Leaving the Reservation in Selected Prose by Sherman Alexie

82 Pages·2014·0.86 MB·English

Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Eliška Kellnerová

Leaving the Reservation in Selected Prose
by Sherman Alexie

Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A.

2013
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..
Author’s signature
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A., for his kind help,
valuable advice and encouragement while I was working on the thesis.
Also, I am very grateful to my family and Mr. Jan Wdowyczyn,
whose psychological support helped immensely.
Table of Contents

1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 5
2 Migration from Reservations to Urban Areas ........................................................... 9
3 Despondency ............................................................................................................ 14
4 Education ................................................................................................................. 27
5 The Reservation: A Place Haunted by a Horrid History ......................................... 36
6 Becoming a “Traitor” .............................................................................................. 47
7 A Distorted Representation of Native Americans? ................................................. 60
8 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 73
Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 76
Summary ......................................................................................................................... 81
Resumé ............................................................................................................................ 82
1 Introduction
Native American literature is little known to the mainstream European
readership. A knowledge of the contemporary life of Native Americans is minimal.
In contrast, Europeans were and are greatly interested in the romanticized image
of the stoic Indian, the Indian who lives in harmony with nature and has spiritual
powers. This fascination was further encouraged by the immensely popular
of the adventure novels by Karl May, a German author who provided his readership
with highly romanticized representation of Native Americans. It has clearly influenced
the image of Native Americans in many Europeans’ minds, a stereotype that some still
want to believe is applicable today. The desire for wilderness and untamed nature may
also partly explain why May’s novels and film adaptations of his works are still
so popular nowadays.
Significantly, some appealing aspects of Native American cultures
and traditions have been exploited by American society. Some ecology movements
operated with “indigenous wisdom” and ways of thinking and applied indigenous ideas
to fight their own cause. They approved of the indigenous people’s close contact
with nature and the respect of the land. However, some Native American scholars
and writers have criticized this, perceiving it as cultural colonization. In other words,
considering the history of genocide and assimilation, it is understandable
that appropriation of indigenous thoughts is seen as another form of disrespect
and abuse.
It is obvious that readers cannot acquire a comprehensive knowledge of Native
American cultures from May’s novels or Western movies. Similarly, taking bits
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and pieces of traditions and wisdom of indigenous peoples is questionable. That is why
it seems to me important to confront our stereotypical images and representations with
Native American literature, i.e. literature written by indigenous authors themselves.
American Indian literature is unique and contributes to the extraordinary
diversity of human literary expression. The first wave of Native American authors,
called the Native American Renaissance, flourished in 1960s. The leading writers
included N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor and James Welch.
The second wave also known as “Generation X” developed in 1980s and includes
Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Simon J. Ortiz, Sherman Alexie, Louis Owens, Linda Hogan
and Paula Gunn Allen.
Native American literature faces an interesting paradox. A great part
of indigenous literature concentrates on reservation life and is set on reservations.
Yet, about seventy percent of Native American population resides in urban areas
(Alexie, “Humor is My Green Card” 39). In the introduction to the book American
Indians and the Urban Experience, Susan Lobo wonders “why, with more than half
of all Indian people now living in urban areas, there is so little urban-focused interest
among researchers, writers, poets and artists, and why there are so few books on urban
themes and contexts” (xi). American Indians have migrated to urban areas since
the end of the World War II. However, this phenomenon seems to be neglected.
In my thesis, I will focus on the migration from reservations and analyze
selected prose by Sherman Alexie in order to understand the main push factors
as depicted in his works. Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene author of poetry, short
stories and novels. He is one of the most visible and talked about contemporary
American Indian writers. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington
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state, where many of his stories are set. Later in his life, he moved to Seattle,
Washington. In the same way, his early works deal with contemporary reservations
whereas in his later writings he shifted the focus to urban settings. For my purpose,
I have considered particularly relevant Alexie’s first collection of short stories The Lone
Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven1 (1993), his first novel Reservation Blues (1995)
and the novel for adolescents entitled The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian2
(2007). Moreover, I will also refer to other prose by Alexie, namely the novel Indian
Killer (1996) and the collections of short stories The Toughest Indian in the World
(2000) and Ten Little Indians (2003).
First of all, I will discuss the historical and political background of the migration
process and present important demographical information about Native American
population. In the following parts of the thesis, I will focus on selected prose by Alexie.
I will argue that widespread despondency may be an important reason for leaving
the reservation. I will analyze the causes and effects of this despondency. Moreover,
I will stress the significance of poor-quality education and its assimilating function.
American Indians have suffered a violent history of genocide and colonization
and I will therefore explore the influence of the past on Alexie’s reservation characters.
Of course, there are other push factors that appear in Alexie’s works and are not
included in the thesis, but I tried to point out the most significant of them. Another
issue that seems to me noteworthy is the attitude of reservation residents

1 The Title will be shortened to The Lone Ranger in the thesis.
2 The Title will be shortened to Diary in the thesis.
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to the phenomenon of migration. Finally, I will consider to what extent
Alexie’s representation of the reservation reflects the reality and point out the main
criticism raised against Alexie in that regard. I will carry out detailed textual analysis
of Alexie’s works as well as make usage of relevant secondary sources to support
my points. I believe that Alexie’s works offer a profound and interesting insight
into the motivations of large-scale migration from reservations to cities.

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2 Migration from Reservations to Urban Areas
I’ve been relocated and given a room
In a downtown hotel called The Tomb
And they gave me a job and cut my hair
I trip on rats when I climb the stairs
I get letters from my cousins on the rez
They wonder when they’ll see me next
But I’ve got a job and a landlady
She calls me chief, she calls me crazy
-Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues (221)
After World War II, the U.S. government implemented the policy of termination
and relocation that aimed at assimilating Native Indians into mainstream society
and encouraged their migration to cities. The relocation program offered jobs
and housing to American Indians in urban areas. However, Donald L. Fixico points out
that assimilation did not take place and it did not happen the way the government
expected. “Indian people”, advocates Fixico, “have struggled to learn a new culture
of mainstream urbanization, but rather than becoming absorbed into the process, they
have survived to form a new identity of their own” (ix). Nevertheless, the early years
of the relocation in the 1950s and 1960s were very hard for Native Americans. Fixico
accentuates that “[e]conomic pressure and the cultural alienation of city life frustrated
the early generations of early urban Indians who were miserable living in run-down
apartments and feeling lost in the city” (x). Consequently, some Native Indians returned
to the reservations but others managed to overcome the cultural barrier among different
tribes and formed a pan-Indian community (x). Fixico claims that in the 1960s
“[i]n what we sometimes call the ‘second removal’, urban Indians found a new home
in the cities, one representing modern traditions of an urban Indian culture” (quotation
marks in original, x). The increase of the Native American population in urban areas
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was significant. J. Matthew Shumway and Richard H. Jackson, in their study “Native
American Population Patterns” quote the U.S. Census Bureau to stress the large-scale
migration. “In 1950, 13.4 percent of enumerated Native Americans lived in urban areas,
but by 1990 the proportion had risen to 53 percent” (quoted in Shumway and Jackson,
187).
However, many scholars and researchers have reproached the U.S. Census
Bureau for inaccurate enumerations of Native Americans. Shumway and Jackson
argued that “[c]learly, the number of individuals who are of Native American ancestry
has been repeatedly underenumerated in the federal censuses of population” (186).
The underenumaration, explains Snipp, “results in part from the shifting definitions
used by the Bureau of the Census” (quoted in Shumway and Jackson, 186).
The inability of the U.S. Census Bureau to properly define the employed terms reflects
the insufficient comprehension of the minority. That fact is severely criticized by Lobo
who claims that the 1990 undercount “demonstrated the lack of understanding by this
governmental agency, and by extension other governmental agencies, regarding
the very nature of urban Indian populations and communities” (xii). Furthermore, Lobo
points out that “[t]his miscount not only fueled continued misperceptions regarding
Indian life in cities, but also justified reduced funding for the many greatly needed
social services for Indian people living in cities” (xii). She even states that some people
called it “statistical genocide” (xii).
It is interesting to note that Alexie, in the short story “Flight Patterns” from
the collection Ten Little Indians, alludes to the way the U.S Census Bureau used
to enumerate multiracial people. At one point of the story, the main character William
is imagining how it would be to have a biracial child: “He wondered how his life would
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