How To Write A Literary Analysis On Wounded Knee

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In this literary analysis, the June, 1973 issue of New Breed magazine defines the tumultuous activism of Native American communities, such as the Metis Tribe, that sought to resist the tyranny of white oppression in the era of the Wounded Knee Incident at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. One poem in this issue provides an important insight into the internal and external political conflict and corruption at Pine Ridge, which is defined in “Hawk” Henry J. Foster’s poem “Wounded Knee”. This issue also defines the internal issues of governance related to alcohol recovery programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, the Winter Warmth Project, and other community services that are meant to help the Metis tribe as a form of resistance …show more content…

Foster is a powerful literary statement about the political aspects of the Wound Knee incident that took place on February 23, 1973 at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Historically, this poem was published in New Breed Magazine nearly four months after this event occurred. Foster’s poem defines the important aspects of popular resistance against corruption within the tribal unit, as well as outside of the tribal unit in terms of evaluating the military resistance put up by members of the Oglala Tribe to attempt an impeachment of Tribal President Dick Wilson and to use military force to remove this corrupt leader from power. In Foster’s poem, this aspect of militaristic resistance to white governmental oppression is major part of the fight against internally corrupt tribal leaders that oppress their own …show more content…

For instance, Foster defines the historical oppression of the white government’s use of “cavalry” to define this form of external tyranny by the white government: Our children here one day slain/By cavalry riding bold;/Whose journals mark with bloody stain/The saddest story told (Foster 8). In these opening lines, Foster is acknowledging the external genocide of the U.S. Calvary that massacred entire tribes during the period of westward expansion in the 19th century. More so, Foster is using this historical precedent to urge all Indians to rise up militarily against the white government in the U.S., as well as at home in Saskatchewan: “If all our people join as one/ In honoring our braves,/ They have not vainly bore the gun/ Who liberate our slaves” (8). Foster’s call for unity against the U.S. government is a powerful statement on the militaristic call to rise up against tyranny, so that no Indian brave has “vainly bore the gun.” In this poem, Foster is also making the claim that the combination of internal and external corruption are working together to

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