The Sacred Tree

        I am very interested in how similar people from other cultures can be.  While the values from culture to culture may differ there is a common need in all cultures to set up and define a core set of values for people to strive towards.  Something they can aim to be.  We all want to be a 'good' person as defined by our cultural values.  In that way I find that I am very receptive towards the messages in The Sacred Tree.  One value that I strive towards is the ability to practice critical self-examination.
       Critical self-examination is a practice that is advocated by Martha Nussbaum and is important for becoming a 'world citizen'.  In her essay Cultivating Humanity Nussbaum says that one cultivates humanity by developing themselves in three capacities.

•  The first is the capacity for critical self-examination and critical thinking about one's own culture and traditions. 

• The second is the capacity to see oneself as a human being who is bound to all humans with ties of concern. 

• The third is the capacity for narrative imagination - the ability to empathize with others and put oneself in another's place. 

Here is a video of her talking a little bit about it and explaining it a lot better than I could.  It is not all completely relevant to my post but is still super informative. 

 

       So how is this all relevant to the teaching in The Sacred Tree?  Well, if my interpretation of some of the values is correct I think that they are attempting to cultivate that same sort of self-examination through the use of the Medicine Wheel.  It helps us understand the equality of different races and elements and helps with the development of our self. 

 In The Sacred Tree the medicine wheel is used as a means of understanding concepts and ideas.  One of the best quotes in the book (at least to me) is:

...We must learn to look at ourselves from the center of the medicine wheel.  From that center, we will be able to see how we fit together with everything else.  We will experience ourselves to be a small but infinitely sacred part of a very large process.

I think the messages advocated in The Sacred Tree and by Martha Nussbaum are very integral parts of understanding in order to become the kind of person I want to be and hope others to be.  

Better Late than Never- Response to The World Turned Upside Down

          After reading several of the essays in The World Turned Upside Down there are several things that really stuck with me and that I found interesting.  The first was the offer of love and brotherhood that was extended by many of the Indian people in several of the essays that I read.  In the first section, Voices from the Shore, I read Powhatan's Speech to Captain John Smith, which was written in 1609.  One of the lines that I found most interesting was "What will it availe you to take that by force you may quickly have by love, or to destroy them that provide you food."  It is a valid question to ask.  It is not as if the Native people weren't willing to share their resources and offer any aid and support they possibly could and the question "What can you get by Warre...?" is one that becomes significant as hostilities began to brew between the colonists and the Indians.  Which leads me into the essay on Resolving Conflicts with Colonial Neighbors.
         King Hagler (Nopkehe) wrote Reply to Colonists' Complaints in 1754.  Many of the colonists had made complaints about the Indians, saying that they were stealing food,  knives, clothing, etc...children.  Many of the things I'm sure were misunderstandings.  (The stealing of a child is a little weird...but hey, maybe it really was a joke.)  Regardless, King Hagler handled the situation with by extending the same message of love and brotherhood.  However, what I took most from the essay was the part where King Hagler spoke directly to the colonists laying part of the blame on them for the introduction of alcohol to the Native Americans and for encouraging their continued usage of alcohol.  His word were a lot more charged "...I heartily wish you would do something to prevent your people from dareing to sell or give them any of that strong drink, upon any consideration whatever for that will be a great means of our being free from being accused of those crimes that is committed by our young men and will prevent many of the abuses that is done by them thro' the effects of that strong drink..." 
       Essays like these give the reader a good description of the early days of alcohol abuse in Indian populations.  It also chronicles the long struggle Indians have had attempting to have alcohol restricted from their populations.

There is no great way to segway into what other essays interested me so I'm just going to jump ahead.

          One of the essays I found really interesting was the essay A Short Narrative of My Life by Samson Occom.  Really what interested me is the almost self-degrading way that Occom talks about his childhood as being 'brought up in heathenism'.  I was also struck by the very western features he was given in his portrait.  Since I'm not an Art History major I am not sure if this is just simply a trend of the time or the artists way of showing Occom's conversion from heathenism.  One of the only things that is different between his portrait and the other portraits done of colonists is skin color and the portraits background.  I found it very interesting to compare the two.

I know we have talked a lot about Native American depiction in literature and film but I would love it in class if we talked more about Native American art and depictions in art.

Basketball: The Great Equalizer

         

 
         After all the the pieces of Sherman Alexie's literature and film that we have seen in class I thought it was prudent to know a little bit more about the guy.  My image of Alexie is centered around the idea of him as a Native American writer, poet, filmmaker, activist and I don't really know much more about him. There had to be more to him than being a great writer.  Something that we had in common.  Creating a brief biography for Alexie helped me find it.
       Sherman Alexie was born on the Spokane Indian reservation on October 7th, 1966.  He was born with hydrocephalus that required brain operation from which he was not expected to survive.  But he did survive, and even excelled despite the resulting childhood seizures.   Alexie turned out to be an advanced reader with an aptitude for all time dealing with literature.  Reportedly, as a teenager enrolled in the reservation schools, Alexie found his mother's name written in a textbook assigned to him and was determined not to spend his life on the reservation.  So he sought a better education at the high school in Reardan, Washington, where he was a top student and a star basketball player.  He graduated in 1985 and then attended Gonzaga University on a scholarship.  He later transferred to Washington State University after two years to study pre-med.  Fainting spells in anatomy class convinced Alexie to change his major.  He graduated with a bachelors degree in American Studies and shortly thereafter received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship.
     So I made star basketball player bold because that is our common ground.  I should have realized that he was a fan of the sport because in Smoke Signals and The Business of Fancydancing there are scenes revolving around basketball.  The more research I did into Alexie's love of basketball the more I realized the guy himself was just very passionate about all things that were important to him.  

 The video above is Sherman talking about why he loves the game and the reasons behind it.  The professional team he is talking about losing is the Seattle Sonics.  When the team got bought out and moved Alexie was a big proponent of keeping the team in Seattle.  He did several speeches for the Sonics in order swing votes to keep them in Seattle.  Unfortunately they were bought out and are now known as The Oklahoma City Thunder.  This next video is another of Alexie describing the unifying effect of basketball.

He even has poetry about basketball.  My favorite being Defending Walt Whitman.  Here is a reading of it.

Sorry for such a video laden post but I was just really excited to find a common ground between someone whose life is very different from mine.  But we do have one thing.  We were raised on basketball. 

        

The Drunken Indian-- More than a Stereotype

                Be prepared.  Here comes a Debbie Downer post.

     Many critics of Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven argue that he was furthering the stereotype of 'The Drunken Indian' in his book because in nearly all the short stories alcoholism is rampant.  Alexie argued that he wrote only what he saw and you can't fault the guy for his memories.  Many people might not know the relationship between alcohol and the Native American population and I think it is important that we do.
         It is a common misconception that Indians had never seen alcohol before the Europeans arrived.  Long before the arrival of the Europeans many different tribes of Indians were fermenting alcohol from native ingredients like maize and sap from maple trees.  However, these alcoholic substances were often very mild and used only ceremonially.  They were nothing like the alcohol that Europeans would later bring over.

         Alcohol, as we know it, was introduced, in vast amounts, to Indians by the European colonists.  It was introduced mostly through trade.  The Europeans would use alcohol to trade for furs, often cheating the Indians.  This unfair trade balance existed for many years.  In a book called We Pointed them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher the author, "Teddy Blue" Abbot wrote, 

              “You take one barrel of Missouri River water, and two gallons of alcohol.  Then you add two ounces of strychnine to make them go crazy—because strychnine is the greatest stimulant in the world—and three plugs of tobacco to make them sick—an Indian wouldn’t figure it was whisky unless it made him sick—and five bars of soap to give it a bead, and half a pound of red pepper, and then you put in some sagebrush and boil it until it’s brown.  Strain into a bottle, and you’ve got Indian whisky; that one bottle calls for one buffalo robe and when the Indian got drunk it was two robes.”

His words show exactly how alcohol was being used to exploit the Indian people.  The introduction of alcohol to Native Americans has had far reaching effects more devestating that I believe the Europeans ever intended. 

         Alcoholism on reservations is something that has gotten little coverage in the media.  It has become more than just a few isolated events and turn into a pandemic.  Alcoholism in Native populations has even created other problems such as high rates of suicide.  Native alcoholism is, indeed, a serious issue. According the Indian Health Services, alcoholism is the most urgent health problem faced by Native Americans. The rate of alcoholism is six times the United States average. It is estimated that 75% of all Native American deaths are linked to alcoholism! The most common causes of death include motor vehicle accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, complications of diabetes, and suicide. Alcoholism among Native women results in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome rates two times the national average.

        I believe it is pointless to begin assigning blame because surely no one is without it.  However there are those whose attempts to cure their reservation of alcoholism are being thwarted and the United States government needs to step in and help.  I would like to shed a little light on what I know about it. (Which isn't much.)  The Pine Ridge Reservation (We saw a little about in the one of the films we watched in class) is a Native American reservation in South Dakota that is an extreme example of the crippling effects of alcoholism.  Rather than go on typing here is a news article and short news video that may help shed some light.

Indian tribe files $500 million suit against big brewers

There is also a documentary about the Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Reservation.  It starts with their creation story and ends in the present.  Here is a trailer:

If you think you might be interested in the documentary it is available in splices on youtube.