Throughout Daniel Francis’s article “Marketing of the Imaginary Indian” we are led through a number of moments in history detailing times when the stereotyped “Indian” was used for promotional purposes. It is Francis’s final opinion that leads me to believe that he would respond similarly to Drew Hayden Taylor’s article “The Urbane Indian”. We, as a culture, have always feared the unknown and the First Nations culture is no exception. We may not react to this fear by screaming and hiding such as a child would, but instead we respond by taking away their power. From our first arrival to the New World until 1996 when the last residential school closed, the immediate reaction towards First Nations had always been that they must be educated and transformed to the white culture, “to assimilate to the mainstream”, as stated by Francis.…
Growing Tensions: Assimilation Within Modernity Much of American history glosses over the Indian experience; the European notion that indigenous peoples were inferior and “savage” reinforced their justification for years of conquest, killing, and destruction. The stories of two native boys reflect the pain of their ceaseless struggle and highlight the repressed suffering felt as they tried to progress in society, simultaneously inching further from their history. In his short story, and then I went to school, author Joe Suina is able to pinpoint the tension native millennials feel when they must give up parts of their culture to grow up. This pressure, to adopt more “whiteness,” was increasingly felt by Suina through his formative years as he attended traditional schools and was exposed to Western ideology. Comparatively, in Sherman Alexie’s, I Hated Tonto--Still Do, the native experience is better understood as it relates to the usage of stereotypes and generalizations in the media.…
Alexie’s story, Superman and Me was extremely powerful and motivating. The purpose of his essay was to convince and encourage readers to never stop learning, and to always read. He used his own personal struggles to deliver a message. I never knew that school life on a reservation was that unpleasant. I had the assumption that schools on reservations were far more advanced than schools off the reservation.…
As a Sioux Native American, Vine Deloria Jr. has spent a lifetime in the shadow of the stereotypes that falsely represent his culture. In an essay from his book We Talk, You Listen, Deloria Jr. illustrates multiple stereotypes in order to instill a desire within minorities to embrace their heritage and destroy preconceived notions of minority groups, especially Native Americans. Deloria Jr. begins the essay by establishing the types of stereotypes Indians are facing. He alludes to multiple films and television shows to demonstrate the commonplace stereotypes within American society. Indians were portrayed simply as servants to white Americans.…
“Indian Education” is about the author Sherman Alexie, an Indian boy growing up on the reservation and moving on to better his education. As a child he was bullied, both by other kids and even his teachers. His ability to learn was hindered by peoples’ inability to look past the color of his skin. Up until Alexie attended school at the farm town junior high at the beginning of his eighth grade year, his teachers had not given him the opportunity to truly learn to the best of his ability. Alexie went on to graduate high school; I believe his hope came from his fourth grade teacher, Mr. Schluter, who told him to become a doctor.…
The tone of Swentzell’s article is one of reflection and grieving because she realizes the disappointment rooted in the gentrification. She realizes that Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) not only “civilized” her and her fellow students, but also isolated them from their culture. The BIA’s schools were based on the “American” (Anglo) way of education. Furthermore, the BIA’s action of building a school without the input of the local culture was an insult to injury. Not only did they build without cultural consideration, but they also infected the community with the sense that school and…
How has your experiences in education shaped you? When you are at school you not only learn what is being taught, but you learn about yourself. You start to understand what it is important to you and who you are. In this essay I will be discussing my educational experiences growing up, Sherman Alexie’s experiences in “Indian Education”, and how they are similar and different. ¨Knowledge is power¨ Sir Francis Bacon.…
The young indians were thought of to be dumb, and were treated differently, but he stood up, he knew he was smart, he knew that being able to read and being able to have an education made him lucky. The meaning of the quote is very similar to the explanation, because what the quote is saying is that he knew that he was all those things. No one had to tell him that he was, and if someone told him that he wasn’t then they were wrong. He wants the readers to know about how they were treated, and were suppose to be dumb, and that the majority of them just gave up.…
There have been controversial and confusing stereotypes of Native Americans; this humorous, yet frank film helps clear up the whispering hearsay. This Native American agency shows how the Native Americans on the reservation treat one another versus how the white folks along the road trip treated them. Victor tells Thomas that white people always win; whether it was cowboys in their media or their family history from the past. Victor holds high respect for his culture, declaring things like “an Indian man ain’t nothing without his hair” or “you gotta look mean or people won’t respect you.” This is how they want to be perceived, giving an unconscious response to how they are treated.…
The three essays;“The joy of reading and writing: superman and me” by Sherman Alexie, “Is google making us stupid” by Nicholas Carr and “Reunion with boredom” by Charles Simic talk about reading; However Alexie reflects on how reading saved his life, Carr considers that technology has ruined the ability to read deeply and at a length and Simic refers to reading as a way to escape boredom. Alexie talks about his childhood experience as to how he learned to read from a superman comic book and what was importance of reading in his life. For Alexie reading was a way to save himself, he said “All indian children were expected to fail in non Indian world”. He refused to fail and therefor he read books, newspaper and magazines and eventually he started…
When he was a student he would remind and encourage himself that he was smart, arrogant, and lucky. He exceeded the presumptions made by the non- Native American teachers that Native American children are stupid and did not suppress his intelligence. Many years later, as a teacher, he again has to remind himself of this after observing the students who refuse to learn due to the fact that they have been taught to believe that they are not capable of succeeding in school. This is an effective conclusion because the author shows the audience that he is using his authority to make up for the mistakes of his past teachers. He is using his passions for reading and writing and tries to inspire the younger generations, hoping to save, not only his, but now, the lives of those in the community as a…
“He is not culturally “disadvantage,” but is culturally “different.” This antithesis strongly supports the Indian father’s claim that his son is not a “slow learner” by breaking down the fact that his son is merely culturally different. The anaphora that supports this claim is “He is not fluent yet because he is only 5 years old and required by law to attend your educational system, learn your language, your values, your ways of thinking, and your , methods of teaching and learning.” This explains how his son is being brought into a new way of life and therefore should not be so quickly labeled a “slow leaner.” Robert Lake’s, “An Indian Father’s Plea,” uses logos, pathos, ethos, rhetorical tropes and schemes to successfully support his argument of the difficulty of being culturally different and not disadvantage.…
The first half of Alexie 's narrative involves his childhood on the reservation. Alexie uses an emotional appeal of his feelings and develops good credibility with a personal anecdote of his family. Throughout the whole paper, Alexie describes mostly emotional. The main stereotypes that Native AMericans are uneducated. Alexie describes, “ A little Indian boy teaches himself to read at an early age and advances quickly……
When Alexie chose to include the detail of how his father was “one of the few Indians who went to Catholic school on purpose,” it raises the question that if his father’s passion for reading and learning was uncommon, how much was literature valued on the reservation? It is evident through this unpromising detail that literacy on the reservation was not valued. Alexie’s father was one of the few on the reservation who realised he must leave the reservation in order to succeed in life. His father had an obsession with books that he passed along to Alexie through his incorporation of literature in everyday life. Alexie chose to include this in order to convey how reading was non-discriminatory and was an escape from pain.…
First of all, calling a people with mental handicap is terribly disrespectful and should not be made fun of, Secondly, in my opinion they used the wrong term to address Indigenous people, since the story takes place in Canada. The term, Indians can be offensive because Indians is a name given by a European settler, Christopher Columbus, when he landed in North America, but he thought he had reached India. Therefore, Indians is not a term that they chose to identify themselves as. Even though, this passage was bitter to read it reminds me how there are so many people that judge people over the things we do not control of? Often people do not think about how their words…