I Am Not An Indian Combating Contrived American Indian Identities
Date of Award
2004
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Humanities
First Advisor
Wallace, Miriam
Keywords
Native American, American Indian, Alexie, Sherman, Young Bear, Ray A.
Area of Concentration
Humanities
Abstract
My thesis aims to explore the American Indian identity contrived by the dominant Euro-American culture in opposition to actual American Indian experience. By working through the history of contrived American Indian identities as well as attending to the methods of creation, my thesis attempts to illustrate how the Indian as popularly conceived in the United States is a work of Euro-American fiction. By comparing this fiction with the realities of American Indian actuality as expressed through the poetry of Sherman Alexie and Ray A. Young Bear, my hope is to engage readers in questioning what voices and representations are indeed authentic. By claiming the English language as their own, Alexie and Young Bear combat misconceived American Indian identities and reclaim American Indian identity. With wicked humor, lyrical portraits of tribal life, and careful custodianship of culture, these authors demonstrate the error in presuming to know an identity based upon Euro- American fabrications; the American Indian identity as defined by Alexie and Young Bear is unknowable to Euro-American readers. This thesis also finds within the poetry of Alexie and Young Bear, a connection between the ownership and control of land and that of a cultural identity. This form of control acts alongside the past control of American Indian ethnicity through the spilling of blood, and the current trends of quantifying American Indian ethnicity through the blood. Although the United States dictates the political relationship with Native America, American Indian identity, as written by Sherman Alexie and Ray A. Young Bear, is not something that can be assumed and manipulated at the convenience of Euro-America.
Recommended Citation
Backus, Ena, "I Am Not An Indian Combating Contrived American Indian Identities" (2004). Theses & ETDs. 3343.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/3343
Rights
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