Vilnius Pedagogical University Faculty of Foreign Languages Department of English Philology Master Paper Ligita Fejertiene The image of an Indian in Sherman Alexie’s collection of short stories “Ten little Indians” and Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel “Ceremony” Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of MA in English Philology. Academic Advisor: dr.D.Miniotaite VILNIUS 2008 Contents I Introduction 3 1.The importance of rituals in Indians’s life 15 2.The role of a woman in Indian community 21 3. The Indians’ concept of land and nature 26 II. Development 28 1.The importance of rituals in Indians’mentality in Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel“Ceremony”and Sherman Alexie’s collection of short stories “Ten little Indians” 28 2. The role of a woman in Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel “Ceremony” and Sherman Alexie’s collection of short stories “Ten little Indians” 40 3. The Indians’concept of land and nature in Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel “Ceremony” 48 Conclusion 51 Summary 56 Bibliography 57 2 I Introduction The aims of the paper are to analyze the characteristic features of Indians’ identity: the memory of rituals in Indians’ mentality, the position of a woman in Indian life and the Indian concept of land and nature in Sherman Alexie’s collection of short stories “Ten little Indians” and Leslie Marmon Silko novel “Ceremony”. To achieve the aims the method of textual analysis is used. The objectives of the paper are to explore the literature of criticism of native American writers (by James Rupert, “World Literature Criticism Supplement”, Jim Rupert “The Journal of Ethnic Studies”, Andrew Wiget “World Literature Today”, Peter G. Beidler, American Indian Culture and Research Journal” ) , literature of rituals, the woman’s position in the society , the spiritual approach towards land and nature, to analyze the importance of rituals, a woman’s position, the concept of sacredness of land in Sherman Alexie’s collection of short stories “Ten little Indians” and Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel “Ceremony”. In the introduction two types of Indians and the identity of Indians are described. In the development characteristic features of Indians, the importance of rituals, matrilineal position in life and the importance of nature in understanding of Indian’s life, are analyzed. Two writers, that will be analyzed in this paper, emphasized two types of Indians: a positive and a negative type. The positive type is an Indian who keeps to the traditions of Indians , has spiritual view about the world, who hasn’t distracted from his roots. The negative type is a drunker, war veteran who lost his humanity because of war atrocities, prostitutes. I will concentrate on the identical features of Indians in literature. In the paper there will be the focus on analysis of Indian identity in Modern Native American Literature, particularly of two writers: Sherman Alexie and Leslie Marmon Silko. Firstly, Native American literature is the literature of people of Native American descent. The dominant focus of Native American literature is on issues related to Native American culture, history, religion, 3 and experiences. Native American literature refers to works written by the indigenous people and it encompasses many different social, cultural, historical, and spiritual perspectives. Native American identity is a sense of “humanity” which links Indianness to sacred traditions, places, and shared history as indigenous people. Language is also seen as an important part of identity, and learning Native languages, especially for youth in a community, is an important part in tribal survival. Henry Real Bird offers his own definition, “An Indian is one who offers tobacco to the ground, feeds the water, and prays to the four wings in his own language.” Pulitzer Prize winning Kiowa author N.Scott Momaday gives a definition that is less supernatural but still based in the traditions and experience of a person and their family,” An Indian is someone who thinks of themselves as an Indian. You have to have a certain experience of the world in order to formulate this idea. I consider myself an Indian; I have had the experience of an Indian. I know how my father saw the world, and his father before him.” (N.Scott Momaday). Cultural identity is a way how Indians remember their past, tell their stories, and interpret their myths. Thus cultural identity is made within the discourses of history and culture. The Native American identity consists of such elements: the significance of rituals in Indians world, the importance of women in Indian society, the sacred understanding of land, genes or biology and self- identification. Firstly, the approach to rituals is based on the environmental wisdom, rituals and spirituality of Indians. In literature (written by Native Americans) animals were described as equal in rights to humans. They were hunted only for food, and the hunter first asked permission of the animal’s spirit. Among the hunter-gatherers the land was owned in common: there was no concept of private property of land, as the idea that it could be bought and sold was repugnant. In literature there were some rituals emphasized. One of them was pow-wow. At pow-wows, such as the annual Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, members of drum group sit in a circle around a large drum. Familiar pow-wow songs include honour songs, include honour songs, intertribal songs, crow-hops, sneak-up songs, grass-dances, two-steps, welcome songs, going-home songs, and war songs. The second element of Indian identity is the power of women in Indian’s society. In literature (written by Native American writers Simon j. Ortiz, Joy Harjo, Greg Sarris) Indian women are portrayed as very strong personalities, warriors, leaders of the family, spiritual leaders in a tribe, 4 wise advisors, carers of children and husbands, teachers of old traditions. It was particularly women who kept the ancient traditions and rituals. They should be thanked for saving the language, spiritual approach towards nature, land. They teach children the rules of appropriate behaviour, they train Indians the sense of community. In effect, women have been, and remain, the keepers of their culture, preserving traditions and handing them down to their children. “It was our grandmothers who held on to what they could of our identity as a People.”(Canadian women’s journal in the late 1980s.) In literature (Written by Linda Hogan, N.Scott Momaday) women are also described as medicine women. Usually, a girl begins to learn medicine from her grandmother at an early age. Women may hold medicine bundles, or jish, for healing. They may be herbalists, knowing which plants to use and prescribe; helpers or apprentices; diagnosticians, responsible for determining what is wrong with a patient and what ceremony and procedure will help in curing him or her. They have become central figures of leadership in their increasingly independent native society. The third feature of Indian identity is the sacred approach of land and nature. Awareness of interrelatedness of man and nature permeates Native American literature. “The treatment of nonhuman animals as distinct people suggests that equality was not simply a human attribute but a recognition of the creatureness of all creation” (Vine Deloria, Jr.). In Native American mythic narrative there is a strong sense of the sense, of animals. In literature (written by L.M.Silko “Ceremony”) the respect to living creatures is so immense that an Indian can not kill a deer even if his family is hungry. “It is inappropriate that I should take life just now when I am expecting the gift of life”.(Momaday). After the colonization (through centuries from the 16th to the 20th century) many Indian traditions, rituals and beliefs changed little by little. The main reasons were the loss of land by the conquest of white people and an actively hostile dominant culture that constantly worked to undermine tribal traditions and native people’s cultural identities. “The seizure of native lands- which was justified by white claims of cultural superiority and divine responsibility to wilderness- has come to be interpreted by whites and certain Indians as a sign of the superiority of the Euro-American model of private property and progress over the Indian model of nonexploitative partnership with nature.”(Rachel Stein) As white [people conquered more and more land, it signified white superiority. Indians’ hardships of reservation life that are related with the loss of prime farming and hunting grounds- such as economic impoverishment, lack of higher education and professional methods, also, emotional hardships, 5 such as drunkenness and depression. This is a sign of Indian racial inferiority and inability to survive the rules of the white world. Indians painfully realize that they cannot protect the natural entities whom they regard as spiritual from abuses at the hands of whites. When former tribal lands that have been seized by the government are sold to ranchers and loggers, the land is stripped for profit and the animals are killed for sport. The Indians understood that the land had been taken, because they couldn’t stop these white people from coming to destroy the animals and the land. The inability of tribes to prevent this disaster leads to terrible sorrow and guilt. Also, the white people performed the genocide of Indians. They slaughtered them, forbade their languages, traditions, rituals. In some cases the white people forced the Indians to work in mines as slaves where they died in great numbers. They tried to extinguish the roots, the basics of Indians life and everything what was dear to them. Indian children in white people’s schools were taught to despise their ancestors, the language, culture. After they had finished the secondary school, they returned home and some Indians became strangers to their parents. Their approach towards Indian traditions was changed. The new generation moved to cities, married white spouses and became half-breed. It was the whites politics to conquer the Indian nation in all possible ways. Besides, the white people brought alcohol to the Indian world that was a total disaster to their mentality leading to degradation. Yet the twentieth century brought significant changes to the conceptions of Natives by Europeans. “The Civil Rights Movement inspired America’s indigenous peoples, and by the late 1960s they had begun reasserting their sovereignty rights and producing a significant body of literature.”(Norma Wilson). It is generally thought that a Native American literary renaissance began in the late 1960s, with the publication of N.Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel House Made of Dawn(1968), an account of a tortured war veteran, Abel, who is caught between the reservation and urban worlds. So, nowadays Indian traditions are not lost but only modified because many Indians in Native American literature try to regain it. The characters (in L.M.Silko “Ceremony” corrupted war veterans Harley, Pinkie) are lost between two opposing cultures: Native American and the whites society. These characters realize that ‘there is no way to be an Indian (with all the pain that implies) and acceptable to whites at the same time. Although mixed descent Indians and Native Indians struggle with alienation, they also find ways to negotiate between the warring native and 6 white cultures, using their painfully gained knowledge of the white worlds in order to reformulate Indian stories and practices that can defeat the destructive practices of the dominant culture. In this way , in literature there appeared many characters (L.M.Silko “Ceremony” a war veteran Tayo) who tried to regain their rights and traditions. As Silko shows that Indian civilization is living and has the potential to transform the whites culture. She says:” These things will only die if we neglect to tell the stories. So I am telling the stories.” With the help of Indian humor, even if we do not get her jokes she purifies us of our illusions about white culture and those about Indian culture as well. So with the power of memory, without anger and hatred, Indians can regain their roots and traditions. However not all Indians are interested in regaining traditions. In literature ( written by L.M. Silko “Almanac of the Dead” a young girl who is caught between her Indian heritage and the aristocratic Victorian society) some Indians accept Christianity, some emulate the white mainstream image of success, the veterans of the Second World War felt self –destructive envy of white peoples’ privileges. This dissatisfaction rise from the loss of ancestral lands. “They were never the same after that: they had seen what the white people had made from the stolen land… Every day they had to look at the land, from horizon to horizon, and every day the loss was with them; it was the dead unburied, and the mourning of the lost going on forever. So they tried to sink the loss in booze, and silence their grief with war stories about their courage, defending the land already lost.”. (L.Marmon Silko ). In early American culture books by white writers (Cooper) either romanticized red men or pictured them as bestial warriors and ravishers of women. Nowadays the portrayal of Indians changed. In recent years, creative Native American writers have finally emerged as eloquent voices for their people; Leslie Silko is one of the strongest and brightest. Nowadays Native American writers (Sherman Alexie, N.Scott Momaday, Greg Sarris) try to picturesque the real (sometimes negative, sometimes positive ) portrait of Indian life. Some of the earliest written works (1700s and 1800s) by Native Americans were religious sermons and protest works. Samson Occom (Mohegan) and William Apess (Pequot) protested discrimination against Native Americans. Occom’s Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian (1772) discusses the damage that the introduction of alcohol had brought to native peoples. Many Native American writers of the 19th century wrote histories of their tribes. 7 One tribal historian was David Cusick (Tuscarora), whose sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations (1827) was the first published tribal history. One of the best –known early tribal historians was George Copway (Ojibwa), whose Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation (1850) emphasizes the importance of tribal oral history and explains the migrations, myths, religions, government, language, hunting, and games of his nation. Among the prominent 19th- century Native American writers of fiction were John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee), who wrote at mid- century, and Emily Pauline Johnson (Mohawk), whose career lasted into the early 20th century. 8 Alexie, (1966) a Spokane and Coeur d’Alene Indian, is one of the most prominent Native – American writers of his generation. He is best known for his brave portrayal of the harsh realities of reservation life, and has become a modern voice in the continuing search for Native – American cultural identity. Alexie’s works (The Lone Range and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), Smoke Signals (1998), Indian Killer (1996) detail, with dark humour, the debilitating influence of alcoholism and poverty that pervade life on the reservation as well as the anger that results from the distortion of true Indian culture. He is recognized as an innovative realist and erudite contributor to the modern Native- American tradition. “I was much more fundamental then (in his earlier writing). What changed me was September 11th (2001): I am now desperately trying to let go of the idea of being right, the idea of making decisions based on imaginary tribes. The terrorists were flying planes into the buildings because they thought they were right and they had special knowledge, and we continue to react. And we will be going to war in Iraq soon because we think we have special knowledge- and we don’t. We are making these decisions not based on any moral or ethical choice, but simply on the basis of power and money and ancient traditions that are full of shit, so I am increasingly suspicious of the word “tradition”, whether in political or literary terms.” (Sherman Alexie). Sherman Alexie learned from this experience that people can not change anything by force, at war . In the war people lose only moral and ethical values. So, in his writings he sometimes corrects Indian traditions and shows the real world of Indians. He criticizes stereotypes of Indians as nature – loving noble savages. Native American literature has nothing to do with the day – to – day lives of Indians. He wants his literature to concern the daily lives of Indians. He is working on a memoir tracing his family history from his grandfather who died in the Second World War to his own children. Much of Alexie’s fiction and poetry takes place on the Spokane Indian Reservation where he was born and raised, and he uses recurring characters like the isolated storyteller, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, and the violent and troubled bully, Victor. He focuses upon a small geographical locate to explore larger issues of history. At the same time he is more of an autobiographical writer. Alexie explains, “Every theme, every story, every tragedy that exists in literature takes place in my little community. Hamlet takes place on my reservation daily. King Lear takes place on my reservation daily. It’s a powerful place. I’m never going to run out of stories.”(Sherman Alexie). 9 Furthermore, Alexie explains that one of his primary goals is to reach Indian children on the reservation, whom he believes to be mainly influenced by White- dominated popular culture. Toward that end, Alexie often uses references popular culture. Alexie often uses references to television shows, movies, and music as a means to capture their attention and to speak in their language. “It’s the cultural currency, “ he explains. “Superman means something different to me than it does to a white guy from Ames, Iowa, or New York City or L.A. It’s a way for us to sit at the same table. I use pop culture like most poets use Latin.” Specially, Alexie describes television as the contemporary Gutenberg press, maintaining that “TV is the only thing that keeps us vaguely in democracy even if it’s in the hands of the corporate culture.” (Sherman Alexie). Indian identity for him has two aspects: on the one hand, some Indianans in his stories (e.g. in a story “Do not go gentle” a couple of loving Indian parents who struggled for their baby’s health, in a story “What ever happened to Frank Snake Church?” the protagonist Frank who quitted his beneficial job to start a new carrier as a basketball player only to commemorate the memory of his dead parents) keep to Indian traditions, rituals, they are spiritual, honest, have moral values, they respect and protect their community and family relations, but on the other hand, other Indians in his literature are drunkards , detached from traditions. They are violent and corrupt people. (e.g. in a story “What you pawn I will redeem” an Indian drunkard Jackson Jackson who wanted to buy his grandmother’s regalia from the pawnbroker but spent all his in a bar ). Alexie’s independent, even rebellious spirit is somewhat at odds with his use of ethnic categories. For the most part, he does not seek to tear down or question ethnic boundaries. For him, being Indian is the primary determinant of his identity and defines his writing: “If I write it, it’s an Indian novel. If I wrote about the Amish, it would be an Indian novel. That’s who I am.” He criticizes the stereotypes of Indians as nature –loving noble savages and implicates what he calls “the corn-pollen, four directions, eagle- feathered school of native literature.” You throw in a couple of birds and four directions and corn pollen,” Alexie explains, “and it’s Native American literature, when it has nothing to concern the daily lives of Indians.” (Sherman Alexie). Indian identity for him has two aspects: on the one hand, some Indians in his stories keep to Indian traditions, rituals, they are spiritual, honest, keep to moral values, respect and protect their community and family relations, but on the other hand, other Indians in his literature are drunkers, detached from traditions. Another of Alexie’s purposes is to rewrite dominant American history, which barely acknowledges the violent colonization and subsequent massacres of Indians by European settlers, because, as Alexie suggests, to do so would severely damage American national identity 10