In the early 1900s tens of thousands of Native Americans were sent off to boarding schools and striped of their culture as a solution to what white men viewed as an Indian problem. It is hard to understand what these children and their families went through without actually being there. One author, Linda LeGarde Grover, helps the world see a new perspective on the times in her story, Maggie and Louis, 1914. The story is about two young Native Americans and their completely different experiences at the boarding school Herron that they were sent to. She demonstrates how white men forced their language, traditions, and their appearance on children in the boarding school. Maggie and Louis, 1914 is a story shaped by many cultural forces.
The story begins in a classroom where Maggie, the main
…show more content…
Grover uses hair color as an analogy between the white forced culture and the destruction of the Native Americans culture. When the girls are in the classroom learning to mend socks the Matron suggests singing the song, Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair. This song is about a caucasian girl. The girls listened to the song a few times before beginning to sing themselves. “Jeanie with the light brown hair, happy as dancing daisies” (45). This song is hard for the Native American girls to relate to as they are doing labor in a boarding school. This is a way for the matron to debunk the dark features of these young girls that is their heritage. Another time hair is used is when Louis first arrived at the boarding school. He knew that he couldn’t stay their. He made a run for it the first chance he got. He almost made it, but his hair gave him away. “The color was his betrayal, a near-black copper that the intensity of the oblique late-day sun lit to a red beacon” (46).This imagery reinforces the struggles Native Americans faced in boarding schools. The use of hair color is a creative way that Grover used to represent the
In the story, this group of brownies came from the south suburbs of Atlanta where whites are “…real and existing, but rarely seen...” (p.518). Hence, this group’s impression of whites consisted of what they have seen on TV or shopping malls. As a result, the girls have a narrow view that all whites were wealthy snobs with superiority like “Superman” and people that “shampoo-commercial hair” (p.518). In their eyes “This alone was the reason for envy and hatred” (p 518). So when Arnetta felt “…foreign… (p.529), as a white woman stared at her in a shopping mall you sense where the revenge came from.
Women of the Western schoolhouse had a reputation for instilling values and lessons to the children of the frontier. They were historical heroines who chose to journey all the way from the East just to hear the sounds of children learning. According to Anne M. Butler, in her book Uncommon Common Women, these women left behind their family and friends, "took teacher training, signed two-year contracts, and set forth for unknown sites " (68). Schoolteachers on the frontier must have had an incredible love for children in order to deal with the difficulties the West placed in their way.
Lives for Native Americans on reservations have never quite been easy. There are many struggles that most outsiders are completely oblivious about. In her book The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich brings those problems to light. She gives her readers a feel of what it is like to be Native American by illustrating the struggles through the life of Joe, a 13-year-old Native American boy living on a North Dakota reservation. This book explores an avenue of advocacy against social injustices. The most observable plight Joe suffers is figuring out how to deal with the injustice acted against his mother, which has caused strife within his entire family and within himself.
Seale, Doris. Through Indian Eyes: The Native Experience in Books for Children. New Society Publisher, Philadelphia, PA: 1992.
Janie’s first discovery about herself comes when she is a child. She is around the age of six when she realizes that she is colored. Janie’s confusion about her race is based on the reasoning that all her peers and the kids she grows up with are white. Janie and her Nanny live in the backyard of the white people that her Nanny works for. When Janie does not recognize herself on the picture that is taken by a photographer, the others find it funny and laughs, leaving Janie feeling humiliated. This racial discovery is not “social prejudice or personal meanness but affection” (Cooke 140). Janie is often teased at school because she lives with the white people and dresses better than the other colored kids. Even though the kids that tease her were all colored, this begins Janie’s experience to racial discrimination.
Culture has the power and ability to give someone spiritual and emotional distinction which shapes one's identity. Without culture, society would be less and less diverse. Culture is what gives this earth warmth and color that expands across miles and miles. The author of “The School Days of an Indian Girl”, Zitkala Sa, incorporates the ideals of Native American culture into her writing. Similarly, Sherman Alexie sheds light onto the hardships he struggled through growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in a chapter titled “Indian Education”.
In the film Unseen Tears, Native American families express the impact they still feel from their elders being forced into the Southern Ontario’s Mohawk Institute and the New York’s Thomas Indian School. Survivors of the boarding schools speak of their traumatic experiences of being removed from their families, being abused, and experiencing constant attack on their language and culture.
During the nineteenth century, the government opened up more land for settlement, and pioneers began to make their way across America to “empty” prairies in the Midwest. These “empty” lands were not actually empty—they contained many different tribes of American Indians—but the white Americans saw this as an opportunity for cheap land and a new, better life. The pioneers lived among the American Indians, but it was not a harmonious relationship. Laura Ingalls Wilder in her Little House series talked about her parents’ attitudes toward the Osage. Most of the time, her parents either made fun of the Osage people or feared them, which, in turn, instilled fear and stereotypes in Laura and her sisters. Such was the case for the majority of
When Lutie applies for different jobs, there is always an alter motif involved. For example, when she auditions to become a singer for Mr. Crosse, he says she has to go through six weeks of training that will cost her $125, which is money Lutie doesn’t have. Boots presents Lutie with the opportunity to sing, but like every other opportunity, it falls through. When Bud asked why white people want colored people shining shoes, Lutie couldn’t come up with an explanation. She figured that it must be “hate that made them wrap up all Negroes in a neat package labeled ‘colored’; a package that called for certain kinds of jobs and a special kind of treatment”(71) that limits their overall experiences as African-Americans.
In our day and age where our youth are becoming more aware of the history of the country and the people who inhabit it, the culture of Native Americans has become more accessible and sparks an interest in many people young and old. Recent events, like the Dakota Access Pipeline, grab the attention of people, both protesters and supporters, as the Sioux tribe and their allies refuse to stay quiet and fight to protect their land and their water. Many Native people are unashamed of their heritage, proud of their culture and their ancestors. There is pride in being Native, and their connection with their culture may be just as important today as it was in the 1800’s and before, proving that the boarding school’s ultimate goal of complete Native assimilation to western culture has
Those two events may seem like nothing but it shows how even at the early age of 8, children are taught to spot the differences in race instead of judging people by their character. Directing after this Twyla mentions how her and Roberta “looked like salt and pepper standing there and that’s what the other kids called us sometimes” (202). On the first page of this short story we already have 3 example of race dictating how the characters think and act. With the third one which mentions salt which is white and pepper which is black we understand that one girl is white and one girl is black. The brilliance of this story is that we never get a clear cut answer on which girl is which. Toni Morrison gives us clues and hints but never comes out and says it. This leaves it up to us to figure it out for ourselves. The next example of how race influences our characters is very telling. When Twyla’s mother and Roberta’s mother meeting we see not only race influencing the characters but, how the parents can pass it down to the next generation. This takes places when the mothers come to the orphanage for chapel and Twyla describes to the reader Roberta’s mother being “bigger than any man
As this poem characterizes the view of a native woman expressing feelings of passion relating to her culture, it also criticizes society, in particular Christianity, as the speaker is experiencing feelings of discontent with the outcome of residential schools. It does not directly criticize the faith, but through the use of a heavy native dialect and implications to the Christian faith it becomes simple to read the speakers emotions.
There are many aspects of Ed Barker’s experience that are similar to Native American experiences in contemporary America. Ed is a second generation Native American who was raised and lived outside of a reservation. He was not taught his heritage, customs or tribal language which is what has been experienced by Native Americans over the last 150 years (McGoldrick, Giordano, & Garcia-Preto, 2005). His grandmother left the reservation because there was no future on the reservation (poor economic conditions and poor survival conditions related to lack of (promised support) from the Federal Government (McGoldrick, Giordano, & Garcia-Preto, 2005)). He learned many Native American values from his father, even though his father did not share the heritage. He learned the importance of honor, decency, respect,
“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, by Karen Russell is the story of a pack of human girls who were born of werewolves. They are taken from their families in the wilderness and brought to a St. Lucy’s. It was here that they were to be civilized. The process of civilization involved stripping them of their personal and cultural identities and retraining them in a manner that was acceptable to the human world. This is a close analogy to the Residential Schools of Cultural Assimilation for native Americans from 1887 to the early 1950’s.
Through the mood of the words Angelou uses, the reader is able to recognize Marguerite’s dissatisfaction for her black features. For example the narrator states “Wouldn 't they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream… number-two pencil.” The use of the word “ugly” when she describes wanting to wake out of the black dream conveys her association of being black with something unattractive or frightening as a nightmare. Her use of the word “mass” portrays her discontent with how large her kinky hair is. Lastly, the use of the word “too-big” when she is describing a Negro girl tells of her distaste for being larger black girl. These words have a negative connotation and depict an unfavorable outlook of features associated with a black girl. Another example is when she describes a “cruel fairy stepmother” who turned her into a “too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil.” The use of the word “cruel” tells the reader that the fairy stepmother cursed her by making her black. Furthermore showing her belief that being black is a