Sherman Alexie's Short Stories: Native Americans And War Dances

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.

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

In Sherman Alexie’s short story “Superman and Me,” Alexie writes about his life as an Indian child growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. He depicts his life from when he was three years old, living on the reservation, up to his current self, as an adult writer who frequently visits that reservation. He primarily describes his interest in reading and how it has changed his life for the better.

In a Bill Moyer’s interview “Sherman Alexie on Living Outside Borders”, Moyer’s interviews Native American author and poet Sherman Alexie. In the Moyer’s and Company interview, Alexie shares his story about the struggles that he endured during his time on a Native American reservation located at Wellpinit, Washington. During the interview, Alexie goes in-depth about his conflicts that plagued the reservation. In an award-winning book by Sherman Alexie called “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, Alexie writes semi-autobiography that reveals his harsh life on the reservation through a fictional character named Arnold Spirit Junior. In Alexie’s semi-autobiography, Alexie shares his struggles of a poor and alcoholic family, the

America truly is the salad bowl of cultures from around the whole world. However, there is often times a dominating cultural structure that makes it difficult to attain peace among the diverse cultural groups of America. Sherman Alexie’s short story, Because my Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock, displays the difficulty of the Native American people having to cope with the dominating culture that they are inevitably being shoved into. The main character Victor, a young boy who reflects much of Alexie’s personal traits, tells the story and struggle of his people through the

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.

     In the movie there is Victor, the main character, which tries to be the typical Indian, or maybe just a typical man. He shows just hate towards his father, who left Victor and his mother alone and fled to Phoenix. The picture Victor has about his

Smoke Signals, released in 1998, is a classic film that provides insight to the lives of Native Americans living on reservations. There are very few films that attempt to portray Native Americans at all, yet alone in a respectful manner. The characters are all played by genuine Native American actors including: Adam Beach, Evan Adams, Irene Bedard, Gary Farmer, and Tantoo Cardinal. Additionally, it is directed by Chris Eyre, another Native American. This film tries to overcome stereotypes of Native Americans that are prevalent in society, and does so in a humorous way. Smoke Signals takes the viewer along on a journey with the two main characters, Victor and Thomas. They leave their reservation in Idaho to travel to Arizona in order to collect Victor’s father’s ashes. This film is a classic because of it’s timeless theme: forgiveness. Smoke Signals portrays the theme of forgiveness by featuring Victor, a character struggling to forgive his late father for being an alcoholic and leaving him as a child; Victor takes Thomas along on a trek to Arizona to retrieve Victor’s father’s ashes.

Native Americans are mostly judged by their addictions and the battles they fought. They are not normally judged by the hardships they had to face. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian and Smoke Signals show that these struggles are real. In his book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, and his movie, Smoke Signals, Sherman Alexie wrote about the challenges of being a Native American. Diary and Smoke Signals are similar because they both showed many family problems throughout the story lines. Also, they are similar in that the families faced difficulty with alcohol addiction. They differ because in Diary, the main character, Junior, adapts to his new school that has all white students while in Smoke Signals, Victor tries not to interact with anyone outside his race.

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).

Sherman J. Alexie, is a short story written in the first person focusing on two Native American Men who grew up together on a Reservation for Native Americans but have been estranged from each other since they were teenagers. Victor who is the narrator of this story is a young man who lost faith in his culture and its traditions, while Thomas our second main character is a deeply rooted traditional storyteller. In the beginning of the story Victor, our Native American narrator learns the death of his father. Jobless and penniless, his only wish is to go to Phoenix, Arizona and bring back his father’s ashes and belongings to the reservation in Spokane. The death of Victor’s father leads him and Thomas to a journey filled with childhood

Traditions and old teachings are essential to Native American culture; however growing up in the modern west creates a distance and ignorance about one’s identity. In the beginning, the narrator is in the hospital while as his father lies on his death bed, when he than encounters fellow Native Americans. One of these men talks about an elderly Indian Scholar who paradoxically discussed identity, “She had taken nostalgia as her false idol-her thin blanket-and it was murdering her” (6). The nostalgia represents the old Native American ways. The woman can’t seem to let go of the past, which in turn creates confusion for the man to why she can’t let it go because she was lecturing “…separate indigenous literary identity which was ironic considering that she was speaking English in a room full of white professors”(6). The man’s ignorance with the elderly woman’s message creates a further cultural identity struggle. Once more in the hospital, the narrator talks to another Native American man who similarly feels a divide with his culture. “The Indian world is filled with charlatan, men and women who pretend…”

The movie Smoke Signals is based on the series of short stories written by Sherman Alexie. Just like any movie, there is a meaning to it. Before this movie, when I thought of the phrase "Native American" I thought of things like feathers and societies that were impeccable. But after watching the movie, Smoke Signals, it portrays what being a Native American really means. It is not all fun and games. The protagonist, Victor Joseph, has many hard aspects of his life, but throughout it all he grows mentally. His personality in the beginning of the movie is mean and despicable, he is filled with wrath, but as the movie goes on his personality grows gradually. By the ending of the movie, he was a nicer and kinder.

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 Alexie’s vignette, “Indian Education”, these themes of racism and discrimination come up very often when Victor describes the challenges he faced going through school. Victor recalls how his second-grade teacher made him “...stay in for recess for fourteen days straight.‘” (Alexie 172) but he explains that he didn’t do anything to deserve a punishment like this. In this situation, Victor’s teacher is denying him a privilege because of his race. In another circumstance, Victor’s teacher makes Victor apologize for “‘Everything’” (Alexie 172) she then makes Victor “...stand straight for fifteen minutes, eagle-armed with books in each hand.” (Alexie 172-173). During this situation, Victor is forced to perform a specific action as punishment for nothing, this unjust treatment of Victor sparks from the grounds of his race. Once again in second grade, Victor receives another chastisement out of the disapproval of his ethnicity when his teacher, “...crumpled up the paper and made me eat it.” (Alexie 173). Lastly, Victor’s teacher, not accepting Victor’s cultural differences, “She sent a letter home with me that told my parents to either cut my braids or keep me home from class.” (Alexie 173). Victor’s braids are symbols of his culture and ethnicity, and when Victor’s teacher threatens to take away his education if they are not removed, discrimination against Victor is very prominent.