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Aboriginal beliefs,religious practices, customs and rituals relating to dying and death
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The Changing Spirituality of Individuals: The Similarities of Two Supposed Opposites in Major Texts Spirituality is universal to human beings in the sense that each individual searches for a meaning to their life by taking a look at the bigger picture. The Cree author, Tomson Highway, displays the importance of Aboriginal spirituality in his play, The Rez Sisters. In particular, an Aboriginal sacred figure, called Nanabush (Gadacz), attempts to restore lost morality to a reserve known as Wasychigan Hill. Similarly, a Canadian author, Joseph Boyden, introduces a bringer of Christian spirituality named Christophe “Crow”, to a tribe of Huron, in his novel called The Orenda. In The Rez Sisters, Nanabush focuses to return Aboriginal culture to …show more content…
In The Rez Sisters, one of the only characters able to see Nanabush is a woman named Marie-Adele. In addition to her ability to speak Cree to communicate with Nanabush, she is also dying from cancer. Some readers speculate that Nanabush speaks with Marie-Adele because she is able to speak Cree; however, her approaching death gives the impression that Nanabush appears to her to take her away. For this reason, Nanabush strikes at Marie-Adele, and goes as far as to play “games” with her (Highway 1.18). In an attempt to bring her the spirituality he believes is right, Nanabush uses the weakness of Marie-Adele’s close death to bring spirituality to her before she dies, and to stop her from continuing into the afterlife with a lack of Aboriginal culture. Likewise, Christophe from The Orenda self proclaims himself as a trickster (Boyden 245). He and two of his donnés – helpers from France – use writing and reading to deceive a group of Huron into believing that the Great Voice gave the French donnés. This would lead the Huron to consider the existence of the Great Voice, when in reality, Christophe simply used their lack of reading ability to trick them. The actions of Nanabush and Christophe show that both characters exploit the weaknesses of the Aboriginals they are with in order to increase the number of people with spirituality in …show more content…
Christophe originally intended for Snow Falls to be his first convert among the Huron village; nevertheless the two face a rocky relationship. In particular, Snow Falls primarily thinks of Christophe as an awkward man and she only pretends to support his Christian faith, as a means to infuriate her father, named Bird. For majority of the text, Christophe fails to convert her to his ways and eventually gives up on her. Regardless, he continuously protects her and even saves her from being assaulted by a French man (Boyden 133). Yet, when Snow Falls realizes that her husband may be killed, she accepts Christophe’s faith when she eats the Transubstantiated food, hoping that her husband may be saved by the Great Voice (Boyden 450). Unfortunately, however, the food was poisoned by one of Christophe’s French donnés, which kills Snow Falls, and leaves her with the same fate as Marie-Adele. In sum, Nanabush and Christophe formed a unique
At the Roundhouse theatre La boite in 2012 the play boy girl wall was performed by one man, Lucas Stibbard. The play is essentially a love story unlike what Stibbard says at the very beginning. The story is about a star-gazing boy, Thom, and a matchmaking wall, as well as Alethea the girl with the magpie after her. Along with a range of other characters, those three make up the title. This play’s didactic purpose to the audience is to make the audience overcome their fear. Stibbard effectively transmits this to the audience through conventions Brecht Theatre, such as V-effekt, Spass, Gest and multimedia.
Neidhardt in Black Elk Speaks offers an introspective narrative of the spiritual atmosphere surround the Sioux’s spiritual legacy. In doing so, the author promotes the validation and worthiness of spirituality in the so-called modern society. It is his intent to use the prayer as a vehicle to transmit the message that transcends the mere formulation of an apologetic thesis. Hence, Neidhardt seeks to penetrate the reader’s soul by presenting with a healing body of text, which he structures following two main themes: spiritual leadership and everyday human struggle against the corruption of the mind by the limitation to see beyond one’s physical strength.
In Salvation on Sand Mountain, the emotional frustrations, cultural hypotheses, and literary images provide insight into the ethics of the author, Dennis Covington. During his dangerous undertakings while submerged in the religious practices of Appalachia, Covington incites anxiety within the reader when discussing worship services involving snakes, and inquisitorial thought when revealing the number of casualties involved, in turn showcasing his own passions and morality. Covington’s rectitude, goodwill, and intelligence all play important roles in revealing his ethos. Subsequently, they also exemplify his argument: No obstacle can conquer one’s religious devotion.
Trauma, abuse, displacement, and feelings of alienation have, and is still plaguing the Aboriginal community. Author Eden Robinson and playwright Constance Lindsay Skinner address the displacement, mistreatment, and abuse the indigenous population has faced, and still faces, in Monkey Beach and Birthright. Both Eden Robinson's novel Monkey Beach, and playwright Constance Lindsay Skinner's Birthright deals with characters who are struggling with trauma and haunted with scars from the past. The authors detail these events and bring the reader into the “shoes” of the characters through characterization, imagery, dialogue, and through revealing intimate memories of the characters. These literary techniques enable the reader to see the parallel between the cyclical, ambiguous state of nature, and the ambiguity in humans and how there is a perpetuating, intergenerational cycle of violence caused by abuse and the mistreatment of the Aboriginal.
Stereotypes are common in the United States because people have different beliefs and ideals how they view others. The article "Ghetto Bitches, China Dolls, and Cha Cha Divas" by Jennifer Pozner demonstrates the negative racial and stereotypes use in the famous national TV show America's Next Top Model. She stated that a model was making a decision whether she was more tied to her ethnicity or her nationality. Given that this situation is becoming more important in America which makes the melting pot impossible to achieve. Tyra Banks, a former supermodel and the host of the show, yelled at a African America contestant is considered racialism to Pozner. For my consideration stereotypes are a way that build up and organize the society. Furthermore,
The novel Black Robe by Brian Moore, follows the stories of many individuals but places a focus on the characters, Father Paul Laforgue, a priest who came to America to become a martyr, Daniel Davost, a young Frenchman who falls in love with an Algonkin, and Annuka, the Algonkin woman who struggles between her love for Daniel and her love for her people. This narrative follows their journey from the fur trading center of Québec to the distant village of Iwanchou that is in desperate need for a new priest to replace the ailing Father Jerome. Along the way, each of these characters will face trials including the loss of the Christian faith, starvation, sickness, and even the threat of other Native American tribes such as the Iroquois.
Tomson Highway is a playwright of Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kaspukasing. The play is based on the real life of Highway as he was born as a full-blood Cree, lived in a Native community that takes place in Wasaychigan Hill, and registered as a member of the Barren Lands First Nation (“Biography”). Native people have their own culture and beliefs; unique language and mythology. Most of his plays use Cree and Ojib language and show the issue of the women power in the community. As the period changes, the Canadian government tries to implement a new system to ensure that native people can cope and adapt with the world that keeps changing. The government tries to assimilate Christianity and Western culture by forcing the kids to go to the residential schools. They are not allowed to speak their own language, Cree, and stay with their parents so that they have less time spend on having a normal family life. As one of the ways to preserve Native cultures and beliefs, Highway uses the play as a medium to express their hardship in facing social challenges by the government. Tomson Highway explain the uniqueness of Cree language, the value of women in Native community and how the government’s strategy on modernizing Native people leads to the destruction of Native cultures.
With grief also comes pain. Naomi suffering through sexual exploitation at the hands of her next door neighbor left her scared for the rest of her life, yet unable to speak on the ordeal. Along with molestation, Naomi also suffered through displacement, racism, and the interment of her people. Events that would have a serious effect on the psyche of someone still maturing; Injustices carried out against her family outraged her Yet she endures in silence, unable to speak, only able to question, ponder and forget; “If I linger in the longing [to remember her childhood], I am drawn into a whirlpool. I can only skirt the edges after all”, it’s clear that she wants to forget the past, yet ponders on whether or not to revisit it. Her two aunts serve as figures that contradict. At the start of the novel, Naomi shares the mindset of her Obasan; An Issei who employs silence in response to injustices and grief. However her aunt Emily does not accept the belief that the Japanese should endure through silence. She wants Naomi to reclaim her voice, follow in her footsteps and speak out against the hatred in the society. The media shames them, calling them the “Yellow peril” and a “stench in the nostrils of the Canadian people”, painting false images that glorify their internment which aunt Emily shows clear resentment towards. Naomi is reluctant to accept the idea that silence is restrictive. As she sees letters her aunt
On April 12, 2014 at 7:30 pm, I gratefully attended the musical Guys and Dolls at Ouachita Baptist University's auditorium. Directed by Daniel Inouye, this wonderful play is based on the story and characters of Damon Runyan. These stories which were written in the 1920s and 1930s, involved gangsters, gamblers, and other characters from the New York underworld. The premiere of Guys and Dolls on Broadway was in 1950 where it ran 1200 performances and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The musical had many Broadway revivals and was even turned into a film in 1955.
In James Baldwin’s 1952 novel “Go Tell It On The Mountain” the characters in the novel each embark on a spiritual journey. Baldwin has dedicated a chapter to each member of the Grimes family, detailing their trails and tribulations, hopes and aspirations, as each one’s quest to get closer to God becomes a battle. I have chosen the character John because I admire the fierce struggle he endured to find his spirituality. I will examine how he’s embarked on his quest and prove that he has done it with integrity and dignity.
Born and raised in a family of storytellers, it’s no wonder that this author, Louise Erdrich became a prolific writer. Louise was born in Little Falls, Minnesota. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, near the Chippewa Reservation with her mom, who had Native American roots and her dad who was of German descent. Her parents encouraged and challenged her at an early age to read, also to write stories and even paid her a nickel for each one that she wrote. Lorena Stookey states that Louise Erdrich’s style of writing is “like William Faulkner, she creates a fictional world and peoples it with multiple narrators whose voices commingle to shape her readers’ experience of that world” (Stookey 14). Louise writes this moving story “The Shawl” as she is haunted by the sorrows of the generations of her people, the Anishinaabeg. I initially saw this tale as a very complex reading, but after careful reading and consideration, saw it as a sad and compelling story.
The play The Rez Sisters is written by one of Canada's most celebrated playwrights, Tomson Highway. Highway was born in 1951 in northwestern Manitoba. He went on to study at the University of Manitoba and graduated from the University of Western Ontario, with honors in Music and English. Native Literature is inspired by 'contemporary social problems facing native Canadians today; alcohol and drug abuse, suicide, wife battering, family violence, the racism of the justice system, loneliness, rejection, youth awareness, as well as modern-day environmental issues.';(P. 172 Native Literature in Canada.) Highway once said, 'We grew up with myths. They're the core of our identity as people.';(P. 172 Native Literature in Canada.) I am going to focus on the image and identity of Native people as seen through the play The Rez Sisters.
The play “God and the Indian”, written by Drew Hayden Taylor, is a story of reconciliation told through dialogue between two people. The main characters are Johnny, a middle aged Cree woman who grew up in a residential school and George King, who is an Archbishop and was a teacher at the residential school. The title of the play is relevant because the character Johnny doesn’t see how God could have allowed the horrible things to happen to the children and probably wonders where God was. The major theme of this play was reconciliation between a child who had been abused and the person she accuses of abusing her. The play describes some of the abuse of the children in residential schools and the long term effects on one of them.
Several times, silence is oppressive due to the fact it stunts communication and relationships within the family. For instance, when Naomi is molested by Old Man Gower, in which he tells her to defer from telling her mother this information for obvious reasons. A. Lynne Magnussen observes the following: “Before Gower: knowledge between mother and child is antecedent to words. After Gower: the silence hides a secret betrayal” (Magnussen 8). This explains how Naomi’s relationship with her mother never became vocal, let alone overly vocal, before the secrets began with Old Man Gower. The weight of the secret strained the relationship, but Naomi was the only one who was able to recognize the situation since her mother had no part. Naomi herself describes the experience as a mountain splitting in half: “[Naomi’s] mother is on one side of the rift. I am on the other. We cannot reach each other” (Kogawa 77). In addition to this instance, the rest of Naomi’s story is also driven by oppressive silence in the government’s treatment to the Japanese-Canadians. They were evicted from their homes and businesses without any guarantee that they would see any of their possessions again. Eventually, this lead to the Japanese-Canadian community being forced into ghost towns to build up a new life. Their letters were
This detachment from society makes her feel very lonely at times and that her daughter, Mariam, is all that she has. However, Nana is scared to trust people in her life because two very important people have disappointed her, her father and Jalil. She hated her father when he was alive, she wishes he had killed her, “‘ I wish my father had had the stomach to sharpen one of his knives and do the honorable thing. It might have been better for me.’” (6-7) For her, death seems more promising than the life she is living. She also feels that Jalil has completely abandoned Mariam and she, “‘Rich man telling rich lies. He never took you to any tree. And don’t let him charm you. He betrayed us, your beloved father. He cast us out. He cast us out of his big fancy house like we were nothing to him. He did it happily.’” (5) Jalil has cast Nana and Mariam out of his life because he is embarrassed of them, he has made Nana feel completely worthless. However, Mariam does not