The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven Essay

Defining exactly what shapes ethnic identity in the United States is the hardest question I can imagine being asked. As a child born in the United States, I find this question so difficult because I have been exposed to a large variety of cultures within the small boundaries of my own family. This makes it very difficult to determine one, or even a few characteristics that define ethnic identity. In the case of many of these novels, the task of defining ethnic identity is not so complicated. The list of determinants that I believe to define ethnic identity includes language, geographic location, and tradition.

The Lakota, an Indian group of the Great Plains, established their community in the Black Hills in the late eighteenth century (9). This group is an example of an Indian community that got severely oppressed through imperialistic American actions and policy, as the Americans failed to recognize the Lakota’s sovereignty and ownership of the Black Hills. Jeffrey Ostler, author of The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, shows that the Lakota exemplified the trends and subsequent challenges that Indians faced in America. These challenges included the plurality of groups, a shared colonial experience, dynamic change, external structural forces, and historical agency.

In Deborah Miranda’s memoir “Bad Indians”, she uses documents, images, and drawings to expose colonial violence and provides evidence of a history of conquest. There are different types of colonial violence that are depicted throughout her memoir, such as: physical, emotional, sexual, and cultural violence. Additionally, Miranda exposes the nature of colonial violence by providing evidence by implementing particular sources to contribute in confirming the history of conquest throughout the lives of California Mission Indians.

When the first colonists landed in the territories of the new world, they encountered a people and a culture that no European before them had ever seen. As the first of the settlers attempted to survive in a truly foreign part of the world, their written accounts would soon become popular with those curious of this “new” world, and those who already lived and survived in this seemingly inhospitable environment, Native American Indian. Through these personal accounts, the Native Indian soon became cemented in the American narrative, playing an important role in much of the literature of the era. As one would expect though, the representation of the Native Americans and their relationship with European Americans varies in the written works of the people of the time, with the defining difference in these works being the motives behind the writing. These differences and similarities can be seen in two similar works from two rather different authors, John Smith, and Mary Rowlandson.

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.

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.

Colonialism has a historical context that has long obscured and distorted the experiences of indigenous people, particularly those who endured the brutalities of the California Missions. Although indigenous people are portrayed in history as docile people, who openly embraced invasion, Deborah Miranda dismantles this depiction in her memoir, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, through two stories called “Dear Vicenta” and “Novena to Bad Indians”. Throughout the stories run various narratives of survival and resistance, which form new understandings of colonization and missionization. Miranda practices decolonization through oral history in order to form new and ongoing indigenous identities. Evidently, through decolonial practice and deconstructing dominant narratives about “colonized” peoples and replacing them with stories that use traditional memory and practice, Miranda disrupts the commonly accepted narrative of indigenous peoples by reconstructing the dichotomy between good and bad Indians through acts of resistance and survival.

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

     In Conclusion the author, Leslie Silko, displays the poverty and hopelessness that the Native Americans faced because of the white man. The Author elaborates this feeling of hopelessness in the Indians myth explaining the origin of the white man. As a result

When Victor realizes what is going, he comes to the realization that how all white people see Dirty Joe is how they see all Indians, as a drunken group of people. They see Victor and Sadie as Dirty Joe. Dirty Joe is the representation of all Indians. To get this point across Alexie uses vivid imagery and symbols such as Thunderbird wine and the Holy Grail. Thunderbird wines is a cheap affordable wine and since Indians live on a reservation it something they can afford to get drunk off of. The Holy Grail is usually seen as a cup holding happiness and substance in abundance. What those two thing correlation is that an Indians happiness’s come from a cheap bottle of wine. But before the story is over Victor is reminded that he seen as just as Dirty Joe is seen when he is chased down

In Jeannette Armstrong’s poem, History Lesson, she writes in perspective of Indigenous people reacting to the first encounters with European settlers. Historically, Indigenous people did not have a positive encounter with the first settlers due to their clash of beliefs and values of how communities and structures should run. Instead, they had many disagreements which caused the partial destruction of their whole culture. It is clear that Armstrong uses the theme of history to portray the destruction that the first European settlers had on the Indigenous way of life through various points in history. Armstrong imbeds the theme of history throughout her poem to further emphasize her stance on the assimilation of the Indigenous people with the restricting and destructive effects the early settlers had on them throughout history.

“Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence.” - Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. In Sherman Alexie’s collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, we read stories of Native American struggles for survival in an American society designed to keep Native Americans locked in the cycle of intergenerational trauma. Alexie illustrates the importance of rejecting intergenerational trauma as a method of survival, by isolating the two main causes intergenerational trauma becomes inescapable and giving examples that showcase the impact of attempting to survive the cycle. Through the interpretation of multiple sources, it becomes clear that the inescapability of intergenerational trauma is the outcome of internalized oppression and pessimism.

It is easy to see that current events and issues of the world around them have had an impact on authors and what they have written from the stories in this time period. The Native American authors wrote stories describing life during and after white man came to America. We read Oratory’s by two Native American’s COCHISE and CHARLOT. They gave heart-wrenching speeches, giving great details into the history of the tribes and the devastating effect the white man had on them. Author Zitkala Sa gave us a powerful interpretation of her life as a Indian and how the white’s coming to America affected her life.

Post-Colonialism has been somewhat beneficial to the Native Americans in recent years. Post-Colonialism is the political or cultural condition of a former colony. Obviously, when discussing Post-Colonialism in North America it’s mostly going to be about the founding of the continent and its original thirteen colonies. Throughout the years after the colonization of North America, the Native Americans haven’t really had the best outcome, especially when it comes to the way that they are treated. They haven’t been treated with respect when it comes to being in the film industry, politics, or even just living life day to day as an average person. Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” and “Postcards to Columbus” have

In this course, we have learned the meaning and content of imperialism, more specifically modern imperialism, and how it affects both the colonizers and the colonized. In the first half of the semester, the imperialists’ view was taken into account through literature. We have studied this perspective in books written by well-known authors, like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Melville’s Typee, and Ingalls’ Little House On The Prairie. On the other hand, the colonized , or natives’ reactions and struggle against imperialism was also considered, for example, in Ngugi’s A Grain Of Wheat, and in Silko’s Ceremony, and that is my main discussion in this essay.