Summary Of Strange Visitors By Harry Assu

In “Coyote and the Enemy Aliens” by Thomas King, the main character, the Coyote, has the “most important job in the world” (King 55) as he states it is more important than being “truthful” (King 55), “reliable” (King 55), “fair” (King 56), and “generous” (King 56). The Coyote’s job is a direct parallel to the job of an Indian Agent when it was introduced in 1867. The Coyote’s job is to confiscate and sell any contraband items that the Enemy Aliens have in their possession or any items that the Coyote believes is unnecessary for the Enemy Aliens to have. Similarly, the job of an Indian Agent had the same duties. An Indian Agent had the right and role to regulate everything that happened on a reserve, including confiscating property and relocating problematic Indigenous people away from their home and family. With the Coyote’s ability to confiscate Enemy Alien property, especially the family heirlooms, this can cause depletion of Enemy Alien traditions and heritage can become lost. The loss of tradition was the goal of the Canadian Government when the Indian Act was introduced, “assimilation and civilisation of First Nations people” (Gov website). Eminently, King’s installation of the Coyote’s job appropriates the position that the Indian Agents portrayed in the history of Canada. It exhibits how much unquestionable authority and dominance the government had over the Indigenous society and how much the introduction of the Indian Act had on how the Indigenous people were scrutinized by society.

The expedition of Lewis and Clark was a landmarking event in American history, but its significance goes beyond just the land they discovered.The Lewis and Clark Expedition was put forward so the two would be able to see and map out western America in search of new trade routes and passages. Lewis and Clark would have doubtfully survived had it not been with the aid of the Indians they met on their travels. Upon their controversial meetings with several Indian groups, Lewis and Clark were not respectful to the Americans they met on their journey. The controversial messages behind the peace metals, the reference to the Indians as “children”, and the physical

The long history between Native American and Europeans are a strained and bloody one. For the time of Columbus’s subsequent visits to the new world, native culture has

After the strangling claws of the Indian Act were felt, the Canadian government began to issue more laws that intruded with the aboriginals lives and took away their rights. The first of these was the “Potlatch Law” (Hanson, n.p.). It banned potlatches and other ceremonies of the aboriginals, all for the purpose of forcing the

These oral stories, or histories, provides historical actors with an opportunity to depict their own stories in their own words, where usual written records often discount the great unwashed. For Indigenous peoples, individuality is critical to shared histories. Politicians, activists, and business leaders may materialize frequently in official documents and the media, usually manipulating it for their purposes, but the rest of us very seldom do. In The Back of The Turtle, Kings portrays a identical similar setting; a world full of media coverage that is manipulated by large companies, such as Dominion; “‘A spill?’ ‘No’ said Winter. “But evidently there has been some seepage. Possibly from one of our ponds.’ ‘Didn’t we fund an environmental

“Last Rights for Indian Dead” by Suzan Shown Harjo is an essay written that describes the desecration of Native American artifacts and remains and the call for action to put an end it. Harjo touches on the effects that the harboring and selling of these items causes. She speaks about the universities and the museums and their role in the problem; housing thousands of remains. One museum she speaks of houses over 19,000 remains. She also describes the desecration brought on by thieves digging up burial sites and taking what is not theirs.

The migration of European settlers and culture to North America is an often examined area. One aspect of this, however, is worthy of deeper analysis. The conquest of North America by Europeans and American settlers from the 16th to 19th centuries had a profound effect on the indigenous political landscape by defining a new relationship dynamic between natives and settlers, by upsetting existing native political, economic and military structures, and by establishing a paradigm where the indigenous peoples felt they had to resist the European and American incursions. The engaging and brilliant works of Andres Rensendez and Steve Inskeep, entitled respectively “A Land So Strange” and “Jacksonland”, provide excellent insights and aide to this analysis.

The fascination with Native Americans has been a constant with outsiders since explorers first “discovered” the New World. The biggest surge in this fascination came in the mid-19th century when the Indian Wars were starting to come to an end and the belief that Native Americans were disappearing, walking into the sunset never to be seen again. This led to an increase in the collecting of anything Native American, from artifacts to stories to portraits. The inevitable outcome of this was that Native Americans, who were never considered very highly to begin with, where now moved into a category of scientific interest to be study. This scientific interest in Native Americans is what many museums and other institutions based their collections and exhibits on and is one of the issues that many Native Americans have with how both their people and their culture were, and to some extent still are, represented in these places.

Ruth Cuthand’s Trading series is comprised of patches that have beadwork which depicts the microscopic image of various diseases that Indigenous people were exposed to. This series also contains a beaded patch depicting a disease that the Europeans were exposed to as a result of contact with Indigenous people. In this series, Ruth Cuthand addresses the devastating consequences that contact with Europeans had on the cultures and lives of Indigenous people, while also working to decolonize the knowledge that people have of the historical realities that occurred between Indigenous and non Indigenous people. Ruth Cuthand also manages to depict the survival and strength of Indigenous cultures and lives in spite of colonialism and oppression.

During the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had formed policies which reduced land allotted to Native Americans. By enforcing these laws as well as Anglo-American ideals, the United States compromised indigenous people’s culture and ability to thrive in its society.

These ‘White Papers’ focused on the social and economic problems that were rampant within the First Nation communities and was considered to be humane because of the fact that Native peoples were integrated within mainstream society [pp.6]. These problems were ‘highlighted’ through the result of various studies conducted by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development from 1966 to 1969 and became the basis of the ‘White Paper’. Although the paper was ultimately defeated, these beliefs were brought into mainstream society and became a more idolized form of modernizing the Aboriginal peoples. This form of ‘helping’ the First Nations peoples was the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development [D.I.A.N.D] way of dissolving the First Nations reservations. These institutionalized ideologies were masked as social and economic reforms that addressed the First Nation communities [pp.5-6]. Such reforms include the state of welfare on First Nation communities, re-educating the youth, and the identification of a First Nations person according to the government, which also includes the apology that Prime Minister Harper spoke on June 11th, 2008. These ideals have become the driving force behind the United Nation’s ‘Universal Declaration of Indigenous Rights’. This declaration has yet to be signed by Canada for a variety of reasons, one of them being that it is in direct violation of Article 25, which is a right to social services and health

Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian tells the story of Indigenous people in Canada and the United States, it challenges the narrative on how Indigenous history is taught and explains why Indigenous people continue to feel frustrated. King’s seeks to educate the reader as he provides a detailed accounts of the horrific massacres Indigenous people endured, yet he simultaneously inserts humorous moments which balances out the depressing content and enhances his story. The books highlights the neglect and assimilation that Indigenous were subjected to and how their survival was seen as an inconvenience to western culture. King directs his message at a Euro-centric audience to offer an accurate explanation of Indigenous culture and

Potlatches are important to the people of the coast, and when it was taken from them, it was heartbreaking. How do you define a potlatch? During the potlatch ban, First Nations people would break the law by holding secret potlatches. Many of the elders in my home communities were kind enough to share stories of their family’s time during the ban. Children raised in the times of the potlatch banned, learned of their traditions through stories, as shown in Secret of the Dance. U’mista, a Kwak̓wala word for “to give back,” was not a term in Kwak̓wala, until the years following the banning of the potlatch. The truth about the potlatch ban is hidden in the stories of those who endeared the worst of trials, in honour of their culture and its traditions.

The historical literature of First Nations and Peoples’, within North America, have shown inaccuracies and a lack of certain components. This being said, the contents of written history often reflect the points of view of those who have written it; the majority of the historical records composed appear to be homogenized, and

In Andre Dubus’ short story “The Intruder”, he explores the mind of a 13 year old boy named Kenneth Girard. Kenneth has an overactive imagination that causes him to intermingle reality and fallacy, which ultimately causes him to shoot his sister’s boyfriend, unknowingly. Kenneth’s character in this story symbolizes the transition from childhood to adolescence. Kenneth is a child that lacks talents aside from being able to shoot well: “But he found that there was one thing he could do well and he did it alone, or with his father; he could shoot and he could hunt. He felt that shooting was the only thing that had ever been easy for him” (Dubus 11).