Welcome to American Indian Studies484/English 484
 American Indian Literature

                        Jaune Quick-To-See Smith (Salish)
T H I S      I S      I N D I A N      C O U N T R Y
Fall   2011 *  MWF  1:30 - 2:20  *  TLC 146

New Engl 484 presentation.ppt

Dates/Readings May Shift-- Come Here Often and Check your email

Monday, 8/22
Introduction to the course and each other

2 outside events are required: arrange your schedule accordingly:

1) "According to Coyote," 6pm, 9/7, Shattuck Amphitheater

2) "11th Annual Distinguished American Indian Speakers Series: Dr. Daniel Wildcat, UI Law School Courtroom, 10/19, 7 pm

Other Native events will  be announced; you can receive extra credit for attending and writing about those events.

In this course we will learn from Native speakers and writers, and attempt to approach the material from a Native perspective, based on indigenous values and epistemologies.

Questions We'll  Consider this Semester:
"Indians," Native Americans," "First Nations," "indigenous" ?
What are Indians' legal status in the United States? What is dual citizenship?
How do many Native peoples' sense of place, time, space and identity differ from non-Natives?
What is the significance of stories to indigenous peoples?
What is the oral tradition?
How is it present in written literature?
How long have Indians been writing in English?
How have U.S. policies affected Indians and what they write?
Do Indians tend to write out of a sense of individuality or community or both?
How do Native people/writers respond to their colonization and stereotyping by the dominant  culture?
What is colonialism? What are the effects of colonialism on the colonized? Are American Indians still colonized?
What is resistance literature? What is decolonization?
What do or what should non-Indians do when they feel under attack by Indian writers? Get angry, defensive, feel guilty? What do Indians want non-Indians to feel and do?
Can understanding colonialism and its lasting effects on Indians helps us realize that colonialism may be what Native writers are critiquing, not individual non-Native people?
Does Indian literature suggests that we're all in this together, and we can all work to improve Native-non-Native relations and to decolonize our  country and ourselves?


Other questions:
What is race?
What is ethnicity?
What is "white privilege"?
"Unpacking the Knapsack of White Privilege"

Wednesday, 8/24
 

Read: "Essential  Understandings" button at left to discuss in class

Video (30 min): Native Voices: Resistance and Renewal in American Indian Literature (includes Simon Ortiz, Joy Harjo, Paula Gunn Allen, Leslie Marmon Silko, Greg Sarris, and Lucy Tapahanso
 

Resources for the Video (American Passages)

Assignment 1:  Write a 2 page (typed, double-spaced) response to an idea or author in Native Voices that particularly affected you. Due Friday
 

Unit 1: Native Worldviews, Oral Literatures

Friday 8/26

* Share responses to Native Voices
*  Discuss handout: Lil'wat Ways of Teaching and Learning

Monday 8/29
Guest:  Ann McCormack, Economic Development Director for the Nez Perce Tribe

Stories that Make the World (SMW), Introduction: The Tin Shed, pp 5-37
Text, Texture, Context

Wednesday 8/31
SMW, pp 39-61 (finish "Coyote and the Swallowing Monster")
 

Friday, 9/2
No  Class:  evening meeting next Wednesday
 

Monday, 9/5  Labor Day holiday, No Class

Wednesday, 9/7
Stories of the Lewis and Clark Trail Tribes

SMW, pp 61-91 (finish "Coyote and the White Man")
SMW, pp 141-167
 

6PM Shattuck Amphitheater: "According to Coyote," performed by Carlotta Kauffman

Friday 9/9
Guest:  Nez Perce storyteller, JAMES HOLT   

SMW, pp 161-top of 188
Assign Exam 1: cite your sources and use MLA style

MLA Formatting and Style Guide

Monday 9/12
Reports on "According to Coyote" due
Contemporary Oral "literature"

Santa Fe Indian School Spoken Word Team

About Horace Axtell
read the Glossary on pp 215-217

A Little Bit of Wisdom, Preface - 67
 

OPTIONAL EVENING EVENT (for extra credit) with DR. RODNEY FREY:

Keynote Address for 2011-12 Humanities Exploration: 7pm Admin. Auditorium:
"Meeting the Challenges and Charting--Creating the World with Spokes and a Hub"
Dr. Frey will talk about how Native American storytellers have influenced his life; how cultural differences (spokes), and cultural similarities (the hub) can be at the heart of how we effectively communicate, collaborate, and sustain community.

 

Wednesday 9/14
A little bit of wisdom: 68-149

Friday 9/16
Conclude, A little bit of wisdom
Visit from Horace Axtell and Margo Aragon

Monday 9/19
No Class; work on your exam

Wednesday 9/21
Exam 1 Due

Historical Trauma and Healing in Native America

We will attempt to connect the pre-colonized life world of Native Americans to colonized life worlds: how do both seek balance and  healing and balance through literary arts, oral and written.

Native American Studies as a field was created to support American Indian self-determination and cultural revitalization. Thus, learning about NA historical trauma and healing is important to the study and understanding of Native American literatures.

Video:  A Century of Genocide: The Residential School Experience (18 min)

Friday 9/23
Native Americans and the Trauma of History, Duran, Duran, and Brave Heart (PDF)

What are colonialism and imperialism?
What are the effects of colonialism on the Native American "life world"?
How have Native Americans reacted to the system of colonization?

Understanding this history and the intergenerational trauma it produced is a vital part of the healing and regenerative process for Native American people today.

What is "Postcolonial thinking"?
What are "academic colonial processes" ?
What is "epistemic violence"? 
What is "counter-hegemonic ideology"?

Hegemony:  Ideological/cultural domination by the assertion of universality and neutrality and by disavowal of all other cultures forms or interpretations. (68) A Eurocentric mode of representation of Native Americans is a biased assessment of non-Western cultures.

What is the "Soul Wound"?
Why would loss of the traditional environment be a sever spiritual and psychological injury?
What happens when your own government is the oppressor?
What are the ramifications for Native people when the "American holocaust" is not acknowledged by the majority culture?
See top of p. 69 for a discussion of the inadequacy of western healing models, and the idea that they actually can inflict "epistemic violence"
See bottom of p. 70 for a definition of "Postcolonial thought"
How can simply educating Native Americans about historical trauma be healing?
 

Lisa Poupart, "The Familiar Face of Genocide: Internalized Oppression Among Native Americans" (pdf)

* define "historical unresolved grief," "internalized oppression," and "disenfranchised grief"
* According to Poupart, how have Western patriarchal values affected Native Americans? Do you have a sense of when and how patriarchy was introduced to Native Americans?
* Explain some of  the dynamics of rage as a result of colonialism.
*  Poupart says in paragraph 4 that Indians have a sort of "cultural double consciousness" due to the preservation of traditional ways that lets them know they "have not deserved a history violence and genocide," and which provides an alternative interpretation of the harms inflicted by white society.
* In her conclusion she makes recommendations for Native people and non-Native people who want to change the system and start the healing. What are they?


For further reading on Historical Trauma/Intergenerational Grief you may read:
Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, "The American Indian Holocaust: Healing Unresolved Grief" (starts on p.60)(pdf)

Monday 9/26
continue intergenerational grief discussion

Wednesday 9/28
Free write: your response to the Historical Trauma articles and then connect it to the combating racism/becoming an ally handouts:

--what for you is most significant about Native American historical trauma and intergenerational grief?
--what does being an ally mean to you?
--where are you on the continuum of racism? where do you want to be?
--how can non-Natives best be allies to Native people?
--how would  becoming an ally help you, other people and the larger group?

FYI: for those who want to read this essay now:
 

Jan Johnson, "Healing the Soul Wound in Flight and Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian"

Friday 9/30

Documentary: American Holocaust: When It's All Over I'll Still Be Indian

Monday 10/3

The Boarding School Experience
About Indian Boarding Schools
A Photo Gallery of the Indian Boarding School

Canadian Apology and Acceptance by Tribal Leaders

and Australian Apology

For further reading: "American Indian Boarding School Experiences: Recent Native Perspectives"
 

VIdeo: Our Spirits Don't Speak English
Andrew Windyboy's testimony

Louise Erdrich (Ojibway), "indian Boarding School: The Runaways"

Wednesday 10-5
NO CLASS: INSTRUCTOR HAS MEETING AT WSU: DO THE READING, WATCH THE VIDEO CLIPS, AND DO THE ASSIGNMENT FOR FRIDAY
 

Humor in Native America

        

Deloria (Lakota), "Indian Humor" pp. 39-53, from Nothing But the Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature (PDF)
Click on the "Indian Humor" button above left side of the screen and read . . .
 

For discussion:
What are the traditional as well as post-colonial functions of humor in Native societies?
What are the advantages of employing humor in difficult contexts, such as the German Holocaust? How does this apply to the American Holocaust?

Video clips from:
Charlie Hill on Richard Pryor Show 1977
Dr. Greene's Original Pain Reliever
"Auditions for Werewolf movie"
 

Writing assignment due on Friday 10/7 :
*  Choose a piece of art at the Smithsonian Indian Humor site and explain what issue(s) it addresses and why you like it. Type, double-spaced and include a graphic of the piece. 1-2 pages

E N T E R  T H E  E X H I B I T  B E L O W:

Indian Humor Exhibit at Smithsonian

Friday 10/7

*  Volunteer to present your choice and analysis to the class Friday; turn in written art analysis

Monday, 10/10

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY:  STICK GAME with Norma Peone, Coeur d'Alene Tribal Member: Whitewater Room

UNIT 2: POETRY

Wednesday, 10/12

Brian Swann, "Introduction: Only the Beginning," from Nothing But the Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature Ed. James Ruppert and John Purdy, 2001

Kimberly Blaeser (Anishinaabe), Nothing But the Truth:  "The Possibilities of a Native Poetics"

Contemporary Native American poetics are "infused with echoes of the song poems and ceremonial literatures of the tribes, born out of the indigenous revolution, filled with the dialogues of inter-textuality, sometimes linked to the cadence and construction of 'an-other' language, frequently self-conscious, and often resistant to genre distinctions and formal structures" (412).

Recognizable facets of Indian-authored poetry:
1)  a significant spiritual and physical landscape
2)  an investment in political struggle (they carry history)
3)  a search for or an attempt to articulate connections with the individual, tribal or pan-Indian legacy
4)  connections to the oral tradition
5)  engages in framing a response to the perceived expectations of Native literature, and/or how non-Natives have represented Indians. "One function of American Indian poetry has been to 'resist cultural erasure' to question the dominant narrative, and to remember our histories clearly as a way to resist both amnesia and nostalgia."

"Literacy in English has not prevented Indian writers from exploring the possibilities for articulating the truth of their own visions through poetry. These visions come out of an exploration of what it means to be Indian and what it means to come from a cultural and historical  past that is unique within American experience."

Poetry often serves to tell us about the places we've been as a people or about the places we wish to be. What we admire about it,  or about the poets who make it, are the ways poetry may succinctly distill and render human experience into language.  Language is a vehicle of ceremony [and healing]. "  poet Janice Gould (Maidu).
 

The Oral World into Written Poetry

from

Navajo Nightway Chant
 

to

The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee         --N. Scott Momaday
I am a feather on the bright sky I am the blue horse that runs in the plain I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water I am the shadow that follows a child I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows I am an eagle playing with the wind I am a cluster of bright beads I am the farthest star I am the cold of the dawn I am the roaring of the rain I am the glitter on the crust of the snow I am the long track of the moon in a lake I am a flame of four colors I am a deer standing away in the dusk I am a field of sumac and pomme blanche I am an angle of geese in the winter sky I am the hunger of a young wolf I am the whole dream of these things You see, I am alive, I am alive I stand in good relation to the earth I stand in good relation to the gods I stand in good relation to everything that is beautiful I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte You see, I am alive, I am alive
from Angle of Geese, 1974

Friday 10/14

Recording and Retelling History

             
The Ghost Dance

Ghost Dance Songs

Massacre at Wounded Knee     

N. Scott Momaday, "December 29, 1890: Wounded Knee Creek"

December 29, 1890         --N. Scott Momaday
Wounded Knee Creek In the shine of photographs are the slain, frozen and black on a simple field of snow. They image ceremony: women and children dancing, old men prancing, making fun. In autumn there were songs, long since muted in the blizzard. In summer the wild buckwheat shone like fox fur and quillwork, and dusk guttered on the creek. Now in serene attitudes of dance, the dead in glossy death are drawn in ancient light.
from In the Presence of the Sun, 1992

(Many Excellent Native American Poems for your perusal)

Wendy Rose (background/bio)
"I Expected My Skin and My Blood to Ripen"
 

Does poetry influence policymaking?

Native American Graves Repatriation Act (1990)
Nez Perce Repatriation Notice

 

Monday 10/17

Sherman Alexie video on his newest book of poetry, "Faces."

Sherman Alexie, "My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys"

1.
In the reservation textbooks, we learned Indians were invented in 1492 by a crazy mixed-blood named Columbus. Immediately after class dismissal, the Indian children traded in those American stories and songs for a pair of tribal shoes. These boots are made for walking, babe, and that’s just what they’ll do. One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

2.
Did you know that in 1492 every Indian instantly became an extra in the Great American Western? But wait, I never wondered what happened to Randolph Scott or Tom Mix. The Lone Ranger was never in my vocabulary. On the reservation, when we played Indians and cowboys, all of us little Skins fought on the same side against the cowboys in our minds. We never lost.

3.
Indians never lost their West, so how come I walk into the supermarket and find a dozen cowboy books telling How The West Was Won? Curious, I travel to the world’s largest shopping mall, find the Lost and Found department. “Excuse me,” I say. “I seem to have lost the West. Has anyone turned it in?” The clerk tells me I can find it in the Sears Home Entertainment Department, blasting away on fifty televisions.

4.
On Saturday morning television, the cowboy has fifty bullets in his six-shooter; he never needs to reload. It’s just one more miracle for this country’s heroes.

5.
My heroes have never been cowboys; my heroes carry guns in their minds.

6.
Win their hearts and minds and we win the war. Can you hear that song echo across history? If you give the Indian a cup of coffee with six cubes of sugar, he’ll be your servant. If you give the Indian a cigarette and a book of matches, he’ll be your friend. If you give the Indian a can of commodities, he’ll be your lover. He’ll hold you tight in his arms, cowboy and two-step you outside.

7.
Outside, it’s cold and a confused snow falls in May. I’m watching some western on TBS, colorized, but the story remains the same. Three cowboys string telegraph wire across the plains until they are confronted by the entire Sioux nation. The cowboys, 19th century geniuses, talk the Indians into touching the wire, holding it in their hands and mouths. After a dozen or so have hold of the wire, the cowboys crank the portable generator and electrocute some of the Indians with a European flame and chase the rest of them away, bareback and burned. All these years later, the message tapped across my skin remains the same.

8.
It’s the same old story whispered on the television in every HUD house on the reservation. It’s 500 years of that same screaming song, translated from the American.

9.
Lester Falls Apart found the American dream in a game of Russian Roulette: one bullet and five empty chambers. “It’s Manifest Destiny,” Lester said just before he pulled the trigger five times quick. “I missed,” Lester said just before he reloaded the pistol: one empty chamber and five bullets. “Maybe we should call this Reservation Roulett,” Lester said just before he pulled the trigger once at his temple and five more times as he pointed the pistol toward the sky.

10.
Looking up into the night sky, I asked my brother what he thought God looked like and he said “God probably looks like John Wayne.”

11.
We’ve all killed John Wayne more than once. When we burned the ant pile in our backyard, my brother and I imagined those ants were some cavalry or another. When Brian, that insane Indian boy from across the street, suffocated neighborhood dogs and stuffed their bodies into the reservation high school basement, he must have imagined those dogs were cowboys, come back to break another treaty.

12.
Every frame of the black and white western is a treaty; every scene in this elaborate serial is a promise. But what about the reservation home movies? What about the reservation heroes? I remember this: Down near Bull’s Pasture, Eugene stood on the pavement with a gallon of tequila under his arm. I watched in the rearview mirror as he raised his arm to wave goodbye and dropped the bottle, glass and dreams of the weekend shattered. After all these years, that moment is still the saddest of my whole life.

13.
Your whole life can be changed by the smallest pain.

14.
Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies. Arthur, here we are again, you and I, fancydancing through the geometric progression of our dreams. Twenty years ago, we never believed we’d lose. Twenty years ago, television was our way of finding heroes and spirit animals. Twenty years ago, we never knew we’d spend the rest of our lives in the reservation of our minds, never knew we’d stand outside the gates of the Spokane Indian Reservation without a key to let ourselves back inside. From a distance, that familiar song. Is it country and western? Is it the sound of hearts breaking? Every song remains the same here in America, this country of the Big Sky and Manifest Destiny, this country of John Wayne and broken treaties. Arthur, I have no words which can save our lives, no words approaching forgiveness, no words flashed across the screen at the reservation drive-in, no words promising either of us top billing. Extras, Arthur, we’re all extras.

Wednesday 10/19

author reports: scott momaday, sherman alexie, joy harjo

Horses, by Sherman Alexie 

Friday 10/21

Alexie poems:
"Defending Walt Whitman" and "Memorial Day 1972" from:
A Serious Collection of Alexie Poems

   Joy Harjo (Creek)

"Stories and songs are like humans who when they laugh are indestructible"

                                                                            Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo,

Text of "A Postcolonial Tale"

"I Give You Back"

Author reports: wendy rose, louise erdrich, linda hogan
 

Louise Erdrich (Anishinaabe) 

"Dear John Wayne"

August and the drive-in picture is packed.
We lounge on the hood of the Pontiac
surrounded by the slow-burning spirals they sell
at the window, to vanquish the hordes of mosquitoes.
Nothing works. They break through the smoke screen for blood.

Always the lookout spots the Indian first,
spread north to south, barring progress.
The Sioux or some other Plains bunch
in spectacular columns, ICBM missiles,
feathers bristling in the meaningful sunset.

The drum breaks. There will be no parlance.
Only the arrows whining, a death-cloud of nerves
swarming down on the settlers
who die beautifully, tumbling like dust weeds
into the history that brought us all here
together: this wide screen beneath the sign of the bear.

The sky fills, acres of blue squint and eye
that the crowd cheers. His face moves over us,
a thick cloud of vengeance, pitted
like the land that was once flesh. Each rut,
each scar makes a promise: It is
not over, this fight, not as long as you resist.

Everything we see belongs to us.

A few laughing Indians fall over the hood
slipping in the hot spilled butter.
The eye sees a lot, John, but the heart is so blind.
Death makes us owners of nothing.
He smiles, a horizon of teeth
the credits reel over, and then the white fields

again blowing in the true-to-life dark.
The dark films over everything.
We get into the car
scratching our mosquito bites, speechless and small
as people are when the movie is done.
We are back in our skins.

How can we help but keep hearing his voice,
the flip side of the sound track, still playing:
Come on, boys, we got them
where we want them, drunk, running.
They'll give us what we want, what we need.
Even his disease was the idea of taking everything.
Those cells, burning, doubling, splitting out of their skins.

discuss the setting, speaker, imagery and themes

The antelope are strange people ... they are beautiful to look at, and yet they are tricky. We do not trust them. They appear and disappear; they are like shadows on the plains. Because of their great beauty, young men sometimes follow the antelope and are lost forever. Even if those foolish ones find themselves and return, they are never again right in their heads.

Medicine Woman of the Crows

All night I am the doe, breathing   
his name in a frozen field,
the small mist of the word
drifting always before me.
And again he has heard it   
and I have gone burning   
to meet him, the jacklight   
fills my eyes with blue fire;   
the heart in my chest
explodes like a hot stone.
Then slung like a sack
in the back of his pickup,
I wipe the death scum
from my mouth, sit up laughing   
and shriek in my speeding grave.
Safely shut in the garage,
when he sharpens his knife
and thinks to have me, like that,
I come toward him,
a lean gray witch
through the bullets that enter and dissolve.
I sit in his house
drinking coffee till dawn
and leave as frost reddens on hubcaps,
crawling back into my shadowy body.
All day, asleep in clean grasses,
I dream of the one who could really wound me.   
Not with weapons, not with a kiss, not with a look.   
Not even with his goodness.
If a man was never to lie to me. Never lie to me.
I swear I would never leave him.

Monday 10/24
Assign Exam 2

Discuss Erdrich poems
 

Phil George (Nez Perce)
from his book Kautsa (Grandmother)
 

Name Giveaway

That teacher gave me a new name. . . again.
She never even had feasts or a giveaway!

Still I do not know what “George” means:
and now she calls me “Phillip.”

Two Flocks of Geese Lighting Upon Still Waters
must be a name too hard to remember.
 

Salmon Return

Like many Grandfathers before me,
I spear Salmon: splashing, flapping.
These echoing waters no longer your home.
Up Celilo Falls you will dance no more.
Cleansed, Grandmother will weave
willows into your needle-boned flesh.
Beside night fires you will roast—
Fat oozing, dripping, sizzling.
My people will not go hungry.
We fast. We sing. We feast.
May your spirit always live, my friend,
if even in the Moon of High Waters.
From saltwaters you swim upstream to die.
We remember: “Return home to die.”
 

Moon of Huckleberries

 Black Bear sang, drumming on a log:
“Come, bring your biggest baskets
To the best berry patches.
I’ll show you.”

 “If you maidens get lost—
Just follow my dung,
Just follow my dung.”
Black Bear sang, drumming on a log.

Wednesday 10/26

GUEST POET Tiffany Midge (Standing Rock Sioux), MFA (UI)

About Tiffany Midge

A selection of Tiffany's  poems
be sure to read all the poems here

and a couple of Tiffany's favorites:
Joy Harjo, "Anchorage"

Nora Dauenhauer "How to Cook a Wild Salmon"
http://poeticsandpolitics.arizona.edu/dauenhauer/salmon.htm

Thursday - BRANDO  SKYHORSE reads for free, 7:30 pm at Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre as part of UI's Hemingway Festival  

Friday 10/28

Visit with Brando Skyhorse        

History of Chavez Ravine

Monday 10/31

Indigenous theories of literature

Simon Ortiz, Towards a National Indian Literature: Cultural Authenticity in Nationalism"

Kim Roppolo, "Toward a Tribal-Centered Reading of Native American Literature" (pdf)

Wednesday 11/02

 Approaches to Native literature:
 

"Homing In," Wm. Bevis (Jan)
"Communitism," Jace Weaver: That the People Might Live  (molly)
"Mythic Realism," Louis Owens in Other Destinies (sam)
American Indian Literary Nationalism, Weaver, Warrior, and Womack (jan)
"Tribalography," Leane Howe (jan)
"Survivance," Gerald Vizenor (jan)
"That's Raven's Talk: Holophrastice Approaches" (Tracy)

THURSDAY 11/3:

NEW Environmental Justice Film Series - Clearwater/Whitewater Rooms 11/3:
Indigenous First Nations people and oil development: 10 AM and 2 PM

Friday 11/04

Exam 2 due

Unit 3: The Novel

Map of Montana's Tribal Nations

Debra's relative, Chief Charlot

 

Debra Magpie Earling, Perma Red
 

Debra Magpie Earling

Perma Red, pp 1-91

supplemental reading:

Thursday 11/03

Environmental Justice Film Series Kickoff with The Tipping Point: Oil the Age of the Tar Sands
Commons Whitewater/Clearwater Rooms: 10AM and 2PM
 

See "Requirements" button for Project Proposal assignment and "Final Project" button for directions for final project: Literary Research Essay or Multimedia Group Project
 

Monday 11/07  

Perma Red, through p. 208

5:30 pm free screening of "American Indian Homelands: matters of truth, honor and dignity-immemorial"
 Kenworthy on Main Street   doors open at  5:00pm

sponsored by UI Native American Law Students

Wednesday, 11/09

conclude PERMA RD

Intro to James Welch and

Winter in the Blood:  the novel and the movie

The MOVIE

Friday, 11/11
final project proposal due on Monday: follow instructions carefully!

Winter in the Blood,

Friday 11/11   Native Art Auction 5:00-7:00 & INDIGENOUS concert at 7:00 in SUB Ballroom - students with id admitted FREE!!
   

Monday 11/14
 

Final Paper/Project Proposal Due: Follow instructions at bottom of "Final Project" and email your Proposal t me

no class today--appointment off campus--sorry!

 

11/15:  HooPalousa basketball game, 7:30 Memorial Gym with Sherman Alexie

Wednesday 11/16
conclude Winter in the Blood
 

Introducing . . . Sherman Alexie (again)
Sherman Alexie's website     
Video Clips: Sherman Alexie: Open All Night (NOW/PBS)                                                   
Video Clip: 2001 World Heavyweight Poetry Championship with Sherman Alexie
Alexie on Colbert

Lecture: Sherman Alexie's Postmodern Aesthetics
FABULOUS INTERVIEW  with Alexie on trauma, writing

 

discuss Flight

Optional secondary readings:
S. Evans, "Sherman Alexie's Open Containers"
PBS/POV "Border Talk" with Sherman Alexie
also check out:  RED ROAD TO SOBRIETY

S I G N   U P   F O R   P R E S E N T A T I O N S ! ! !

Deconstructing the Myths of the First "Thanksgiving"
 

Friday 11/18
finish discussion of Winter in the Blood and Flight

S I G N   U P   F O R   P R E S E N T A T I O N S ! ! !

instructor returns your Proposal

  Monday 11/21 through Friday 11/25 Fall Recess
            
 

Monday 11/28

Exam 3: Fiction in class

Wednesday 11/30

10-15 minute presentations of your final paper; be prepared to tell us:

-the title of your paper or project and your topic--the critical or theoretical idea you're exploring
- primary and secondary source(s) and a graphic/illustration that helps bring us to your project
-your thesis--your major claim and an example of how you support your claim
-why/how your work is important? how it benefits tribal communities

Presenters:
Riley
Sam S
Tracy
Noel
Rachelq

Friday 12/02
-the title of your paper or project and your topic--the critical or theoretical idea you're exploring
- primary and secondary source(s) and a graphic/illustration that helps bring us to your project
-your thesis--your major claim and an example of how you support your claim
-why/how your work is important? how it benefits tribal communities

Presenters:
Diana
Erin and Lindsay
Lisa
Christina
Laura

Monday 12/05
10-15 minute presentations of your final paper; be prepared to tell us:
-the title of your paper or project and your topic--the critical or theoretical idea you're exploring
- primary and secondary source(s) and a graphic/illustration that helps bring us to your project
-your thesis--your major claim and an example of how you support your claim
-why/how your work is important? how it benefits tribal communities
Presenters:

Kara
Hannah
Allix
Molly
 

Wednesday 12/07

10-15 minute presentations of your final paper; be prepared to tell us:

-the title of your paper or project and your topic--the critical or theoretical idea you're exploring
- primary and secondary source(s) and a graphic/illustration that helps bring us to your project
-your thesis--your major claim and an example of how you support your claim
-why/how your work is important? how it benefits tribal communities

Presenters:

Jordan
Ronda
Terry
Hawley and Josh

Friday 12/09

10-15 minute presentations of your final paper; be prepared to tell us:
-the title of your paper or project and your topic--the critical or theoretical idea you're exploring
- primary and secondary source(s) and a graphic/illustration that helps bring us to your project
-your thesis--your major claim and an example of how you support your claim
-why/how your work is important? how it benefits tribal communities

Presenters:
Crystal
Brenda
Sidney
Kelsey

 

Wednesday, Dec. 14th from 12:30 - 2:30. We'll MEET in OUR CLASSROOM.

Chris and PJ
Eric
Richard
Shannon
Brittany
Thomas
Breeze
 

Final Papers Due Monday 12/12 Brink 200, 5pm    

 --------- have a great break! 

_________________________________________________________________

For discussion: What do these writers have to say about the relationship between language, place, identity and the nature of reality?  Choose a short passage from each essay that you find particularly important and/or intriguing and be prepared to share your ideas in class.

Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), "Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective," 159-165

N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), "The Man Made of Words," 82-93
What does Momaday mean by "land ethic"?
How is the Arrowmaker a "man made of words"?
How do you understand Momaday's ideas about the importance of the imagination?

Carter Revard (Osage), "History, Myth, and Identity Among Osages and Other Peoples" 126-140
1.  How does Revard describe Geronimo's identity?
2.  In comparison, describe Jason Betzinez's identity. He is Apache but went to a US government boarding school and has an identity quite different from Geronimo's.
3.  Revard claims, ". . . Americans have untied their names and individual histories from place and nation to an astonishing extend in the last five hundred years--precisely since the terms individualism, self, identity, and civilize came into the English language in their current meanings." What does Revard mean here, and what does he infer is his concern about this phenomena?
 

Greg Sarris (Miwok-Pomo), "The Woman Who Loved a Snake" 141-158
What are some of the important points Sarris's essay suggests about cross-cultural situations? About oral rather literary discourse?

Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo), "Towards a National Indian Literature: Cultural Authenticity in Nationalism" 120-125
1. Explain the ceremonies of Acquemeh and how they are "authentically" Indian.
2.  How have Native people responded to colonialism, according to Ortiz?
3. What quality or qualities, for Ortiz, most characterizes NA literature and people/communities?
 

* Colonialism: what is it? where is it? how does it work?

Tuesday 9/07
catch up on Revard, Sarris and Ortiz

For discussion: Explain how Ortiz's essay seems to speak from and to a political/historical context although with a spiritual dimension, while Moore's essay seems to tell us more about the epistemology and worldviews of Native people and how they are revealed in literature?

Moore, "Decolonializing Criticism: Reading Dialectics and Dialogics in Native American Literatures" 93-119
1.  Para 1: explain Moore's concern here with ethics and NA literature.
2.  P2:  Epistemology: a theory of the nature of knowledge (how we know the world); How are our ethics connected to our epistemology? What does Moore mean: Colonial cognitive structures underlie cultural definitions of race and ethnicity, embedded as those definitions are in the economics of colonial history."
3.   P3: Explain the "dualistic episteme" of absorption or resistance.
4.  P4: "Dualistic, dialectic and dialogic ways of thinking; "Those ways of thinking echo ethical and then political ways of interacting" (95). Explain.
5.  P5:  Moore says that Native texts are tied to land-based and pan-tribal communities. Explain the major points of this paragraph.
6.  P6:  "What is an epistemology of exchange"?
7.  P9:  "An examination of dialogic ways of eluding dialectic systems." The dialogic never erases the dialectic, though the dialectic ignores the dialogic.  The dialectic ignores the dialogic by reducing issues to binaries, while the dialogic continues to "dialogue" with the dialectic by opening up more than binary possibilities." Discuss the examples of binary, dialectic thinking/history in this paragraph and the dialogic history/reality that exists that dialectical thinking doesn't see.
8.  See footnote p. 99. Heteroglossia in language/communication, primacy of context; "Similarly, efforts to reduce cultural contact to monocultural domination are doomed to failure, as cultures engage necessarily in a nexus of dialogue" 99).
9.  Explain (p.103):  "A postcolonial rather than neocolonial critique must by definition be non-oppositional and heteroglossic, because colonial hegemonies are based on dualistic oppositions."
10.  Explain "nexus of exchange."
11.  How does Moore suggest we as readers (and participants) of NA literature engage in a "nexus of exchange" and how does he return us to the ethical dimension of readers/critics of NA literature?


Elizabeth Cook-Lynn will speak to our class on October 7th.

Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth, "The American Indian Fiction Writers," 23-38
1.  What is Cook-Lynn's concern in regard to both much popular Native American literature and criticism of it?
2.  What does she see as a major purpose of Native orature and literature?
3.  What do you understand to be Cook-Lynn's major concern.

Thursday 9/09

Thursday 9/16
continue with humor analyses

Video: In Whose Honor? (on sports mascots debate)
In Whose Honor? website with lots of information about the issue/history

Issues: 

Distribute take-home essay exam #1 (due Tuesday 9/28)
 

Unit 2: Short and Long Fiction

Tuesday  9/21

FYI:
Website for Navajo removal/relocation and Sen. John McCain's bill mentioned in American Holocaust.

 

Thursday 9/23

Historical Trauma/Intergenerational Grief

HistoricalTrauma.pptx

Tuesday 9/28
 

Roppolo, Kimberly. "Towards a Tribally-Centered Reading of Native Literature: Using Indigenous Rhetoric(s) Instead of Literary Analysis"
We need to read from a Native perspective, not force Native ideas onto a western framework.
The Native author/artist as an agent negotiating meaning with an audience.
To assert ourselves as subjects, we must claim our own way of making meaning--this is an issue of sovereignty.
We are taught by story and explain by story.
The metaphor of the spiderweb : pick a strand to follow.
We argue by analogy and indirect discourse; the reader supplies the meaning; the reader acts.
Texts contain the critical contexts needed for their own interpretation.
We don't need to be Native to read and understand Native literature; we do need to respect and value Native culture to do it.

NBT, 190-193 (Intro to fiction)
Beth Brant (Mohawk), "Swimming Upstream," 212
Silko (Pueblo),  "The Man to Send Rain Clouds," 358

For discussion: How do historical trauma and attempts to heal from the legacy of genocide and colonization play a role in Native American contemporary fiction?

The introduction to fiction introduces Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor's term "survivance": survival, endurance, and the repudiation of dominance." We will strive to read Native literatures from a Native, non-colonial point of view, so I want you to ask yourself how "survivance" applies to Brant and Silko's stories. You have learned much already about the realities of American Indian history and present experience, as well as worldview and values. What of these realities, worldviews and values to you see in Brant's story, "Swimming Upstream." Images, issues, themes?

What issues does Silko address in her story? How do setting, characterization and tone help convey her concerns and how would you articulate the theme of her story?

Essay One due

Thursday 9/30

 Lecture: current strands in Native American Literary Criticism: nationalism/tribalism and hybridity


Simon Ortiz, "The Killing of a State Cop" 321
Leslie Marmon Silko, "Tony's Story," 362
Cook-Lynn, "The Power of Horses," 226

Discussion questions:
1. Why do you think both Silko and Ortiz chose to apply their imagination to an historical event?
2.  What are the major differences between the stories and what effect(s) do these differences have?
3. Choose a passage from each story that represents for you one of the author's major concerns/themes.
4. Which story--Silko or Ortiz's--did you most enjoy and why?
5.  What role does the Tribe's oral stories play in this story? How does the story employ Momaday's  "myth, history and memoir/personal" ? How do both the ancient story of the horse and the mother's story affect the father and daughters' actions? What IS the power of horses?

Tuesday 10/05

discuss Cook-Lynn's "The Power of Horses"

(NBT) Pauline Johnson, "As It Was in the Beginning," n(1917) p. 282
1.  choose the passage you find most powerful in the story
2.  explore the animal imagery and how it is used
3.  consider the first line of the story and the final two lines, "They account for it by the fact that I am a Redskin. They seem to have forgotten I am a woman" (288).
4.  what are the major themes of the story, and perhaps Johnson's "message"?
5.  does the story resonate in any ways with the boarding school essay above?

For further reading:  Silko, Leslie Marmon, "Lullaby"

Prof. Johnson's Nez Perce Jazz Band Research (if time)

Thursday 10/07
Meet in Brink Faculty Lounge (basement level near POLYA)
Guest Speaker:  Prof. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
Tuesday 10/12
The Power of Place/Place-Based Religion in Native America
Video clip: In the Light of Reverence (www.sacredland.org) (excerpt) NOW ON RESERVE

for further reading:
www.sacred-sites.org
www.ienearth.org (Indigenous Environmental Network)
 

Intro to James Welch (Blackfoot/Gros Ventre) and 19th Century Northern Plain culture/history

Background on James Welch (Blackfeet/Gros Ventre)

James Welch at Internet Public Library
Ploughshares (a literary journal) story on James Welch

Welch's novel, Winter in the Blood, is currently being made into a movie with filming occurring in Montana

FOOLS CROW HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND

FOOLS CROW   Parts 1, 2 and 3-- Look at the Map in the back of the book--learn Blackfeet country and important places in the novel

For Discussion:
1. What are the setting, situation and point of view or the narrator? Describe our two protagonists. What are some of the Blackfeet values communicated in this early part of the novel?
2. What are some of the names for the animals Welch has named and why do you think he chose to this language? What effect do these names have on you?
3. What evidence is there within the novel that the buffalo economy of the Pikuni is changing? What is their response to the change?
4. What are the expectations for young Blackfeet men in terms of being accepted as adults in the community? What skills, values and behaviors demonstrate male maturity? What defines success and status? How does White Man's Dog meet or not meet these expectation? How does Fast Horse meet or not meet these expectations?
5. How do the Pikuni define and acquire material wealth? How does this influence their behavior toward other tribes? Toward traders? Settlers? How do the settlers define and acquire material wealth? How does this influence their behavior toward the tribes? Toward the traders?
6. What role do different perceptions of land ownership play in the conflicting economies of the Pikuni and the settlers?
7. Explain a "vow" and its value to the Blackfeet.
8. What are the expectations for young Blackfeet women in terms of being accepted as adults in the community? What skills, values, and behaviors demonstrate female maturity? What defines success and status?
9. Discuss gender roles and division of labor in Pikuni society?
10. What is the purpose of the Sun Dance ceremony? Is it analogous to traditions in other cultures?
11.  How do the Pikuni define warfare? What are their goals? What is permissible and impermissible in their acts of war? Why did the Blackfeet war against the Crow?

Good event:

Tuesday 10/19
FOOLS CROW Parts 4 and 5
12. What is the significance of the conversation between  Raven and Fools Crow? In terms of worldview, what does Welch suggest through the relationships the Pikuni have with animals?
13. Why does Welch call whites "Napikwans" and how has the Pikuni's attitude toward them changed from the beginning of the novel?
14. What statement is the novel making about justice? What does Kipp mean when he thinks, "These people have not changed, but the world they live in has" (252)?
15. In chapters 21 and 22, what are the different chiefs and their philosophical position on the conflict with the Napikwans. What would you advise in the council meeting?
16. Where does Fools Crow journey? What is the symbolism of the turnips?
Who is Feather woman and what does Fools Crow learn from her? How are they similar?
What is honor to Blackfeet?
Where is the hope in chapters 25-32?

then
INTRODUCING Richard Van Camp         

read his bio here on Nativewiki, hear him read poetry, learn what he's up to--
The Lesser Blessed will soon be released as a movie!
Richard Van Camp, The Lesser Blessed
what do you like most about this novel?
how would you characterize the style?
what are the novel's major themes?
what will you most remember about the novel?

Keri Cederquist: Sacred Earth
Erika Bengston:  Radioactive Genocide
Derek Ax
Gretchen Schultz & Gabbie Saurette: Impact of Westernization on Native Mobility

Colin Cassard: Indian Humor
Karlee Cysewski and Melonie Schutte: Overcoming Stereotypes in Literature

Mattie Rydalch:  Staging Native Drama: Power Pipes and Violence Against Women
Erin Fenner:  Violence Against Women in Fools Crow and Perma Red