preview

Native American Belonging

Better Essays

“So many things in the world have happened before. But it's like they never did. Every new thing that happens to a person, it's a first... In that night I felt expansion, as if the world was branching out in shoots and growing faster than the eye could see. I felt smallness, how the earth divided into bits and kept dividing. I felt stars” (Erdrich 27)
This quote shows vastness of though and human experiences and thought. It also shows have Native Americans are extremely in touch with nature and their feelings. "They gave you worthless land to start with and then they chopped it out from under your feet. They took your kids away and stuffed the English language in their mouth . . . They sold you booze for furs and then told you not to drink. …show more content…

Clearly they were of one soul. Handsome, rangy, wildly various, they were bound in total loyalty, not by oath, but by the simple, unquestioning belongingness of part of one organism” (Erdrich 210)
The dancers represent how they are all moving together to a rhythm that binds them together, not as dancers, but as human beings. It represents how everything is bound together, but this connection is lost by many of the characters. They distance themselves from their connections to relatives and to the Earth through the actions of the government and their own decisions.
“There they were. And he was really loving her up good, boy, and she was going hell for leather. Sheets were flapping on the lines above and washcloths, pillowcases, shirts was also flying through the air, for they was trying to clear a place for themselves in a high-heaped but shallow laundry cart” (Erdrich 154)
The Laundy cart is a symbol for their love. They were making love very passionately, but their love is not that deep. There were trying to pile so much love and emotion into this “laundry cart” that was not very deep. Their feelings are powerful but they are not deep enough to

Get Access