Half Indian Belonging

Throughout the story, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Junior goes through many ups and downs. This story is about how Junior, an indian from the Spokane reservation, decides to go to Rearden, the school for non-indians because of how run-down his school is and has trouble fitting in. Some of the ways Junior dealt with those downs include his uncanny sense of humor, his love for his friends, and the want to fit in and prove he’s just as good as everyone else at his new school.

Purpose: Alexie highlights how he ultimately overcame the hardships suffered during his early years due to his Indian ethnicity and displays how Native Americans were, and continue, to suffer from discrimination.

Sherman Alexie, in “Indian Education” tells his experiences in school on the reservation. Some of his teachers did not treat him very good and did not try to understand him. In his ninth grade year he collapsed. A teacher assumed that he had been drinking just because he was Native American. The teacher said, “What’s that boy been drinking? I know all about these Indian kids. They start drinking real young.” Sherman Alexie didn’t listen to the negatives in school. He persevered and became valedictorian of his school.

Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his

Education —an institution for success, opportunity, and progress — is itself steeped in racism. In Sherman Alexie’s short story “Indian Education” from his book The Longer Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is set in two places, the Spokane Indian Reservation and a farm town nearby the reservation. The story is written in a list of formative events chronologize Victor’s youth by depicting the most potent moment from each year he is in school. Alexie addresses the issue of racism in education by examining examples of injustice and discrimination over twelve years in a boy’s life. Victor faces his initial injustice in first grade when he is bullied by bigger kids, but his understanding of injustice becomes much more complex in grades two through twelve as he experiences discrimination against his American Indian identity. Familial experiences of a Native woman, Alexie’s style and humor, and Victor’s awareness of discrimination from grade one to twelve all reveal the grim reality of growing up and being schooled on an American Indian reservation.

Good Afternoon teachers and students, The following texts express how an individuals understanding of belonging can quickly be changed by the people and place around them. “Jasper Jones a novel written by Craig Silvey”, it is a short story of a boy named Charles Butkins and the events that occurred because he helped Jasper Jones mask the death of Laura Wishart. “Australia by Ania Walwicz”, is attacking the people of Australia in the form of a poem, because of their point of views and attitudes in life. She also hates Australia itself because the people are not welcoming, this is the main point of this poem.

As Diary of a Part Time Indian progresses and Junior enrolls in Reardan, he continues to belief that he does not deserve hope, unlike the kids at Reardan, but not necessarily because of his race anymore. Resulting from his choice to leave the reservation, Junior struggles to fit in at Reardan, but not leave his identity behind, since for him living on the reservation is entwined with being poor.

Relationships and experiences shape an individual’s sense of belonging only to a certain extent as an individual’s sense of belonging is greatly influenced by their own beliefs and self-perception. This can be predominantly understood in Redfern Now: Stand Up (RN), directed by Rachel Perkins, and Going Home (GH) written by Archie Weller. Redfern Now demonstrates how protagonist, Joel Shields, though studying in an elite school like Clifton Grammar, he chooses to not belong and differentiate himself from the values of the school and assert his own beliefs. Similarly, Going Home explores how even though Billy Woodward, born an Aboriginal, perceives the entire Aboriginal society as “rowdy, brawling, drunk people” and therefore chooses to not belong.

Even after hanging out with a bunch of the American people, Arnold still feels attached to his own heritage. He loves his family and his best friend, Rowdy, and he feels that he needs to make amends with Rowdy. He was really scared that Rowdy would hate him and Junior would need to leave his old Indian self. Later he fixed his problems while playing "one-on-one (basketball) for hours..." (pg. 230) and they "didn't keep score" (pg. 230). Also, Junior cares about his family a lot. When two of them died in a row (his grandmother and sister), he didn't know what to do without them. He also thinks that Indians are forgiving of any kind of eccentricity (until the Americans came). "Gay people were seen as magical, too...Gay people could do anything. They were like Swiss army knives!" (pg. 155). He is pretty accepting of his heritage. He knows that he is Indian going to a white

Belonging comes from an understanding, or the knowledge that an external sense of being comes from an internal sense of connection and safety. This critical analysis will portray how the text “Stolen” by Jane Harrison relates to the concept of belonging. Stolen is a play that tells the stories of 5 Aboriginal children that were stolen away from their families and were forced to grow up in institutions, following the European way of life. The children were segregated from their communities and treated as inferiorly. Their worth was seen as minimal and only useful to Europeans as slaves. “Stolen” is an example of not belonging to the environment that one is living in. The children are stolen from their parents, their culture and traditions,

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.

They say that home is where the heart is, but they are wrong. Home is where you are accepted amongst your peers, it is where you have people who love and support you. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Junior, a young native teenager, faces the dilemma of belonging in Reardan, a white town that he transferred schools to, or Wellpinit, the Indian Reservation where he was born and raised. In Reardan, he has many more friends than he ever had in the 14 years he lived in Wellpinit, and he does not get beat-up or called names. Furthermore, in Reardan, he has a huge outpouring of support from all the people who live there and watch his basketball games.

16). Arnold perceives himself within his relations with his family and the reservation, thus his self-esteem is directly tied to his place within the two groups. However near the end of the book, Arnold cries for his “fellow tribal members” future in the reservation (Alexie, 2009, p. 216) and acknowledges that he “was the only one who was brave and crazy enough to leave the rez…. The only one with enough arrogance” (Alexie, 2009, p. 217). Although part of his self image is still tied to his tribe, Arnold sees himself as independent from them. He has a sense of who he is from his choice to leave the reservation and the qualities that allowed him to do so. The experiences Arnold encountered along the way such as exclusion, individuals with highly independent self-construals, and the deaths of his led to changes in his self-concept.

Belonging doesn’t only mean the concept of being emotionally and mentally comfortable and secure, but an individual’s desire to improve themselves and progression along changes. It is about finding your own sense of acceptance in society. The related text I’ve chosen is the film, Matilda, directed by Danny DeVito. As this film is about a young girl named Matilda Wormwood, she lives with her ignorant parents and an elder brother, Michael. Her whole life’s been mistreated and alienated, but when she met her class teacher, Miss Honey, she changed Matilda from an insecure to a bright bubbly child.

A coming of Age Novel entitled The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian (PTI), by Sherman Alexie, focuses on the effects of colonialism on Native Americans, the pressures of assimilation historically and contemporarily, and cultural appropriation. Junior, a Spokane Indian teen who chooses to leave his reservation school, Wellpinit, attends a predominantly white school off-reservation called Reardan. While there, many of Junior’s friends and family die from alcohol-related incidents. These tragedies are some of the long-term effects of colonialism not often addressed accurately in media. Historically, many Native American people were forced to attend boarding schools, while Junior makes chooses to leave the alcohol, poorness, and sadness. Alexie, a Spokane and Coeur D’Alene author, impacts the story because he is an actual Indian. Alexie writes in the perspective of a nerdy, poor, teenage boy that seems to exaggerate in his life story. This story is unique, because realistic things happen in the book, for the author is an actual Native American. By understanding that Colonialism has and still does impact Native Americans, it changes and deepens the understanding of the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. This essay focuses on the cultural context of Native Americans and their experiences on reservations. It focuses on hope, losing cultural identity, alcohol and it’s effects, disrespectfulness toward a group, loss of land and culture, cultural