Native Identity in Welch´s Winter in the Blood, The Heartsonh of Charging Elf, and Alexie´s Flight

The colonization of Native American people has consequently framed Native American society as heteronormative, despite the historical inaccuracies of such a notion. The relationships presented throughout this collection range from sexual, platonic, familial and interracial. Race is "a constant presence" (14) throughout the course of each narrative. Alexie 's stories question of identity as it relates to race and sexuality across a boad spectrum. The nine stories in The Toughest Indian in the World move off the reservation to Seattle or the nearby city of Spokane. The ‘urban Indians’ at the heart of these stories are educated, middle class and sober, and outwardly at least, they are fully integrated into the dominant white society. This paper will explore the trajectory of identity in Alexie 's work and how Toughest Indian demonstates a sense of otherness of Indians in an urban envirnment. This theme is expored through Alexie 's treatment of race and sexuality as demonstrated in two stories: Toughest Indian and John Wayne.

Throughout human existence, mankind has had to overcome difficult obstacles in order to prosper. In Diane Glancy’s “Pushing the Bear”, the reader discovers how the Cherokee Indians overcome their hardships and flourish into a new, thriving community. In this novel, the audience observe how these Cherokee Indians outlast the harsh environment during the Indian Removal Act. Additionally, Glancy creates a human experience during the Trail of Tears; giving a different perspective of various characters. Through the eyes of characters such as Maritole and Knobowtee, the reader is able to sense the desperation that the Cherokee endured. The upheaval of being forcefully removed from the land stripped the Cherokee of their identity. This disruption left the Cherokee confused, causing frustration to arise because they were unable to live their familiar roles. Men were no longer able to farm. Women had a loss of property and wealth. The bear symbolizes these struggles throughout this novel. Maritole explains, “The bear had once been a person. But he was not conscious of the consciousness he was given. His darkness was greed and self-centeredness. It was part of myself, too. It was part of the human being” (183). In other words, the “bear” is the personal dilemma each character is put up against during this removal. Furthermore, each character has their own personal struggles to overcome; whether that be Knobowtee’s loss of masculinity or Maritole’s loss of family. These struggles,

“We live the Old Way” are the words that author, Catherine Knutsson, uses to introduce readers to the fascinating culture of the Métis Indians in her intriguing book, Shadows Cast by Stars (1). Set in an unspecified future, sixteen year old protagonist, Cassandra Mercredi, finds herself and her family fleeing from the mainland of UA and going to find refuge on “The Island” (Knutsson 21). They have been targeted because they are “marked by the precious Plague antibodies in [their Native American] blood” (Knutsson 1). According to Essentials of Young Adult Literature, Knutsson’s book is categorized as American Indian and Indigenous Literature (Short, Tomlinson, Lynch-Brown, and Johnson 177). After analyzing the text, the categorization is correct because the story is told from the perspective of the protagonist, Cassandra, who provides readers are given insight into the cultural beliefs and values of the Métis tribe. Additionally, her character communicates the traditional roles of men and women within the tribe, while integrating cultural details that provide authenticity to the story.

Lives for Native Americans on reservations have never quite been easy. There are many struggles that most outsiders are completely oblivious about. In her book The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich brings those problems to light. She gives her readers a feel of what it is like to be Native American by illustrating the struggles through the life of Joe, a 13-year-old Native American boy living on a North Dakota reservation. This book explores an avenue of advocacy against social injustices. The most observable plight Joe suffers is figuring out how to deal with the injustice acted against his mother, which has caused strife within his entire family and within

Native American literature from the Southeastern United States is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the various tribes that have historically called that region home. While the tribes most integrally associated with the Southeastern U.S. in the American popular mind--the FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole)--were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) from their ancestral territories in the American South, descendents of those tribes have created compelling literary works that have kept alive their tribal identities and histories by incorporating traditional themes and narrative elements. While reflecting profound awareness of

To explain the Native American identity is necessary to take into consideration several arguments. A group’s identity is never a universal consensus, since every individual’s experience would define the meaning of what is to be member of a certain group. Despite these differences in experiencing and living within a given culture; the commonality is that members of the group are recognized are part of It by members of the group they claim to belong. Native American’s self-definition is a continuum because “[…] knowledge is conditioned knowledge, constructed within our conceptual systems, and thus knowledge is a communal achievement and is relative to time and place. One need not retreat to a complete

A Native Americans identity is deeply rooted in his culture, “it’s a particular way one feels about oneself and one’s experiences as an American Indian or tribal person” (Horse 65). Without his Native American culture, a person can feel lost in the world, disconnected from everything. Throughout history, there have been moments where Native Americans were forced to lose part or all of their culture, of their identity. There was the termination era in the 1950’s and Indian boarding schools that both were ways to strip Native Americans of their culture. In Joy Harjo’s poem, The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window, the woman hanging experiences the termination era. In Sherman Alexie’s book, Reservation Blues, Junior Polatkin experiences the lasting effect boarding schools have on Indians. In LeAnne Howe’s book, Miko Kings, Lena learns that you can always come back from to your Native identity.

Gunn Allen is writing about the struggles American Indian women have had through the years with their identities. Writing about American Indian women, Gunn Allen uses ethos and builds her credibility by claiming that she is a “half breed American Indian woman. ”(83) Telling us that she is an American Indian woman herself makes her more believable and trustworthy because she isn’t just speaking fully upon different sources that she has gathered and heard over the years. She is using her own experiences as well as what she has heard from others.

Deborah Miranda’s entire novel Bad Indians counters the view that Native Indians are and have been gone. Throughout the novel Miranda uses tools of domination as tools of agency. The whole structure of the novel seeks to undermine the dominant discourse in society by paralleling it to the California Mission projects. This and her use of other techniques throughout the novel re-situates the history of the native community as a whole which contrasts Miranda’s feelings and views in her present state. Rather than viewing her people’s history as destroyed and irreparable, she views her people’s history as a means of reinventing themselves to something different, possibly better. She challenges the discourse that I, her people, and many others share; the effects of colonization have completely erased the native communities. First she illustrates the dominant culture that exists and then counters it by using devices like metaphor to attest to the resilience and adaptability of the natives. Finally she objectifies herself to embrace a new view of her people on a personal and social level. Miranda uses her literary work as a tool of agency particularly in A Californian Indian in the Philadelphia Airport by using allusion, metaphor, and objectification to undermine the dominant culture that the Native American peoples are passive and have disappeared.

He notes the cold behaviors of anthropologists who view Indians as peculiar subjects to be researched rather than human beings with their own agencies. As these academics come out and flood all talk on these people with their observations, not plans of action, even many young Native Americans start viewing themselves as predicable and in such a dehumanized lens. They do not see that they too can provide their own observations about the plight of their people as descendants of those who had lived in the Americas before white settlers and instead are caught in the paralysis of idealism while trying to fulfil the expectations that academics have for them on what it means to be a “real”

In Sherman Alexie’s book, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” the reader experiences firsthand the overwhelming devastation poverty wreaks on the lives of those living on a reservation. The story’s awkward teenage narrator, Arnold, expresses frustration when he shares how he lives “with his poor-ass family on the poor-ass Spokane Indian

In addition to being victims of poverty, these female protagonists also suffer as victims of their gender. In her book, Feminist Readings of Native American Literature: Coming to Voice, Katherine M. Donovan wrote, “Although [Native American women] face many of the same problems as their male counterparts – alcoholism, drug abuse, unemployment, poverty, suicide, loss of tradition and identity – they also face problems that are distinctly female-gendered: a loss of power and esteem in formerly matrilineal cultures; the trauma of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse from Native and non-Native men” (Donovan 18) First Nation women had very few rights in the 1900s and their issues drew very little attention. Even today, many First Nation’s women are murdered and raped without much police or media attention. In the 1940s until the 1980s, the setting of these books, their rights and attention to their issues would have been even fewer, and many men will have taken advantage of First Nation women.

Sherman Alexie’s novel, Reservation Blues, successfully captures the essence of pain and struggle that was so evident in both the slavery of Africans and the eradication of Native Americans, and integrates the power of blues music in order to bring the reader a breathtaking story. Alexie develops a strong, interconnected web of characters sharing common misfortune. Whether it is in Coyote Spring’s inability to succeed, Robert Johnson’s painstaking attempt to leave his guitar over the years, alcoholism within the character’s families, discrimination, or any other aspect of Native American life, Sherman Alexie is able to combine the characteristics of Blues music with the oppressed Native American culture present in his novel Reservation Blues.

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.

This analytical review will attempt to show how the conflict of alienation with in the Native American community is influenced by social class, alcoholic tendencies/behavior, and ethnic background. The author Shurman Alexie explores the issues of despair, poverty, alcoholism, and racial conflict, which pervade everyday matters of the American Indians (Hossain & Sarker, 2016). In the story, What You Sell I will Redeem, by Sherman Alexi, the main character Jackson Jackson is a homeless Native American who is portrayed, that he, like many other Native Americans are alienated due to social stature, alcohol decency, and ethnicity. This alienation is accepted not only by the Native American community but amid the non-Native Americans as well. It has become a norm amongst North America and can be seen in literary works throughout our nation.