Wounded Knee siege, South Dakota (1973)
The genocide of the Native Americans is probably one of the lesser known and less talked about genocides. I think some of the reasons behind that is 1) it was happened through an extended period of time during America’s history 2) the death figures aren’t as high as some of the other genocides 3) and I think many Americans don’t want to remember this kind of past because as America was trying to fight for its freedom and democracy, it was killing the people who were already here. It is a part of the country’s history that many don’t want to know about because it cast a light on the wrongs and cruelty that was committed by Americans in their own country.
The short story “Saint Marie” by Lousie Erdrich was an interesting one because it is deals with quite a few issues that have been seen repeated time and time again throughout history. The treatment of Marie by Sister Leopolda mirrors the treatment of natives of Africa, Asia, and the Americas by Europeans when they first came to those places. As professor McCay mentioned, Sister Leopolda resembles King Leopold of Belgium so this story is a reflection of those past events. Sister Leopolda treats Marie and her people as though they are less than, uneducated, uncivilized, impure, and unworthy people because they are different. She acts as though she is a higher human being trying to help save these people from ultimate sinful destruction. She thinks she knows what is best for Marie and other children and it is quite similar to the way Europeans came to Africa and treated the natives as sub-human and had to ‘civilize’ them, but ultimately controlled and abused them. Marie is young and in the story she seems to want to please Sister Leopolda, but she is treated horribly. Sister Leopolda dumped hot water on her and stabbed her among other things. For Marie, she takes advantage of the fact that the others believe her hand to be a miracle. She gets back at Sister Leopolda and makes her kneel next to her and now Sister Leopolda has to follow along or be discovered of abusing Marie. Marie knows she has to and will overcome this because she doesn’t want herself and her people to be just forgotten and buried.
Powwow Highway has a strong contrast between two individuals in the Cheyenne Tribe. Buddy is committed to the community and making sure that the Feds and developers don’t overtake the reservations while Filbert is trying to gain in his place in the community because he doesn’t even have a spirit name. Buddy doesn’t want investors to come and are trying to stop them from trying to get more of their land and ruin their community. When Sandy tries to persuade the others to allow the vote to go through Buddy brings up the fact how it doesn’t benefit everyone and most of the people are the reservation are still living under the poverty line. He wants to make sure that no more destruction comes to their community. During the powwow in Pineville, he makes the comment how having some feathers and a powwow in a gym doesn’t make Indian culture. He wants them to do more than that and protect what their have left of their identity and land. Filbert takes detour along their trips to Denver so he could reconnect with his tribal past by visiting all the famous Indian sites. I think Filbert is more optimistic about who he within the community and preserving the rituals and history. He tries to keep up with the practices and not become cynical about everything that is going on. I think Buddy’s friend near Denver shows the complexity of the situation of the Native Americans because though the friends want to stay they know it isn’t safe and there are not many opportunities so they decided to live in the Denver suburbs for a bit. This upsets Buddy who thinks they are giving on their people and community. By the end I think Filbert finds or understands who he is and what his people’s history means to him. Buddy too sees that the fight for the tribe to maintain their community will be hard, but it is something he will fight for. I think the protective attitude he has to stop investors from stripping their land states there are those who aren’t oblivious to the manipulation outsiders are willing to do in order to take advantage of reservations. He is trying to better his community and not allow to this to continue happening to other reservations.
We do not talk about it because we did it and are still doing it. YOu make a good point about what role Christianity played in genocides around the world. Both Buddy and Filbert are fighting the same battle. Be more specific about what that battle is. How is Bonnie used by whites in the battle?
ReplyDelete"Buddy doesn’t want investors to come and are trying to stop them from trying to get more of their land and ruin their community." I think this point that you make is really relevant to the story "Saint Marie." Buddy and Marie are similar characters in that they both are trying to resist the people and societies that are trying to come down on their own community or culture. Sister Leopolda could be seen as the driving investors and mining companies that are trying to destroy and show no respect for a certain established culture-- Sister Leopolda is trying to fight against and oppress Marie who represents that NA culture because she sees it as evil. She is relentless, and is not only essentially fighting against the NA culture, but she is also going against a "religious notion"-- being that Marie seems to represent climbing the religious ladder to a higher and better belief and faith through her desire to be more saint-like.
ReplyDeleteTran: Comment on my Week 5 Blog
ReplyDeleteI think the battle that they're both fighting is how to maintain their traditions, culture, and Indian roots in this modern world that is closing in on it while also trying to advantage of the reservation. I think the other battle is how to remain Native Americans while also helping the reservations improve and develop without destroying it. They don't want the white people to come in and use the resources that they have and profiting from it while the Indians won't get anything. In the film, Bonnie was put in jail which forced Buddy to come down and get her. By doing so, Buddy wouldn't be on the reservation to talk to people about what the vote would mean which meant more people would be in favor of the mining happening in the reservation.
Gudan: Comment on Tran's Blog on Native American Genocide, Part 1
ReplyDeleteI like how you bring up the fact that a lot of people don’t really talk about the Native American genocide, either because they simply don’t realize or understand the scope and intensity of the death and destruction caused by European forces to the Native Americans as a result of the length of time over which the major injustices spanned or because they just don’t want to think of America’s seizure of the land and continual westward expansion as something bad. I appreciate this topic because it is so underplayed and forgotten. In school, I remember learning about the various conflicts history books deemed appropriate, such as the Trail of Tears or the Battle at Wounded Knee, but, like the Jewish Holocaust, I feel these events have become desensitizing elements to school children, or at least, school children have become desensitized to them, either from the various inputs of violence in the media and society in general or out of familiarity with the names and general stories. The whole idea of taking land from the Native Americans has seemed to become this generalized, necessary evil almost, something that is acknowledged as wrong, but dismissed as something people did along time ago, as if that excuses them from all responsibility. Although I’m not in a position to judge the past, it seems at least that modern Americans don’t grasp the reality of the issue, of what happened, or what continues to happen. Being completely ignorant of life on reservations myself, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t grasp the situation. However, I at least have a vague idea that the atrocities of the past don’t just end with the Trail of Tears, that the government is still taking advantage of Native Americans and their land, and that people are still completely ignorant of the world around them.
Gudan: Comment on Tran's Blog on Native American Genocide, Part 2
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I don’t want to sound like I’m judging the past irrationally, or the holding everyone in America accountable for what has happened and what continues to happen, although I’m sure many people would disagree with me. I think though, again, it’s hard to judge the past without attempting to understand the context of the time. Not to excuse what happened in any way, I think it’s important to remember that Native Americans shouldn’t be idealized or romanticized as one complete, cohesive population who picked corn and painted with all the colors of the wind. Also, as a disclaimer, I’m don’t want to sound like I’m casting blame on Native Americans for what happened to them, as it often seems the case that victims are cast in the light of the wrongdoers, but I just want to point out that there was fighting among Native American tribes even before the arrival of the European settlers, so it’s not like Europeans came and totally destroyed a perfect, Utopian community, as they are often portrayed doing. So, I think that perhaps the Native American genocide doesn’t receive as much attention perhaps as it deserves, or at least, it’s not considered in the same light as the Jewish Holocaust, although perhaps it should be, simply because there was so much more interaction between settlers and Native Americans, and because there was a different attitude: where Hitler wanted to completely destroy and erase an entire people and their cultural identity, the conflict between Native Americans and American settlers was one that arose out of economic issues (land, primarily), and cultural and religious differences, rather than a complete hatred for an entire group simply because of their race. Maybe it filtered into that kind of generic hatred in the nineteenth century—I don’t know because I wasn’t there—but it seems that it wasn’t there at first, at least, not by everyone. There were so many different colonists and settlers, so many people with different outlooks on life searching for different things in the “New World,” that it’s wrong to lump them together and throw this blanket label of “white community” or “victimizer.” The terms may be more appropriate today, for an American population that forgets its past, even if those people are the descendants of immigrants that didn’t have to deal directly with Native American subjugation, they’re still part of the collective community.