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Raoul C. Chung
Professor Bowen
English 40WI
06 July 00
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Never-Ending Conflict
Culture -- The socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. It certainly took many years to develop such thing as culture, behind every little part or celebration there's often a meaningful story. Take Chinese culture for example July 14th of the lunar calendar is the Chinese Halloween that the spirits of our ancestors will visit their children, and the present generation will welcome them by burning paper sculptures resembling houses and maids in an open fire as gifts. Without knowing what is going on, foreigners would be clueless and make assumption about our culture, this is the problem when two or more cultures clash together. United States is the best example of a melting pot; many different cultures are closely associating with each other in a contact zone (a virtual space where two or more cultures overlap one another). This is where most of the conflicts begin -- misunderstanding, disapproval, and false superiority. Leslie Marmon Silko uses the characters and settings of Gardens in the Dunes to show the intercultural conflict in the late 1800s. Such conflicts between the Native Indian and the US government can be traced back to the 1500s when European settlers first expose to the America natives. Their natural religious beliefs gave the settlers a barbaric uncivilized impression, and that's when the settlers decided to take advantage of the innocent minds of the Indians setting up unequal trade for lands.
As a mixed blood Laguna Publeo, Mexican, and White, she had been discriminated by both Indians and Whites. In Garden in the Dunes she clearly interpreted the mistreatments toward Indians in the late 1800s through the eyes of a third person narrator, with the spotlight focused on Sister Salt and her younger sister Indigo. There are several turning points in the story, but the one I see as the most important is when all the Indians were evicted from the riverside due to their "illegal" religious gathering and dances to pass on the dead/ancestor. Later on Indigo was caught and sent to Indian boarding school where the main purpose was to "civilize" the wild Indians. All the other students there are what Indigo described "only their skin looked Indian. Their eyes, their hair, ... shoes, stockings, ... everything else looks like a white girl." (Silko 67) Apparently that is the first step of US government's attempt to Americanize Indians, speaking so Victor in "Smoke Signals" is a great model. Victor is one of many teenage boys that grew up in a reservation single parent family, without any proper knowledge given about his native culture the only sources are the public school and television. On the other hand Victor's friend Thomas whose parents passed away and was brought up by his grandmother, he had learned a lot by the traditional storytelling method. Although Thomas is the "real" Indian, but Victor's type of Indian is by far more acceptable to the outsiders because according to what they've seen in books or television Victor is what Indian should look like. At one point in the movie the two had gone into a car accident and later accused to be intoxicated at the time of accident. Victor and Thomas then told the sheriff the entire story behind the incident. Having the presumption that most Indians are alcoholics, he was quite surprised when he heard that neither Victor nor Thomas had ever ingested a single drop of alcohol. Alcoholism was common in the old days due to after war effects of World War I, World War II, and Vietnam War, many Indian soldiers had taken alcohol as a relieve from the memories of battle terrors. It ponders me whether or not it is fair if the officials are having such negative assumptions about an entire ethnic group?
The religious believes of different Indian tribes may differ from one another. Author of Soul of the Indian Charles A. Eastman mentioned that Sioux believes in the "Great Mystery", a God that takes place in nature but never a solid physical form. On the other hand, Sand Lizard people in Gardens in the Dunes believed in Jesus Christ and Messiah. This is when the government starts to affiliate with the Indian belief due to the different view for Messiah. In Christianity, Jesus Christ died thousands of years ago for his children to cleanse our sins. The Native Indians believed incarnation and Jesus Christ's spirit would be inserted into the body of Messiah generation after generation. Similar to Christianity, knowledge about Messiah was taught to the next generation through stories and storytelling much similar to bible stories. Another goal of the government was to conform the Indians into western culture, so the first step was to separate their children from the parents and old believes. All children by law has to go to school, the duty of capturing children were off to the Indian polices. (Silko 1) There were even rumors of that the soldiers are after the Messiah and his family attempting to kill them off. Where in the world is humanity? Isn't this similar to the reason of the pilgrims migrating to the New World, because the Churches were overpowering personal rights? The settlers had invaded the Indians' land hundreds of years ago, and now they are trying to eliminate their culture. How is it different from the totalitarian churches in the 16th century? Just a slight disapproval for the Indian culture, they would separate children from their parents to reprogram their minds. Are they really superior to the Indians and alter their cultural beliefs?
Is it superiority or false superiority? There's no such thing as a man is superior to another man, everybody is created equally. The thought of being better than another individual is only a psychiatric self-fulfillment.Due to their skin tones and primitive instruments, they were automatically considered as low wild people. The settlers themselves weren't any sort of upper-classmen in Europe, so when they came to America psychiatrically wanted to rule over this newfound land. Many of their behaviors gave the Indians bad impression; some even became enemies with the Europeans. On top of the Europeans settlers, the missionaries weren't that much better of a case. Mama -- mother of Sister Salt and Indigo, she was captured by some soldiers and became the maid of an officer's wife. She was later taken away by a reverend who raped her claiming to be "saving her soul from temptation" (Silko 16). I do not see what feelings such behavior can give the natives but hatred, the corruption within the white people also played a quite important role attributing to the conflict. After claiming all of the Indians' land, the government in order to repay the Indians by establishing reservations. All of the reservation added together is less than 5% of the landmass of United States (Vogeler), how can it being fair? According to the grandmother of Sister Salt, everything in the reservation was controlled by the government, they ate white food, weren't allow to travel, actually they weren't allow to leave the reservation at all. (Silko 17) If the government was trying to conform Indians into Christianity, didn't God created everybody equally? It's quite ironic how their actions were contradicting their purpose.
The conflict between the Native Americans and the government is a never-ending story, trying to resolve always leads to unpleasant argument. Also, there's not much the US government can do about it. Throughout history I've never seen a thing happened. Going to war was a fair game. No matter how strong and powerful are your invaders, you have the responsibility to protect your own estate. Whoever loses the battle, loses everything he or she got. There shouldn't be any paying back for war. United States would be the first. It started out with paying back the Indian by establishing reservation, and then it was rebuilding the entire Japan. Why do you think Japan is the number one technological advancer in the world, if it wasn't United States there would not be the Japan we see now. Back to the conflict with Indians. Majority of the casinos now are Indian owned, and each of them are making millions upon millions each month. Aren't Native Indian supposed to be non-materialistic? Why are they opening casinos then, are they trying to get their money back from the white people now? I think the main reason now is MONEY, all those saying about "you stole our land." Or "my ancestors owned these lands." Those are all lame excuses for them to make more money. Work Cited
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Gardens In the Dunes. New York.
Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1
Definition for Culture. Dictionary dot com.
Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. Visited07/05/0
http//dictionary.reference.com/search?q=culture
Smoke Signals. With Adam Beach, Evan Adams, Irene Bedard. Shadow Catcher, 18.
Eastman, Charles A.(Ohiyesa). The Soul of the Indian, An Interpretation. Lincoln,
Nebraska. University of Nebraska Press. 111
Indian Reservations in United States. Map of Indian Reservation
Vogeler, Ingolf. Last revised 0/1/0
http//www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w188/i.htm
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