College Writing
Quick links to the projects and papers on this page:
Native American Stereotypes Project
"Weaving a Place" Paper
"The Touch of Meaning"
Index
Project Outline:
Conduct a survey concerning Native American Stereotypes. Members of the project: Tina, Zach, Emily, Kate. The writing below and the following reflections were material from the class and prelude to the project.
Group reflections on the following:
Anne Dillard's The Writing Life
"When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a woodcarver's gouge, a surgeons's probe. . . . The line of words is a hammer. You hammer against the walls of your house. You tap the walls, lightly, everywhere. After giving many years' attention to these things, you know what to listen for. Some of the walls are bearing walls; they have to stay, or everything will fall down. Other walls can go with impunity; you can hear the difference. Unfortunately, it is often a bearing wall that has to go. It cannot be helped. There is only one solution, which appalls you, but there it is. Knock it out. Duck."--Annie Dillard
Gary Soto's How Things Work (1985)
Today it's going to cost us twenty dollars
To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book,
A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls,
Bus fare, rosin for your mother's violin.
We're completing our task. The tip I left
For the waitress filters down
Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child
Perhaps, a belligerent cat that won't let go
Of a balled sock until there's chicken to eat.
As far as I can tell, daughter, it works like this:
You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of apples
From a fruit stand, and what coins
Are passed on helps others buy pencils, glue,
Tickets to a movie in which laughter
Is thrown into their faces.
If we buy goldfish, someone tries on a hat.
If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom.
A tip. a small purchase here and there,
And things just keep going. I guess."
Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place
"At that, everything stopped. The whole earth fell silent. The two black things joined together in the middle of the room separated, hers going to her, mine coming back to me. . . I wanted to go over and put my arms around her. . . But I couldn't move, and when I looked down it was as if the ground had opened up between us, making a deep and wide split. On one side of the split stood my mother�on the other side stood I, in my arms carrying my schoolbooks and inside carrying the thimble that weighed worlds"
Maxine Kingston The Woman Warrier
"And majoring in English interfered with my writing. It was all I could do to write those formal papers on literary criticism. I felt that if I stayed to get a master's degree it would destroy the writing. Formal literary criticism made me look at my own writing too critically. I would tear the page apart before I created it" (Kingston, quoted in Brownmiller 211). "
Present Day Native American Relations
Our group chose to examine stereotypes of Native Americans and the evolution of these from times of the French and Indian wars to modern day. We feel that education of and concerning these people had vastly improved for the better though still not totally accurate. While surveying 25 to 30 people, we came upon several conclusions; however, they are conclusions that, similar to the widespread concept of Native American place, cannot be summarized to concise statements. It is our belief that the topics we found ourselves arguing and discussing will continue to be debated as they have been in the past.
Initially, we based our paper on the topic of Native American stereotypes. Incorporating place, we agreed that their sense of place has been lost. However, in researching the topic and brainstorming this starting point, we agreed that everyone not only has a sense of place, but also has a right to their own natural sense of place. By giving a survey we wanted to elaborate on the idea that everyone has his or her own opinions and reasoning, just as did we when we worked out this project. We eventually decided that people are entitled to their own sense of place no matter what the stereotype and that the factors that contribute to their sense of place should be acknowledged and honored. The first thing we did in our group project was to combine our knowledge of past Native American stereotypes; these are impressions relayed by word of mouth, literature, art, and media.
In the past, specifically during the times of the, French and Indian wars, Native Americans were asked to choose a side; they were asked to help other countries struggle for a land that had been their own. Interaction with foreigners led to disease and the murder of not only lives but also tradition and freedom. While other countries fought for land and places that had once been free land, Native Americans were commonly viewed as an obstacle that was to be overcome if these countries wanted to claim the land for their owns kings and homelands as well as beliefs and gods. In this struggle, their own pleas and suffering were ignored as settlers formed stereotypes of the �Indians.� For instance, while trying to take over this �place�, European, French, and Spanish peoples all labeled the Native Americans as savage, pagan, uneducated, and without souls.
With this conception, Native Americans were murdered and such wrong doings were justified with reasoning backed by stereotypes. Furthermore, stories that the �civilized� people heard were seemingly verified by their observation of tribal ways. Since they were from a different place, they did not understand actions different from their own. Instead they were determined eliminate these �wild, barbarous, primitive� cultures and instill their own.
From our readings over the semester, we have been forming an understanding of a sense of place. Dillard, Soto, Kincaid, and Kingston all relay ideas of place that lead us to believe that place is perceived by not only location, but also by factors such as community, heritage, history, and ethical beliefs. Native Americans were robbed of these distinct senses while foreigners priced and marked literal places and land as if it was theirs for the taking.
Native Americans identified their place with the land. It was in land that they found strength, well-being, sustenance, and freedom. They grew their roots in the land to make their strength. They gave the land respect, and it, in turn, gave back to them. Land was not their possession, and they did not feel that they owned it. Land was not only a place to raise cattle, farm, live from and hunt on; it contained the blood and histories of their ancestors. Land was the initial root of their ancestors and the foundation of their way of life. We learn this at museums and on TV. It is portrayed in such movies as �Dances With Wolves,� �The Last of the Mohicans,� and in books like �Love Medicine,� �The Bingo Palace,� and �The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven.� We learn this from their expressions in poetry and song. We have read poetry collections such as �Home Places� that indicates this connection in the title alone. But more importantly, we have all felt this connection to the earth in some way. It is nature and it is natural to feel replenished or alive when viewing beautiful sunsets or listening to a bubbling brook. However, Native Americans were often denied the freedom to pay their respect to the land. They were barred and restrained by people who suddenly �owned� the land. They were relocated. With stereotypes came restrictions and they lost their right to a sense of place.
Survey:
In the following survey, we asked a variety of people their views on Native Americas as well as on the treatment of these people.
1. What do you generally think of when the term Native American comes to mind?
Dances with wolves
Thousands of existing, unrealized American nations
Spirits, nature
Original tribal peoples of America
Sitting Bull; red skin �injun�
Poor guy, western, lousy job
People riding on horses, wearing feathers on their head
2. What is your opinion of relocation from ancestral lands to reservations? Is this right or wrong?
We should have just let them live their usual ways
It was the same as theft and it was wrong
It was not right, and STILL isn�t
Wrong but they do will with their casinos now
Relocation is wrong
It was not the best thing, but it could�ve been worse
Morally wrong but when were morals associated with capitalization
3. Do you think that the assimilation of N.A. into western culture had positive effects on their culture?
Adverse on population; it took the entire culture away
They are the poorest minority & highest rate of alcoholism, no
Nations have to adapt to survive; initially it was difficult for them
If low birth weights, genetic damage, and alcoholism are positive effects, then yes
It makes a little difference
As long as they keep their old traditions
More damage was done than good
4. Should general items such as cigarettes, alcohol, and gas be purchased for prices under current usual market prices on reservations?
Gasoline, yes, but food and clothing instead of the drugs
Reservations should be sovereign nations, no matter what size
They should be allowed to do anything they want
I think low price competition should be encouraged in all stores especially for cigarettes and alcohol
Yes, we owe it to them
It provides good business opportunities; its a nice discount and it cheats the government right back for cheating them
Yes, if they are going to buy at lower prices, then they can sell to college students for a discount
5. Do you think society is indebted to the N. A. �s for past wrongdoing?
I would not know where to begin on that one
I am ashamed of our ancestors. We should try to fix it
Different times, different leaders, those people are dead
We are indebted to a certain degree
Index
Weaving a Place
Jamaica Kincaid's speaks of her place in Antigua in her book called Weaving a Place. She brings to life our own place, showing us the nature and actions of our ancestors. Antigua, introduced as a tourist attraction in the beginning of the book, appears to be an island constructed for visitors but Kincaid describes a home that was invaded by intruders. "People who inhabit the place cannot stand a tourist, an ugly, empty thing." They are people who can leave their own banality and boredom and turn that of others into a source of pleasure. Seemingly, the first to do this were the English. These "bad-minded" rulers built empires and tried to turn every place into England. For Antigua, they brought their laws, names, religion and education but made orphans, taking their motherland, gods, holy ground, and tongue. It is with the criminal's language that Kincaid describes the crime.
This crime, transforming nations into English colonies, can be considered tradition. As England spread, foreign places, like Antigua and North America were forced to adjust and absorb the shock. Kincaid dislikes hearing people from North America tell her how much they love England with its traditions, but does she realize that North America is a place having its own Antiguans? Yet, North America's natives were not allowed the chance to be surprised by racism or struck by thoughts of "un-Christian-like" behavior; instead, they were killed for their land and destroyed by disease. Native Americans were not "rescued" by the English and taught the names of Kings of England; they were exterminated. North America is a place, like Antigua, that met the world through England. Here too, Englanders murdered, robbed, imprisoned, and dominated over those whom they felt they had superiority.
Our ancestors left us with a tangle for an answer to questions about place. People like Kincaid, afer years and years of agitation, make claim to their place in light of the past wrongdoings. Native Americans, like Antiguans, have made deeply moving and eloquent speeches, and their children, like Kincaid, have published books trying to recapture their lost stories. For example, Louise Erdrich has written several inter-related novels tracing her traditions and events of the past that show her ancestors' undeniable pain. Becoming lost between cultures, her characters reflect her own sturggle as they try to find their sense of self as well as their sense of place. In the third book of the saga, Erdrich explores into the past speaking of the last buffalo hunt and windigo magic. She tells of Europeans who feared magic but brought detriments of their own--broken treaties, reservations, and diseases that took entire clans.
As in Antigua, the foreigners were racist among a race and in a place they did not understand but abruptly overcame anyway. They built what has now become our place disregarding people they felt were unworthy of life. Although somewhat in retrospect, our nation now acknowledges them because these people are and have been a part of North America prior to England's "permission." It is on the loom of our history that our sense of place has been woven together with theirs. The threads join and become a single weaving, telling the story as colorfully or ugly as it may be. Although we are capable of asking questions and admitting our actions, to separate histories is to unravel this reality--our place has been determined by our past and is therefore, however regrettable, unchangeable.
Index
The Touch of Meaning
When I think about stories that have made an impression on me, The Little Prince immediately comes to mind. The lessons in this short novel give life an interesting, meaningful simplicity. The main character, the Little Prince, lives on a planet with his flower, Rose, a stagnant volcano, and balboa tree saplings that must be pulled up before they take root. His planet is comparable to the size of a small room, so if the saplings took hold, they would grow right through the planet and break it to pieces. Though he is very young, this little boy has many responsibilities. Aside from pulling up saplings, each day the Little Prince takes car of his prickly-mannered friend Rose. He waters her from the well and sweeps out the volcano so that they are not in any danger. He also enjoys beautiful sunsets on his small home, walking around the planet some nights so that he can see 30 or 40 in one night.
There are several reasons why I love the Little Prince and read his story frequently. Initially, my mother read me the adventure as a bedtime story. I listened as the Little Prince traveled to earth, met an aviator and encountered strange ideas and things. She would read with the pretend voices of characters; other times she would add the flowery French language to certain descriptions as she acted them out for my understanding. Later on, in high school, I studied the book in French IV, though for me the class provided only a summary. However, it was stimulating to see my classmates try to understand this funy, quirky little boy, whose advice I am only too eager to follow. It is almost like he has a secret that he shares with his audience with a little wink that becomes more noticeable with each visit.
It is hard for me to write what meaning the book hlds for me since every time I read it I get fresh meaning and appreciation for it. The story teaches me things about my life at the time that I read it, therefore it is always changing. Here, in college, I respect the Little Prince in a new way as I question my own beliefs and friendships. Promising to return to his friend Rose, the Little Prince travels far from his home to an scary place so that he can find sheep to help him with the balboa saplings. While there, he encounters many new ideas that he thinks aboutu always seems to disprove with child-lke innocence. Meeting the aviator first, he finds technology, such as the airplane, foolish. He also demands a picture and then uses his imagination to create the perfect sheep. He questions even the most day-to-day concepts. Among these queries, his optimism is delightful.
The Little Prince meets many people who do not share his banter, wisdom, or optimism. Many of them take an interest in time-consuming, grueling activities. For example, though he finds a mathematician and a king, he considers their lives empty and sad. Reality for him is keeping his home safe and his friendship with Rose. So, one significant lesson I learned from the Little Prince is to make life precious by spending time responsibly and taking care of loved ones.
