Ceremony Essay

Before the colonists arrived in America, Native Americans had little to no knowledge of alcoholic beverages. (“Stereotypes of Native Americans” par. 1 ). Low alcohol beverages were produced by some tribes but this was only used for ceremonial

Foremost, would be to get the answer if Geronimo was actually a racist serial killer or a man who simply snapped and wanted revenge after the death of his family. In addition, I would like to know, if the Chiricahaua felt that Geronimo was actually hurt the tribe as a whole, why did they not try to stop him by death or imprisonment. It is very easy to look back at an event or period of time and make allegations about why things transpired or why they were not stopped. But one thing is for sure, Geronimo is an Icon in American and Indian history and always will be know as the last hold

The concepts of change and identity are problematic for the characters within Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. Tayo’s hybridity represents all that the Laguna people fear. The coming of change and meshing of cultures has brought an impending threat of ruin to Native American traditions. Although they reject him for his mixed heritage, Tayo’s journey is not his own but a continuation of the storytelling tradition that embodies Native American culture. Through tradition he learns to use his white and Mexican heritage to identify himself without abandoning his Native American practices.

When all these steps and stages were completed it led to freedom and enlightenment for him. When Tayo reached the “understanding that everything is interrelated” (Heroes), he is now free to live between his home and

This sentiment of racial inferiority by the white American was further demonstrated by their treatment of Native American society. As European settlements continued to expand across the continent, Indians were forcibly removed from their land to make room for the “more civilized” white American. The Native American population was practically eradicated with only a handful of survivors remaining on small, segregated reservations in Oklahoma. The genocide of their people-- and their culture-- left most Native Americans with extreme resentment towards the white man. Ironically, just as the white man saw the Native American people as uncivilized savages, Native Americans saw firsthand how barbaric the white man actually was. This further supports the theory that race is not a physical characteristic, but something that is constructed by different societies to establish each ones perception of how the other is viewed or perceived. In Mary C. Waters “Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity,” she explains this theory in the

The miners were very harsh toward the Apaches. They would often poison their food, or cut fetuses out of the stomachs of women. They would also send young girls off into slavery. They were not friendly toward the white people after this point. They would ambush the people, and murder every person that came into their

Erasure. Imagine having almost every detail of your life – your beliefs, your family, your culture, and success – erased by those only focused on their own personal gain. That is what happened to Native Americans over the course of American history. Due to the settler colonialism that laid the foundation of our nation, many Native Americans became the victims of horrific abuse and discrimination. As “whiteness” became the ideal in society, Native Americans lost their voices and the ability to stand up for themselves. Through her memoir, Bad Indians, Deborah Miranda reveals the truth of the horrific pasts of California Native Americans, and gives her ancestors’ stories a chance to finally be heard. In the section “Old News”, Deborah Miranda writes poems from the “white man’s” perspective to show the violent racism committed against Native Americans, as well as the indifference of whites to this violence.

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko is a novel written multidimensionally to portray the traditions and ceremonial practices of the Native American. Silko describes the rebuilding of the Native American culture by writing the real story and poems in the alternate story. The animal symbolism is an integral piece of the novel’s importance that reflects characters and the Native American culture with the use of them in metaphors. Silko respectfully depicts the animals, such as cattle, Fly and Hummingbird, and mountain lion that represent Tayo and the Laguna people, Betonie, and the cultural relationship with nature.

Both of these examples are de-humanizing to Native Americans because the opposite is true. Native Americans have always had very tight knight family groups, they are accepting of everyone in their tribe including the young and old, members native to other tribes, and even homosexuals. The belief that they are barbaric is just an opinion; this isn't any different than the belief that Christians were wrong when Christianity was first established, yet the Christians of this time were not accepting of another religion (despite the fact that one reason for coming to North America was religious freedom).

In Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, the gender roles of three women are significant to the development of Tayo as being half-white and half-Indian. These three women are Tayo's birth mother, Auntie, and Old Grandma. His mother left him when he was four years old and that began his sense of emptiness and abandonment. She could not bear to raise a child that brought the reservation shame by her mistake.

Native Americans are losing their background and where they come from starting with culture and heritage that has been passed down to each generation. Not losing site of that, there is a chance in seeing the positive of preserving and continuing the culture and heritage of the Native Americans and bringing significance to ceremonies.

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Unfortunately Native Americans have deep roots with racism and oppression during the last 500 years. “In The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven,” Sherman Alexie tries to show racism in many ways in multiple of his short stories. These stories, engage our history from a Native American viewpoint. Many Native Americans were brutally forced out of their homes and onto Reservations that lacked resources. Later, Indian children were taken from their families and placed into school that were designed to, “Kill the Indian, save the man.” In the book there are multiple short story that are pieces that form a larger puzzle that shows the struggles and their effects on Native Americans. Sherman Alexie shows the many sides of racism, unfair justice and extermination policies and how imagination is key for Native American survival.

In the novel Ceremony by Leslie Silko, the main character, Tayo, shows apparent madness as he suffers from PTSD due to fighting in World War II. Madness can be defined as mental delusion or the behavior arising from it. The delusions that result of Tayo’s madness, hallucinations of important people he has lost and frequent flashbacks of the worst parts of the war, occur in a reasonable manner because it is common for people to be affected by war in such a negative way and fail to understand what is truly real. The product of Tayo’s madness gives truth to the fact that if one holds on to someone or something for too long, it is impossible to move on in a positive direction.

Understandably, American Indians soon began to distrust and resent their white oppressors. Simon Pokagon put it nicely in his speech The Red Man's Greeting :

In shogun Japan, during the Tokugawa period, Shinto funerals were created. They are 12 main rituals that made up the ceremony. The first ceremony was the pillow adjustment (naoshi no gi), the second ceremony was the coffin ceremony (nōkan no gi), the third ceremony was the giving food to the deceased regularly (kyūzen-nikku no gi), the fourth one is returning the spirit in their place of the shrine by reporting the god or goddesses (ubusuna-jinja ni kiyū-hōkoku), the fifth ceremony was purification (bosho-jichinsai or batsujo no gi), the sixth ceremony was a waking ritual (tsuyasai no gi), the seventh ceremony is the moving the dead Japanese spirit (senrei no gi), the eighth the ceremony was transferring the coffin into the room (hakkyūsai