A Shift in Advertising

If you’re like me–an avid watcher of AMC’s Mad Men–after one episode you’ll think of yourself as quite the advertisement specialist. And really–what’s to know about advertising? Sex. Women. Materialism. The formula for successful advertisements is a simple one.

That’s why I have been so pleasantly surprised by new and innovative commercials. The first is for a Bounty Select-A-Size paper towel. Usually, Bounty commercials or any advertisement of a domestic product will show the housewife, or soccer mom cleaning up after their bratty, inconsiderate kids who make a ridiculous mess. But she always has a super happy face on because she knows with the cleaning product she bought that–all will be fine. (Off camera she takes 3 Xanax and downs  a fifth of Vodka). Cleaning products have always been geared to the female demographic until now: The commerical below shows a father–yes, that’s right!–cooking a breakfast, minding his children, and cleaning up when messes are made.  The message here: Men can do domestic work like cooking and cleaning. AND they can have fun doing it. Who woulda thunk?

The next commercial goes along with the same motif as Bounty: Men are empowered by doing housework! But the Tide with Downy commercial takes it a step further. This commercial shows a loving father as “Mr. Mom”. He has the cleaning skills to use phrases like, “I use Tide to get out the stains and Downy to get it soft” & “I let her play cowboy once a week so I can wash [her princess outfit]”. Men everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief as they exclaim in unison, “Thank you for giving us some freaking credit! Just because I’m a guy doesn’t mean I am helpless and sloppy.” The world in television and movies show us that men are hopeless and helpless when it comes to cleaning. (Ever see the “Man puts too much suds into the laundry” gag?). Bounty, Downy and Tide won’t stand for that idiocy any longer. 

 

Go advertising! Making the world a little less misogynistic, one paper towel use, laundry cycle and chip gorge at a time.

I Can’t Believe I’m Saying This…I’m On Miley’s Side.

It’s been a few weeks since the whole Miley Cyrus-VMA’s debacle and I wanted to voice somethings before I get totally bored with it. I think it was really interesting to see the backlash of the performance. There were a lot of different theory’s going around about it. Feminists backed her up. Conservatives slut shamed. Race was brought up questioning if it was an issue of commodification & accessorizing of black women. I read a lot of theories but I don’t feel that there was enough of what I am thinking: Miley Cyrus is a bad performer and should never sing again in a setting like that…ever.

Raise your hand if you want me to stop!

I watched the VMA performance, I wasn’t impressed. I’ve heard Cyrus sing before in a small, acoustic setting and she was alright. Not my cup of tea but she has a fair voice. The fact of it is–she just isn’t that strong of a performer. She was off key, out of breath, unable to keep tempo and instead worked the shock-and-awe factor of the performace. Compare Cyrus to Beyoncé, Gaga and Minaj–three women who are equally scantily clothed, who have gyrated during a concert and possibly stuck their tongues out for people to see–and Cyrus misses the mark. The difference is: The Holy Trinity are  good at entertaining, they can sing, dance, & perform! Cyrus on the other hand, can’t do any of that. She should stick to small venues where she can work on her voice.

I guess the big annoying thing about this whole thing is that we couldn’t look at the performance as an isolated incident. So she bombed-big deal! Instead, Cyrus’s failure became a negative reflection upon an entire gender. That is so annoying. Fo’ realz.

I’m walking a little slower today

Dusten Brown holding his daughter, Veronica.

Monday, the battle for Baby Veronica came to an end. With guns in tow, US Marshals took the screaming child from her biological father—from her Nation—and placed her with the adoptive couple in South Carolina. “The Court of the Great White Father” never allowed a “best interest” hearing, and by doing so, disregarded Native sovereignty and condoned intergenerational -cultural genocide.  Therefore, “The Court of the Great White Father” asserts that Baby Veronica’s best interest is to be placed in a world that is better for her—a world only an affluent, white family can give her. Native communities came together to fight for Veronica, to no avail. When the Great White Father wants something to happen—by God, no one can stop it.

This case is all sorts of racism, sexism, and classism being fueled by a Right-wing narrative that the Puritans themselves couldn’t have created. Change the variables of race, gender, and class and you can really see how messed up this case is: Would a mother have to fight this hard and long to have her biological daughter back? Would a white-military man have to fight like this at a chance to have his daughter? Would an affluent biological parent have these issues?  The answer is. Hell No!

The funny thing, if you could call it funny, was the lack of outcry from anyone other than Native folks. The Native activists discourse has been a good one, a strong one but–compared to the amount of crap mainstream media has produced—it hasn’t even made a dent. Obviously, this case has marginalization of the classes/races/genders written all over it. So where was the outrage from mainstream activists?

Where were the civil right allies, pissed that a Native man—a soldier even—was fighting for his daughter? Where were the Feminists, pissed that an unwed father had no rights to his biological daughter, pissed of the blatant patriarchy of the case and pissed of the dismissive media who saw the father as a lazy, no-good Indian? Where were our liberal-lefties who saw an Evangelical adoption agency circumvent all laws and ethical protocol in placing Baby Veronica up for adoption?

Where were they? Where are they? I’m not saying that Natives need white Saviors, I’m saying that allies are the greatest invention in history. The more voices, the louder we can be.

This case is the fulfilling of a systematic venture to kill the American Indians. We have been defeated. Without our children—we have nothing left. Laws, like the Indian Child Welfare Act, have been gutted before our very eyes. How does an Indian trust the government? The laws that were enacted to protect us were disregarded and trampled upon. Treaties continue to go unchecked.

Can you imagine how this case has made me feel? Everything I do, my school work, my hope for my people’s brighter future—is futile. I have to come to terms that things like this most likely will happen again. I’m terrified to have children of my own—what if they are taken from me? All I can do is to continue to walk the Red Road, being the best I can be and more importantly, making it possible for my people to reach their goals. I need to come to terms with what has transpired.

I will—hopefully.

I will—just give me  time.

I want to thank the countless lawyers, activists, tribal members, and allies for their support over the past 2 years. I also want to say a prayer for the Brown family during this difficult time. I pray for Veronica, that she will grow up healthy and strong. Our hearts go with you. Be safe.

Seamus Heaney 1939-2013

Amid the reports of war in Syria, I completely brushed over the news that Irish poet, Seamus Heaney passed away. Heaney was born in County Derry in 1939, on a farm called Mossbawn. In many ways, that place is still the center of his poetic world, its omphalos. Heaney used the word to describe the farm, turning the word itself into a kind of sonic vehicle. In that way Heaney brought a sense of irish renaissance, or more accurately, a rebirth of Northern Irish poetry. Seamus Heaney’s conceptions of powerful informed regionalistic poetry earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The Squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where we was digging.

The course boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my fingers and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

 

From Squarings

xlviii

Strange how things in the offing, once they’re sensed,
Convert to things foreknown;
And how what’s come upon its manifest

Only in light of what has been gone through.
Seventh heaven may be
The whole truth of a sixth sense come to pass.

At any rate, when light breaks over me
The way it did on the road beyond Coleraine
Where wind got saltier, the sky more hurried

And silver lamé shivered on the Bann
Out in mid-channel between the painted poles,
That day I’ll be in step with what escaped me.

Encounter by Czeslaw Milosz

It’s been so hot here in SLC it’s nice to look at something chilly and read a poem with cold images.

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.

A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.

One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,

Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going

The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.

I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

For many years Milosz’s poetry was little noticed in the United States, though he was highly regarded in Poland. Recognition in Poland came in defiance of official government resistance to Milosz’s work. The communist regime refused to publish the books of a defector; for many years only underground editions of his poems were secretly printed and circulated in Poland. But in 1980, when Milosz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the communist government was forced to relent. A government-authorized edition of Milosz’s poems was issued and sold a phenomenal 200,000 copies. One sign of Milosz’s widespread popularity in Poland occurred when Polish workers in Gdansk unveiled a monument to their comrades who were shot down by the communist police. Two quotations were inscribed on the monument: one was taken from the Bible; the other was taken from a poem by Milosz.

Czeslaw Milosz, “Encounter” from The Collected Poems, 1931-1987. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalites, Inc. Used by permission of the HarperCollins Publishers.

When at a Certain Party in NYC

Wherever you’re from sucks,
and wherever you grew up sucks,
and everyone here lives in a converted
chocolate factory or deconsecrated church
without an ugly lamp or souvenir coffee cup
in sight, but only carefully edited objets like
the Lacanian soap dispenser in the kitchen
that looks like an industrial age dildo, and
when you rifle through the bathroom
looking for a spare tampon, you discover
that even their toothpaste is somehow more
desirable than yours.

And later you go
with a world famous critic to eat a plate
of sushi prepared by a world famous chef from
Sweden and the roll is conceived to look like
“a strand of pearls around a white throat,” and is
so confusingly beautiful that it makes itself
impossible to eat. And your friend back home—-
who says the pioneers who first settled
the great asphalt parking lot of our
middle were not in fact heroic but really
the chubby ones who lacked the imagination
to go all the way to California—it could be that
she’s on to something.

Because, admit it,
when you look at the people on these streets,
the razor-blade women with their strategic bones
and the men wearing Amish pants with
interesting zippers, it’s pretty clear that you
will never cut it anywhere that constitutes
a where, that even ordering a pint of tuna salad in
a deli is an illustrative exercise in self-doubt.

So when you see the dogs on the high-rise elevators
practically tweaking, panting all the way down
from the 19th floor to the 1st, dying to get on
with their long planned business of snuffling
trash or peeing on something to which all day
they’ve been looking forward, what you want is
to be on the fastest Conestoga home, where the other
losers live and where the tasteless azaleas are,
as we speak, halfheartedly exploding.

-Erin Belieu

When at a Certain Party in NYC,  first appeared in 32 Poems and was reprinted in Best American Poetry 2011. Poem copyright 2011 Erin Belieu, all rights reserved, used by permission of the author.  Belieu was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. She attended Boston University, and Ohio State University receiving advanced degrees in the area of poetry. She now teaches in the MFA/Ph.D. Creative Writing Program at Florida State University. Check out her other works on goodreads.

8th Annual Governor’s Native American Summit

The 8th Annual Governor’s Native American Summit was held August 14-15, 2013 at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. This was my first time attending the conference and I was extremely impressed with the turn out, especially since the Utah Division of Indian Affairs is led by a woman who epitomizes the word incompetence.

The Summit was held for Utah tribes to showcase the programs that have been successful in their respective communities and to innovate new ideas for the future.

The Salt Lake Intertribal Veterans Association present the colors. Courtesy of Utah Division of Heritage & Arts.

The Buffalo Nation drum group perform the Flag Song. Courtesy of Utah Division of Heritage & Arts.

I went to three breakout sessions. The first session was Dr. Jose Enriquez who had successfully built a pathway for Latino students to gain access to higher education through his organization Latinos in Action. Dr. Enriquez is now working with other minority populations, helping them forge pathways to higher education that specifically meet the needs of each minority’s culture and unique educational challenges. Latinos in Action, or LIA places considerable emphasis on cognitive thinking, social responsibility, and linguistic cultivation. Dr. Enriquez stated that kids get lost, meaning they don’t follow the path to hight education,  as early as the 5th & 6th grades,  “I want to teach the kids of the Latino heroes, but there were none, so we have to create our own. Our young ones need to see those heroes because if they don’t see them, then what will they see? Everything else.” The high school students involved in LIA are trained to tutor the elementary students in literacy and math. In turn, the mentor-mentee relationship builds the confidence of both involved. Latinos in Action participants:

• boast a 98% high school attendance rate
• 85% college enrollment
• 3.2 average GPA
• Leadership, literacy, and service

The social aspects of LIA are the cool cultural presentations. Dr. Enriquez believes that it so important for the youth to learn to articulate what they are  thinking in an intelligent way. LIA participants are required to keep a journal to hone their writing skills. Students are asked, “Do you feel you are worthy of your dreams? If not, then you don’t know yourself”. Tlak about an awesome writing exercise! The last component is linguistic cultivation. LIA students help out at parent teacher conferences as interpreters.  I can’t imagine these kids doing such a personal thing without getting stressed out.  in LIA, it is important to do this type of service because it will educate the kids and the community and can change how they are perceived. Tight!  Southern Utah University and Weber State actually have Latinos in Action courses. I kept thinking. I wish we could do something like this with the Native community. I wish I had the contacts to get something like this up and going for Native students. I hope someone else, somewhere in that meeting, who has those connections, was thinking the same thing.

After the Latinos in Action breakout session it was time for lunch. It was OK. Paiute Tribe youth performed a variety of traditional dances

Adorable! Courtesy of Utah Division of Heritage & Arts

I did some exploring. UVU is huge-normous!

I don’t know if these are up year round or if they are special occasion teepee’s. Either way, pretty cool.

Directly following lunch,  representatives Rex Lee Jim, Vice President of the Navajo Nation,  and Vice-Chairman Madeline Greymountain of the Confederated Tribe of the Goshute Reservation gave us an update on the cool things they are working on:

Rex Lee Jim introduced himself in Navajo which is cool.  Not only is it Navajo tradition to introduce yourself in Navajo, including your clans, but he wanted to emphasize the language revitalization projects through Rosetta Stone. In addition, the Navajo elders who speak the language are being certified to teach it through the school systems. The Navajo Nation is setting up a Navajo virtual university. It sounds like it would be a website or Wiki-page so Navajo members, around the world, could have instant access to anything Navajo. I feel that it would bridge the gap between the worlds on and off the reservation. In other news, the Navajo Nation will begin a  program that will teach traditional, peace-making communication skills to deter the use of alcohol, drugs, and domestic violence.  Rex Lee Jim said, “We have forgotten how to sit down and talk things through”. The plan will, with the help of social services and religious institutions, teach effective communication skills to deal with personal, family, and career miscommunications.  As a member of the Navajo Nation I was proud that there were so many cool things in the works. We still have a lot to work through.

Madeline Greymountain emphasized the resiliency of the Goshute youth. Kids are bussed 140 miles round trip, everyday! The Goshute tribe is trying to better serve the kids to make sure that they know they are valued, appreciated, and to get them to graduation. They have tried various plans and all have failed. Greymountain asked the audience  if they had any ideas. A classic sign of humility on behalf of the youth. The last issue affecting the Goshute Indian Reservation is ensuring their water rights. Right now there is piping going on to take their federal reserved water and ship it to Las Vegas. This is why I hate Las Vegas and St. George, Utah, the cities can’t sustain themselves. Read more about it here: Goshute Tribes Fight for Water Rights in Face of 300-Mile Pipeline to Vegas.

The last session I went to was about a program called LIBERATE! through the University of Utah’s Department of Education.

Ryan Walker, M.Ed from The University of Utah

The Live Interactive Broadcast Equalizing Rural Access to Teacher Education (LIBERATE) is designed to address the critical shortage of highly-qualified special education teachers in rural and remote areas of Utah. Specifically, during the project period, LIBERATE will deliver a comprehensive post-bachelor teacher licensure program in severe disabilities to two cohorts of 15 teacher candidates located in a minimum of three distance sites. Which is great for the up and coming innovation of distance education. The ultimate goal is for American Indian students to have free education and to work in their own communities, and on their own reservations. We had a treat as one of the first student cohorts Skyped us. Byron Manycattle from Navajo Mountain High school is in his second year of teaching there. He learned, through LIBERATE, how to view students with disabilities and to engage his students with disabilities. “Educators are so vital to the small communities. I have been able to use the Navajo language and culture in daily lessons. When I first came here, the hooghan on campus was boarded up. Now that’s where we hold class. I see that the students become focused and become engaged.” A San Juan School District Board member was present who told her story. Her son is disabled & non-verbal and works with Byron. She was grateful for Byron and his hard work. It was wonderful to hear that we are taking care of our own.

The conference ended with a special showing of the movie Smoke Signals. The next day was going to be full of presentations and lectures but unfortunately, I couldn’t go. I was so grateful that I was able to go. I hope I get invited next year.

 

Ode to a Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

         My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

         One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

         But being too happy in thine happiness,—

                That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

                        In some melodious plot

         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

                Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

         Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

         Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

         Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

                With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

                        And purple-stained mouth;

         That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

                And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

         What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

         Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

         Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

                Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

                        And leaden-eyed despairs,

         Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

                Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

         Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

         Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

         And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

                Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;

                        But here there is no light,

         Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

                Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

         Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

         Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

         White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

                Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;

                        And mid-May’s eldest child,

         The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

                The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

         I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

         To take into the air my quiet breath;

                Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

         To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

                While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

                        In such an ecstasy!

         Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

                   To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

         No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

         In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

         Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

                She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

                        The same that oft-times hath

         Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

                Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

         To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

         As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

         Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

                Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep

                        In the next valley-glades:

         Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

                Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

-John Keats, 1975-1821

A treat. Benedict Cumberbatch (Star Trek Into Darkness, Sherlock) reads the hell out of this poem. This is what poetry is supposed to sound and feel like,

The Absolutely True Diary & Sherman Alexie

Mid-August was a fun time for me. I was asked by my favoritest, most awesome professor to collaborate on a lecture for The Summit County Library One Book, One Community Program in Park City, Utah. Our topic would be Sherman Alexie’s, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-TIme Indian and The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fistfight in Heaven. It was smashing! I really could talk about literature all day. So…

Sherman Alexie and Native Literature, in general:

Native Authors whose work has created a  renaissance for the genre include M. Scott Mamaday, Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon  Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie. I call them the Furious Five.  Others may call them that too but I called them that first! Sherman Alexie is a pretty cool dude. If you haven’t heard of him, you should look him up. At least follow his twitter feed. It’s hilarious! He is hilarious, irreverent, and creative. Alexie is a poet, screenwriter, teacher, and father. He’s known for his in-your-face rhetoric of contemporary Indian life. Native American/American Indian not Indian from India. Alexie is Spokane Indian born to a very hard-working mother and an absent-tee father. He studied at Gonzaga University and majored in American Studies. Random. Since then he has published a butt-load of novels, collections, and poetry. Most notably is his collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fistfight in Heaven which was adapted by Alexie into the movie, Smoke Signals directed by Cheyenne-Arapaho director, Chris Eyre. (Look him up too!)

Sherman Alexie

This book turned 20 this year!

Here is a clip from Smoke Signals: 

I lectured on Alexie’s YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. If you haven’t read it. Go out to your local bookstore and buy it. DO IT NOW!  

Buy it, or die!

The lecture was quite an experience. My parents, sister, and I made the trek from Kearns to Kimball Junction. It’s about a 45-minute drive up the canyon but it’s like leaving/entering 2 different worlds. A lower-income, diverse community to an affluent, upper-class, hoity-toity, white community. Interesting enough, I was living the book I would be discussing.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,  let’s call it Part-Time Indian, is a coming of age YA novel set in Alexie’s hometown of Wellpinit, Washington. The protagonist is Arnold/Junior Spirit.

My name is Junior,” I said. “And my name is Arnold. It’s Junior and Arnold. I’m both. I felt like two different people inside of one body(60).

Junior/Arnold decides to leave his reservation, the physical epicenter of his cultural identity, for the more affluent, white school at Reardan. As Junior/Arnold leaves for school each day he is metaphorically and literally crossing from one world into the other. On the Rez, Junior sees himself as a nerd who can’t play basketball, who loves his family despite living with the trauma of  alcoholism and poverty, and as someone without hope or a future. Off the Rez,  Arnold, identifies himself with the antiquated and racist stereotypes of Indians, a basketball star, and a person who has hope and a future. As Arnold or Junior, the kid is as funny as hell and has the insight of a 55 year old medicine man.

My lecture included the idea of Reservation Realism, ( a literary genre specific to Native American authors who implement literary techniques to create realistic elements of reservation life) that Alexie is known, and often criticized for. In response to the criticism Alexie has said, “I got a lot of criticism because alcoholism is such a loaded topic for Indians. People thought I was writing about stereotypes, but more than anything I was writing about my own life”.  Alexie does have a penchant for deconstructing Native American stereotypes. He wrote a poem, How to Write the Great American Indian Novel about it. Hilarious! 

The themes within the text are pretty deep. I’ve narrowed it down to three: Identity, Poverty, and Hope.

I’ve touched on Arnold’s identity. Half of himself is tied to the Rez, half of it off the Rez. He’s a Part-Time Indian. He comes to realize that he is more than his race and his culture:

I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms. And the tribe of cartoonists. And the tribe of chronic masturbators. And the tribe of teenage boys. And the tribe of small-town kids. And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners. And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers. And the tribe of poverty. And the tribe of funeral-goers. And the tribe of beloved sons. And the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends. It was a huge realization. And that’s when I knew that I was going to be okay (217).

Poverty is so prevalent.  Reservations across the United States are overwhelmingly impoverished. Why is that? Well, let’s look at the history. The US government was all, We don’t want your kind here so we’re gonna put you on shitty pieces of land, without assistance. EVEN THOUGH WE PROMISED IT TO YOU. and you can live there until you die, or we decide to kill you. And then they were forgotten. Not just for a few months. For decades. For generations. We’re still trying to overcome the problems from 200 years ago. Arnold has a heartbreaking experience with poverty. His dog, Oscar, is sick. No money for the vet. Can’t let him suffer. The dog is shot because “a bullet only costs two cents”. It’s sad because it’s true,  Indian kids learn about life this harshly. Poverty is a vicious cycle and sooner or later it will affect how you perceive yourself:

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it (13).

Hope is the element that ignites Arnold/Junior’s life.  The book takes slow turns, dips and dives, all the while elevating our protagonist to a higher level of hope. Doing well in school, on the basketball team, and with his girlfriend confirm what Arnold/Junior had been so afraid to ask, Am I worth the effort to get out of this place and make something of myself? To convey the hope Arnold/Junior has for his future, Alexie juxtaposes Arnold/Junior’s plight with that of the immigrants who come to America. I know right? Indians and the colonizers in the same boat? But Alexie pulls it off.  Arnold says:

I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in the loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream (217).

How interesting it is to have the comparison of immigrants and Indians. It drives home the themes of finding oneself in a strange land, and through self-determination create a future that was never before available. This is the plight that so many Native youth are experiencing today. It warms my soul to the core to hear of all of the wonderful and innovative ideas Native youth are creating. We never do find out if Arnold will continue to call himself Arnold or go with Junior.

Part-Time Indian and other Native Literature is pretty cool. Craig S. Womack, Creek-Cherokee scholar has said,  “A key component of nationhood is a people’s idea of themselves, their imaginings of who they are. The ongoing expression of a tribal voice, through imagination, language, and literature, contribute to keeping sovereignty alive in the citizens of a nation and gives sovereignty a meaning that is defined within the tribe rather than external sources”(Red on Red). The political component of sovereignty infuses itself within Native Literature empowering Native communities to fight colonization and break those vicious cycles of alcoholism, poverty, and hopelessness.

I was invited back to the One Book, One Community Program. This time it will be with the teens whom I will speak to. I will let you know how that goes!

How to Write the Great American Indian Novel

All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food.

The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably
from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is mandatory.

If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender
and in love with a white man. But if she loves an Indian man

then he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse culture.
If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white

that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers.
When the Indian woman steps out of her dress, the white man gasps

at the endless beauty of her brown skin. She should be compared to nature:
brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear water.

If she is compared to murky water, however, then she must have a secret.
Indians always have secrets, which are carefully and slowly revealed.

Yet Indian secrets can be disclosed suddenly, like a storm.
Indian men, of course, are storms. They should destroy the lives

of any white women who choose to love them. All white women love
Indian men. That is always the case. White women feign disgust

at the savage in blue jeans and T-shirt, but secretly lust after him.
White women dream about half-breed Indian men from horse cultures.

Indian men are horses, smelling wild and gamey. When the Indian men
unbuttons his pants, the white woman should think of topsoil.

There must be one murder, one suicide, one attempted rape.
Alcohol should be consumed. Cars must be driven at high speeds.

Indians must see visions. White people can have the same visions
if they are in love with Indians. If a white person loves an Indian

then the white person is Indian by proximity. White people must carry
an Indian deep inside themselves. Those interior Indians are half-breed

and obviously from horse cultures. If the interior Indian is male
then he must be a warrior, especially if he is inside a white man.

If the interior Indian is female, then she must be a healer, especially if she is inside a white woman.
Sometimes there are complications.

An Indian man can be hidden inside a white woman. An Indian woman
can be hidden inside a white man. In these rare instances,

everybody is a half-breed struggling to learn more about his or her horse culture.
There must be redemption, of course, and sins must be forgiven.

For this, we need children. A white child and an Indian child, gender
not important, should express deep affection in a childlike way.

In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written,
all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.

Sherman Alexie, “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” from The Summer of Black Widows. Copyright ©  by Sherman Alexie. Reprinted by permission of Hanging Loose Press. Source: The Summer of Black Widows (Hanging Loose Press, 1996)