Native American Culture Poem Analysis

Within the two passages, two Native American writers, N.S. Momaday and D. Brown, deliver two contrasting views on the Native American landscape and experience. Momaday’s awestruck diction and peaceful imagery revel in the seclusion of a scenario which promotes creation. On the other hand, Brown’s forlorn diction and passive tone mourn the lifeless landscape and loss of people forcibly detached from their land. While Momaday writes to explain the admirable beauty of Rainy Mountain, Brown writes to mourn the loss of life stripped in the barren landscape.

Tribal Land In the poem, Tribal Land by Dale Backo, there are many great verses that would make great animated scenes. So, I planned to make it into a short animated film and justified why I chose these effects, colours, styles and sounds. The poem is very descriptive and interesting so it would make the most sense to animate this rather than to convert this to something as limited as a PowerPoint.

Native Guard is a poem that is built on a lot of passion and precision that makes this entire book of poetry stand out. From the beginning with the elusive imagery and foreshadowing of her childhood and her mother’s life we are easily engulfed in the lifestyle of being born in the south. The imagery continues on in the new memory of the pinnacle time of slavery and the Civil War, which shows the true nature of the south through repetition and metaphoric sentences of many gruesome and remorseful scenes.

Throughout the poem the speaker mentions things that relate to consumerism in America. An example in the poem that speaks about consumerism comes from lines 1-4

With our modern day technology and ever changing society, it is important to keep folk cultures alive and not allow them to slip away. “Piecing it all Together” by bell hooks describes how she remembers her grandmother patiently and skillfully telling the story of her life through the art of sewing a tedious quilt. Chris Rose in his article “Let the Good Times Roll” depicts the tragedy, perseverance of a community, and the total comment from all to rise up and move on and celebrate their heritage and traditions. Folk cultures are the backbones that shape and mold every individual during their lifetime blending together traditions and skills, foods, beliefs, heritage and shared values that are taught and/or passed down from generation to generation, providing a common identity or direction for people within a family or community.

“What I’m about to tell you, Corporal, cannot leave this room. Under no circumstances can you allow your code talker to fall into enemy hands. Your mission is to protect the code… at all cost.” In the movie, Windtalkers, this is how a commander wants his marine to treat the paired Navajo code talker. That is, if it’s necessary, his marine could kill the Navajo, just like abandoning one of his properties. Even in the mid 1900s, the Native Americans were still treated not as human beings, but rather, machines; therefore, it is not hard for us to imagine how even more frightening the Native Americans’ circumstances were in the early days when they were first colonized by the western settlers. In Deborah Miranda’s “Indian

In “America the beautiful” the author’s use of diction creates an uplifting spiritual tone in the poem.The author uses the same words “oh beautiful for…”focusing not on America's flaws but on the beauty. For instance the start of stanza 4 she writes “o beautiful 4 heroes proved in liberty strife who more than self her country loved and marymor than life”.She apads for the people who believe in freedom of america by sacrificing their lives for their

Richard Blanco is a Cuban- American poet who was given the oppurunity to write an inaugaration poem for Barack Obama's second swearing-in. He wrote a poem titled "One Today" that praised the good and unique things about the United States and also the everyday people who's daily routines help to make America the proud country that it is.

From as early as the time of the early European settlers, Native Americans have suffered tremendously. Native Americans during the time of the early settlers where treated very badly. Europeans did what they wanted with the Native Americans, and when a group of Native Americans would stand up for themselves, the European would quickly put them down. The Native Americans bow and arrows where no match for the Europeans guns and cannon balls. When the Europeans guns didn’t work for the Europeans, the disease they bought killed the Native Americans even more effectively.

Everybody has their own definition of Culture – and when this word is used generally, most audiences have a rough idea of its meaning. Culture usually refers to the beliefs, ideas, languages, rituals and traditions by certain communities, that are passed from generation to generations continuously over the past many centuries. In society, two cultures cannot be same if one is located on the west coast and the other one is all the way to the East. As we compare, the American and Indian cultures have very vast differentiation between them. While the culture of America is a mixture of different cultures since each immigrant internally packed his or her previously

In “A Drug Called Tradition,” Alexie’s humor efficaciously shows the bitter reality on the reservation. For example, at the beginning of the story, Alexie uses humor to reflect poverty on the reservation. After Junior shouts at Thomas, questioning “[h]ow come your fridge is always fucking empty,” Thomas goes inside the refrigerator and sits down, replying Junior “[t]here…It ain’t empty no more” (Alexie 12). As seen in this example, having Thomas sit inside the refrigerator and reply in a humorous tone, Alexie is successful in mirroring the issue of poverty, or the bitter reality, on the reservation. This point can also be supported by Stephen F. Evans’s essay, "'Open containers': Sherman Alexie's Drunken Indians,” in which Evans discusses Alexie’s use of satire and irony in his stories and poems. As Evans claims that “[c]onsidered as a whole, the best artistic moments in Alexie's poems, stories, and novels lie in his construction of a satiric mirror that reflects the painful reality of lives,” this further verifies the argument that humor in Alexie’s stories helps reflect the bitter actuality on the reservation (49).

Native American literatures embrace the memories of creation stories, the tragic wisdom of native ceremonies, trickster narratives, and the outcome of chance and other occurrences in the most diverse cultures in the world. These distinctive literatures, eminent in both oral performances and in the imagination of written narratives, cannot be discovered in reductive social science translations or altogether understood in the historical constructions of culture in one common name. (Vizenor 1)

The concept of culture is something that defines many aspects of one’s life. From physical objects to different ways of thinking, culture adds significance to human life and makes groups of people distinct from one another. Culture is essentially a group of people who come together with similar interests and points of view. According to the Center for Advanced Language Acquisition of the University of Minnesota, “culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization.” From a more sociological perspective, culture is a way in which people come together in order to fulfill their needs. These shared patterns and ideas identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.” Culture is one of the things that sets the United States apart from the rest of the world. Not that the rest of the world is not cultural, but the circumstance here is different. Many people of different cultural backroads come to this country in search of a better life. As a consequence, the United States has become a place where many cultures merge together like a colossal pot soup.

The diversity of culture is an incredible notion. It is unfathomable how the anatomy of the human race is so similar, yet so different in the behaviors and ideas that take place. The two primary cultures I am focusing on throughout this essay are the differentiation between popular culture, and indigenous culture. I will also make the point of folk culture, and how it has slowly transformed itself from its self sufficiency, to relying more on the ways of popular culture.

Oliver Goldsmith is not the only author who argues against the loss of culture. The Dave Matthews Band also speaks out against this in their song “Don’t Drink the Water”. This song is aimed at the expatriation of Native Americans, but also touches on the loss of culture from wealth. “Don’t Drink the Water” is narrated through the eyes of a member of the encroaching populace, who says “Your father’s spirit lives in this place / I will silence you.” (Dave Matthews Band 21-22). These lines show the culture of the natives, or “father’s spirit”, is being destroyed by “greedy need”, or wealth (Dave Matthews Band 42, 21). The same message is voiced when Goldsmith laments that “...Trade’s unfeeling train”, which represents wealth, “Usurp the land and dispossess the swain.”, or strip culture from the youth, who carry the responsibility of continuing tradition (Goldsmith 64). While the song and poem