk learns of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show he decides to go with him, after a few months doing shows in America Black Elk went to England. When the Lakotas were camped on Wounded Knee Creek, the wasichus came and murdered everyone in the camp including the women and children. After the battle the remaining Lakota surrendered they went to the reservation and the flowering tree dies. The

Black Elk Speaks, by John Niehardt describes the role the Wasichus (white people) played in the history of Black Elks people. The book is focused on Black Elk's development as a healer and holy man granted by a magical dream showed to him when he was a toddler. The Wasichus greed, played a devastating role in the movement of the Native Americans.

This book is the story of Thomas Yellowtail, a religious leader, and a “pivotal figure in Crow tribal life”. In his youth, Yellowtail lived alongside great men who have tasted the freedom of the days before the reservations life, and were familiar with the sacred ways. Thomas Yellowtail was a Crow healer and also a top religious figure in the Sun Dance, which was the most important part of the Plains Indian spirituality. Yellowtail describes the social problems in reservations, and explains how alcoholism, drug abuse, and poverty were manifested by declining values (pg.28). By trading their daily contact with the nature and prayer, for the modern day fast pace, and things like television, Yellowtail suggests that Indians have become out of

Charles Frazier’s first novel, Cold Mountain, has earned him a great amount of notoriety. From having a film adaptation of his novel in 2003, to receiving a National Book Award in fiction in 1997. Cold Mountain opens with a quotation from a journal entry by Charles Darwin: “It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war of organic beings, going on in the peaceful woods and smiling fields.” And indeed, Frazier’s acclaimed novel describes a war of beings built of flesh and blood–of course not only in the sense of the Civil War. While man’s lone task in war is to destroy the opposition, Frazier’s novel is also dedicated to the struggle which an individual must face in order to survive in a natural environment. From Frazier’s standpoint, the usage of this particular quotation could be a confirmation of Darwin’s influence on his literature. The term naturalism describes a category of literature that applies scientific principles of detachment and objectivity to its reading of human beings. The literary movement of naturalism got its foundation from Darwin’s theory of evolution. In his novel, Frazier makes use of real historical backgrounds and geographical locations. Combined with a style following realism, amidst extensive passages of naturalistic descriptions. There are clear similarities between Darwin’s conclusions and the plot of Cold Mountain.

Many dictionaries define animals as living things other than human beings or plants. However, in some dictionaries, there is another definition for animal, which shows how they distinguish animal and human: a live thing which behaves in a wild, aggressive, or unpleasant way. In Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, the behavior of Max, the protagonist of the story, challenges the boundary line between the animal and human. The way human and animal live their life and convey their love severalizes human and animal.

Throughout high school history class, students often learn about “how the West won” during the period of western expansion era in the United States. Americans had this ideology of Manifest Destiny hoping the United States would stretch from sea to sea. However, not everyone won during these so called “fabulous times” of the western expansion era. Native Americans view the westward expansion as a painful and sad time period during which they lost their cultures. Through the perception of the settlers, westward expansion was good and beneficial to a great country, but what is not read in high school history class is the the negative role the settlers had on the Native Americans. Night Flying Woman by Ignatia Broker depicts the hectic uprooting of the Ojibway tribe on the account by Broker’s great-grandmother, Oona or her native name, Night Flying Woman. The Ojibway tribe struggled to keep their beliefs and traditions as the settlers came in and forced them to assimilate.

Ever changing, the world promised a comfort of shared misery and remained reliable. Brutal truths are instilled, early and sudden, as lasting lessons always present and impossible to ignore. When bold questions slither into a mind as to why anything is and what may be the reason for the continued existence, people find or create places of unjustifiable magnificence. Paha Sapa, “the heart of everything that is,” is this place for the Sioux. The War of the Black Hills between the Sioux Nation Lakota and the U.S. Americans has lasted for more than a century, and continues in the courts, in the lives of its warriors, and is protested through stone.

Items for sale at the confectionery, in addition to those listed in the centennial narrative, included over-the-counter medical and veterinary supplies, toiletries, greeting cards, knick-knacks, and holiday specific novelties. Besides attending Bill’s fireworks display on Independence Day, patrons purchased rockets, firecrackers, caps, and sparklers to enliven their family or neighborhood festivities.11 Even though Bill and Clara offered an extensive variety of merchandise, the physical size of the store placed limits on the selection.

I picked this quote from chapter 6 and it explains the tension building up inside of Buck during his time with John Thornton, who is the ideal master, and his relationship with Buck represents a perfect friendship between a dog and their owner. The author tells us that this is the first time that Buck has loved a human. Yet it is clear that Buck is supposed to free in the wild, so Buck doesn’t know whether to stay with his owner or go free into the wild. But after Thornton is killed and he avenges his death he has no more reasons to not go into the wild where he truly belongs.

Stephen Crane’s “Red Badge of Courage” and John Neihardt “Black Elk Speaks” are two tales about men experiencing a rebirth; one text details a moral rebirth within the main character’s conscience and the latter a cultural rebirth of a forgotten nation. Crane’s novel follows a novice soldier fighting on the frontlines of the American Civil War who confronts his cowardice in an attempt to be a better man and soldier. Neihardt’s book follows Black Elk, a spiritual leader who witnessed Europeans steal land from his South Dakota Indian tribe. “Black Elk Speaks” details a number of spiritual rebirths that Black Elk experienced by connecting with nature in an effort to save his people, but the more potent point is that the recording of the narrative marks a restoration of the history of Black Elk’s tribe. These two pieces of literature exemplify the human need to renew their characters and restore their environment for positive progression.

In Walter Wangerin Jr.'s beast fable, The Book of the Dun Cow, two roosters have the unusual distinction of being Lords of their own manor. Webster defines a Lord as a "person having great powers and authority, a ruler or master," where as a manor is defined as "the district over which a lord holds authority and domain" (Webster). Chauntecleer is introduced to the reader as the leader or Lord of the Coop and the ruler over the animals in the surrounding land. On the other hand, Cockatrice takes over as leader of his Coop and land after he kills his father, Senex. Chauntecleer and Cockatrice are two very different roosters who lead and rule their domain in stark contrast yet they are both labeled as Lords of the manor.

I woke up in the long, 30 foot 5th wheel camper. My grandparents and I drove the camper up to Howard Lake. Howard Lake was just 12 miles outside of Libby, and the home of several different kinds of wildlife, ranging from tiny squirrels to wolves, moose, and bears. Just days before my grandparents and I had arrived to the campsite, the word was out that two bears had been attracted to a moose carcass. Fearing the campsite was closed, our bunch later arrived, and sure enough, it was open.

The setting was early November, the weather was cool, the leaves crisp and falling to the force of the frigid fall breeze. Deer season was in full swing, while Jon and Lance were on a mission to kill a monster buck the two of them had been watching. Over the course of the last two months Jon and Lance had been bowhunting several times in search of the monster buck the two of them had seen. This buck was bigger than either one of them had ever seen. The buck stood as tall as a horse and the bucks rack went towering in the sky, which was visible from miles away. With the size of this buck it should be super easy to hunt him they though, he cannot hide very good. There was an issue though, because every time Jon and Lance seen this monster buck in the woods while hunting, strange things seemed to happen. For example, every time Jon or Lance sighted the buck it would quickly vanish into thin air. As weird as that seems to be that is not the craziest thing that has happened. Every time the buck would vanish there would be some sort of violence directed towards Jon or Lance. One time for instance, the buck was spotted between Jon and lance while hunting and it disappeared. Soon after that Jon just about got shot in the head with an arrow. Jon was just sitting there in his tree stand dazed at the pure amazement of the buck disappearing and he felt a quick breeze go by his head followed by a loud crack in the tree. There was an arrow stuck in the tree