The Politics of “ Postindian” A uthenticity

1 Unit 5: The Politics of “ Postindian” A uthenticity Texts: - James Clifford, “Identity in Mashpee” [D2L] - Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven [please read the whole book, but with special focus on the following : “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star - Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock”; “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore”; “This Is What It Means to Say Pheonix, Arizona”; “The Lone R anger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”; “Junior Polatkin’s Wild West Show”] Assignment: Please write a four - page paper, typed and double - s paced. See p rompt at end for specific s . Due Date : 11/29 , by 3:00 pm. Please submit to D2L Dropbox. Background: In 1968, N. Scott Momaday’s novel House Made of Dawn (1969) won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It was the first time a Native American had won the award. This began what critics now refer to as the “Native American Renaissance,” a period in which a new ge neration of writers of Native American descent, having attained an extensive English language education outside of Indian boarding schools, began to write their own stories about the way in which European settlement in the U.S. affected Native Americans. These writers include James Welch, Gerald Vizenor, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Paula Gunn Allen, and Sherman Alexie, among others. This work provides a very different take on Native American identity than the sort of image provided in early Ameri can texts, such as The Last of the Mohicans . But that doesn’t mean that the stories of the Native American Renaissance simply celebrate Native American identity. In some ways the opposite is true. As you will see, the stories offered by these authors re flect the difficulty of locating or maintaining an “authentic” Native American identity in contemporary America — what Native American critic and author Gerald Vizenor has referred to as a “cultural schizophrenia.” Indeed, in some ways Native American Renai ssance writers suggest that establishing an authentic Native American identity in the modern world is impossible. In so doing they reflect what Vizenor has referred to as a “postindian” identity, one that has lost full access to an Indian past. Instead, Vizenor suggests, Native Americans must rely on what he terms “survivance”: unlike straightforward “survival,” “survivance,” he suggests, is a term that connotes the need to adapt to the modern world, and thus stop relying on an older way of life that is n ow vanished. The two texts for this part of Unit 2, James Clifford’s essay “Identity in Mashpee” and Sherman Alexie’s collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven , both address the tensions between an older, traditional India n world, and a new, more fractured modern world. In Clifford’s essay, for example, he recounts a court case in Massachusetts, in which the Mashpee Indian tribe sues for actual “tribal” status with the US government. The result is that the very notion of what constitutes an “authentic” Native American tribe is completely up for grabs. Similarly, in Alexie’s stories, the book’s main character, Victor, is 2 constantly negotiating his tribal identity (linked with the reservation) over and against the more mode rn and more “white” or “Anglo” identity outside the reservation, especially as he experiences it in Seattle. The result is a group of somewhat complicated narratives that don’t necessarily provide straightforward or definitive perspectives on or answers t o the problems they address. Rather, they sketch out a Native American identity that is in fact uniquely “American,” precisely because it is complicated, heterogeneous, and fraught. Prompt for Unit 5 : Please write a paper in which you compare and contrast the Mashpee Indians that we see in Clifford’s essay with the characters we encounter in Alexie’s st ories — especially Victor. When reading the Clifford essay, you should consider what he seems to be saying about Native American authenticity. Does he seem to think that such a thing exists? Moreover, you should ask yourself if you think the Mashpee tribe has a legitim ate case for tribal identity . Similar questions can be asked of Victor and the other characters in Alexie ’ s stories. Does he have an authentic Native American identit y ? Is he fully connected to this culture? If not, what sorts of things come between him and this identity? ( When analyzing these stories, you might co nsider the following: Victor’s relationship with Thomas Builds - the - Fire in “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”; Vic tor’s relationship with his white girlfriend in “The Lone Ranger and Tonto”; the exchange between Victor and the 7/11 clerk in “The Lone Ranger and Tonto ” ).