Real Control

In the first place, I'd like to say that I've always found the idea of coercive population control antithetical to the concept that people are born with natural rights. That being said, it was nice to have someone outside of my tradition come in and argue about other issues that population control brings up (And the biases it reveals, especially the quote from Paul Ehrlich at the end of the article).
On a larger note, I felt that this piece was a perfect complement to those of Allen and LaDuke. Allen positions indigenous feminism as an historical tradition, one that drove many American Indian cultures. She reaches all the way into the present day, but does not spend so much time in defining what battles are being fought. Both LaDuke and Smith pick up the task and carry it forward. I see Smith's Rape of the Land as a laying out of the war, while LaDuke constructs one particular battlefield where the conflict is being waged. The complex nature of these conflicts reflects the complex world that we now live in. No longer is it just a fight between American Indians and the government, but also against Multinational Corporations and a kind of extreme yuppie environmentalism. In their own way, they are even more destructive than the government, especially the environmentalists. As Smith pointed out, the environmentalists seem to have no place in nature for American Indians to inhabit. Nature should be pristine(Read: NO PEOPLE). In the end, the goals are the same, though the methods may have become more sophisticated.
I think it is a testament to the power and ability of American Indian women that they are such effective spokespeople for their way of life. Hopefully, their efforts can create a new age of American Indian prosperity and peace.

The Sacred Hoop

The most important aspect of The Sacred Hoop for me is its unapologetic uplifting of American Indian culture and custom. Allen's goal with the book is to set out for her audience a sampling of the ideas that drive American Indian culture. She does this by repeatedly calling up concurring examples from the many tribes and traditions she is familiar with. She also spends a substantial amount of time explaining how American Indian understandings of the world conflict and contradict the Western view. She speaks of the power of women in their tribes and how the idea power itself is constructed differently. She speaks of how contemporary American Indian writers use their culture to fuel their narratives, as opposed to the Western basis that everyone else clings to. She complicates ideas of myth, ceremony, and religion, calling into question the Western tradition of reasonableness and primitiveness.
Throughout her essays, she tenaciously defends the American Indian tradition and uses that lens to show the shortcomings, peculiarities, and destructive urges that have come from a Western dominated world. Must we live in a world where power is held and used punitively against those who do not conform? Where is the boundary between what is real and not real? Fiction and fact? The key is not that these questions are answered, but how they are answered. Only when Westerners understand and respect the fundamental differences in thought can they hope to appreciate the full depth and complexity of the American Indian cultural tradition. And The Sacred Hoop is a great place to begin that quest. Allen is eloquent and always interesting, her examples and arguments are lucid and well thought out. Most importantly, what she says is true and needs to be heard.

Well, of course it'sThe Last of the Mohicans

I titled this post this way because I've been doing some research on the Mohicans in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Apparently, the Mohicans were not actually a tribe of American Indians. Thus, the book is quite rightly about the last of the Mohicans because the Mohicans never existed in the first place.
The name Mohican could be coming from either the tribe Mohegans or Mahicans. Likely, Cooper was using Mahicans as his referent because one of his characters is named after a famous Mahican chief.
I thought this would be an interesting way to think about Cooper's novel, as tied up as it is with the idea of the disappearing Indian. Proper naming would imply proper understanding of the American Indian as a respected part of the world. As the Euro Americans believed neither, we can see how Cooper may have had a specific rhetorical choice behind his creating the "Mohican" people.

Books to Watch Out For

While doing my research for my Apache presentation, I found a young adult book to look out for about the Apache. The book is called Apache: Girl Warrior by Tanya Landman. It's about a young Apache girl growing up in the 19th century. I say watch out for it because it subscribes to the myth of the dying Indian, and I hope that from my presentation you got that the Apache are still alive and very strong. We don't need books that portray American Indians as some kind of throwback that has since disappeared from the face of the earth. Rather, we need books that celebrate the diverse traditions and cultures that still exist today. If you want to read more about Apache: Girl Warrior, you can find it at this link.

http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2008/06/slapin-review-of-landmans-apachie-girl.html

Apache (Enemy)

I think it's interesting that what we call most Native American groups is not necessarily what they call themselves. For example, in my research of the Apache for my presentaion, I found out that the Apache don't call themselves Apache. Apache is actually a word that means enemy, and it was used by another tribe to describe the Apache to the Spanish.
The Spanish never cared to correct the mistake or to ask the Apache what they called themselves, and for that matter, neither did anybody else. I think this problem with naming is reflective of the whole complex of problems that plague relationships between American Indians and the West. The West has failed to listen, and even when we have listened, we usually get it wrong.

Rhetorics of Survivance

Before I get into talking about Powell's discussion of Winnemuca, Picotte, Eastman, I just want to comment on how interesting it is reading Powell's work. I really like the way she intersperses small bits of narrative in between parts of her essays to help the reader stop and think a moment about what she has said. I also like the way she calls everyone "folks", instead of people, communities, or whatever else. Coming from the country myself, it has so much more of a relaxed and polite feel. Finally, I enjoy the way she points out that everything is just a story, regardless of the esteem in which we hold it. She's right, and I hope that we take that point with us and share it with others.
As to her discussion of these early American Indian authors, I find that they helped me to better understand the position that American Indians found themselves in in the last century. Using Powell's example, I tried using the same perspective to understand the pressures all minorities were under when looking at the writings of some early American female authors. I found similar patterns, with the authors unable to completely articulate their points, but still finding rhetorical contact zones through which they could successfully establish their own indenpendent identity through the dominant rhetoric. It was helpful having Powell's examples to follow, and I'm very thankful because she made one of my midterms a lot easier.