Trickster Tales of Native Americans Essay

I took the Native American IAT and the Age IAT tests. I thought my results would be that I would have some association with Native Americans because I have Native American in my ancestry. My results were that I had little or no association between Native American and American with Foreign and American. I am not sure if I agree with them or not and that maybe from family history. I have no ideal if this method is truly effective and I would try to make sure that I am being considerate about other people's culture when teaching students and interacting with their families. I took away from this test that I learned new things about my thought process.

This article is about witchcraft and its different varieties of practices in different cultures. This article explains how witchcraft exists and plays an essential part in structural and functional aspects of a society. It also sheds the light on the journey of witchcraft from being profane and wicked to acceptable part of a culture.

In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will

Europeans lived a much more modern way of life than the primitive lifestyle of Native Americans. Europeans referred to themselves as “civilized” and regarded Native Americans as “savage,” “heathen,” or “barbarian.” Their interaction provoked by multiple differences led to misunderstanding and sometimes conflict. These two cultures, having been isolated from one another, exhibited an extensive variation in their ideals. Europeans and Native Americans maintained contradictory social, economic, and spiritual practices.

Popular culture has shaped our understanding and perception of Native American culture. From Disney to literature has given the picture of the “blood thirsty savage” of the beginning colonialism in the new world to the “Noble Savage,” a trait painted by non-native the West (Landsman and Lewis 184) and this has influenced many non native perceptions. What many outsiders do not see is the struggle Native American have on day to day bases. Each generation of Native American is on a struggle to keep their traditions alive, but to function in school and ultimately graduate.

“Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.-Native American proverb” This is a Native American proverb that shows how important storytelling and stories are to the Native Americans and their culture. Storytelling was a big way of teaching their lifestyle to their younger generation. Storytelling is very important to the Native American culture because it helps explain their way of life, faith, and helps teach life lessons to the younger generation.

In her book American Indian Stories, Zitkala-Sa's central role as both an activist and writer surfaces, which uniquely combines autobiography and fiction and represents an attempt to merge cultural critique with aesthetic form, especially surrounding such fundamental matters as religion. In the tradition of sentimental, autobiographical fiction, this work addresses keen issues for American Indians' dilemmas with assimilation. In Parts IV and V of "School Days," for example, she vividly describes a little girl's nightmares of paleface devils and delineates her bitterness when her classmate died with an open Bible on her bed. In this groundbreaking scene, she inverts the allegation of Indian religion as superstition by labeling

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.

Trickster tales have been an important part of the Native American culture for hundreds of years. Trickster tales are an oral storytelling tradition and are continuously passed down from generation to generation of Native American Indians. American Indians enjoy listening and telling trickster tales because it is a fun and interesting way to tell a story with a valuable lesson. In many tales, the trickster has a name associated with an animal, and a majority of listeners assume they are animals; however, in some tales, characteristics may appear more human-like. Trickster tales allow Native American cultures to use their imagination and thoroughly understand the moral lessons presented in the tales, and therefore may help with one’s

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.

People have been living in the Americas for thousands of years. Only fairly recently, the past few hundred years, have foreigners begun to arrive and drastically disrupt the way of life of the aboriginal population. The situation has become so severe that a population that was one believed to be numbered in the millions, was at one point reduced to as few as 220,000 in 1910, and entire tribes have been either irretrievably warped or have disappeared altogether. While Native American Indians have almost completely recovered population-wise, they will never catch up to the rest of the world, and their culture can never fully recuperate. At the time the United States was settled by Europeans, it was abundantly populated by dozens of

die. The Red Chief was also in charge of the lacrosse games which were called

Don’t be confused when an Indian tribe is called the Chippewa or the Ojibway because they are the same tribe. French settlers could not pronounce Ojibway correctly so they called the tribe the Chippewa. Have you ever wanted to know about the Ojibway Indians? If you read on, you will learn many interesting facts about this tribe.

The myths and folklore that we encounter in many cultures appear to have at least one Trickster in the midst. The specific skills of each Trickster varies from cultures, but evidently are important in the creation and development of each culture, “In some... trickster myths, the side effect of its lawlessness is the creation of social order” (Giddens, 31). The Coyote of Native American traditions is often shown as aiding the “Great Spirit” in the world. In opposition to the culture, Greek mythology Hermes is a devious child who captures a tortoise with his lies and creates the first lyre from its shell, but eventually transitions to as the messenger of the gods that relates to Coyote and the “Great Spirit” as he aids the gods by relaying messages. Both Hermes and Coyote have many similarities and differences that make them unique to the culture that believe in them as they depict the theme of duty, the theme of morality as well as gender roles.

The Winnebego trickster, also known as Wakjankaga, was “sent to instruct or destroy monsters who would be harmful to the people (a mission he foolishly forgets)” (73). He fails his mission because he becomes too consumed with “The people…These who walk on two legs, because he was fascinated by them” and so, “he started to tease them” (77). Consequently, “Whatever he was doing…He forgot about it, and then all over the earth he went traveling” (77).