​By. Jasmine Warner

​           For centuries, Native Americans have been faced with stereotypes and criticism that often times lack actual meaning to their culture. It’s equivalent to the racism that African Americans faced yet it is far less known. Overtime, Natives have been pushed to stand up for their beliefs and lifestyles while trying not to get caught up in the white washed world that was quickly overtaking their land. Keeping in touch with their roots became more difficult as whites squeezed their way in, ergo many found it challenging to balance the two worlds while still remaining true to themselves. Many Native authors have faced this idea head on in their works that showed characters juggling what they know and what they are being exposed to. Sherman Alexie and Louise Erdrich’s works represent Natives in a way that depict characters who learned to balance their culture and not internalize the stereotypes in order to survive.​

            At a young age, Victor, the character from Alexie’s novel, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, is met with the challenge of balancing what he knows versus what he is being told during his years in school. Throughout the collection of short stories, the reader becomes familiar with his background and hardships. The beginning years of his life are highlighted in the short story entitled, “Indian Education,” where the reader is able to see how Victor changes through his years in school and how his surroundings influence his desires. From the first grade of wanting to get revenge on his bully, to the fourth grade of wanting to maybe be a doctor when he grows up, to the seventh grade of wanting to be with the white girl, to his last three years of understanding the treatment he had and how the history of Natives will affect his life forever. With this story in particular, Victor’s growth is being shown in a condensed version starting with the most impressionable years of his life. By attending a whitewashed school at such a young age, he could have easily fallen off of the “Native horse.” During the second grade, Victor has a missionary teacher that treats him differently than his peers. She sat him in a different area during a spelling test and gave him a more difficult set to spell. When he completed the test with satisfactory answers, she found it disrespectful and sent him home with a note telling his parents to cut his braids or keep him home from class (Alexie 173). This short story is the epitome of Natives in modern time because Victor is longing for acceptance and the ability to be himself, which is difficult when the people around him are telling him why it isn’t okay.

​          Victor kept to who he was, despite the action of his peers, and didn’t partake in certain acts to fit in with everyone else. During Victor’s eighth grade year, he describes the sound of “white girls’ forced vomiting” and how he once confronted one of them by asking for their lunch since she would just be throwing it up anyway (Alexie 177). He compares this instant to how he was happy with the food his mother brought home despite its awful taste. Both instances describe Victor and the girl growing “skinny from self-pity” followed by “there is more than one way to starve” (Alexie 177). Aside from the gender difference, Victor wasn’t falling victim to the norm of the white girls. This section provides an example of how each culture struggles differently, but more importantly how Victor didn’t follow in the tracks of his peers.

           Another character that deals with balancing two cultures is Victor’s childhood friend, Thomas, who does so in quite a different way from Victor; which brings an apparent imbalance of lifestyles between the two characters and the internal imbalance that they juggle alone. In the short story, “This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” the readers are met with Victor, who has long since graduate, and has recently been hit with the news of his father’s passing. Victor and Thomas embark on a journey to Arizona to retrieve his father’s ashes and belongings. There is a distinct difference between the two friends; Victor, at this point in life, seems to be more in touch with the white ways, while Thomas is still deeply in tune with their Native culture. With the insertion of flashback scenes in the story, the reader is given glimpses of what life was like prior to where the two characters are at today. They show a kind of falling out between the two boys and how they evolved overtime. In the flashback where the boys are going to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July, Thomas says to Victor, “It’s strange how us Indians celebrate the Fourth of July. It ain’t like it was our independence everybody was fighting for” (Alexie 63). This scene in particular shows how aware and thoughtful Thomas is. Victor, on the other hand, tells Thomas that he thinks too much; showing how he didn’t let these events get to him. It seems as though Thomas only attended events like this with his friends to feel included, not because he actually enjoyed them.

​          As the journey progresses, Victor becomes more aware of their differences and starts to feel guilty for the way he has slipped away from his roots. Thomas was the friend he didn’t know he needed until their travels because he made Victor open his eyes to the fact that he changed in a way that he didn’t like. This emotion can be seen when the two return home, “Victor was ashamed of himself. Whatever happened to the tribal ties, the sense of community? The only real thing he shared with anybody was a bottle and broken dreams” (Alexie 74). This is how Victor internalized the stereotypes; by drinking and feeling sorry for himself. It was a moment of weakness that was broken after he spent ample time with Thomas. He was reminded of the ways he should be juggling life’s events and how he shouldn’t be falling into the stereotypical Native category.

​          As shown by Victor, Natives have to work twice as hard to defend their true lifestyles because of the involvement of white culture that makes it harder to walk an authentic Native path. In the essay, Custer Died for Your Sins, by Vine Deloria, the author touches upon the idea of what it’s like to be a Native living in the modern world. He discusses the idea of how many white people are proud to say they have Native in their blood, but choose the most widely known tribes to be a descendant of such as the Cherokees. When sharing this information, it is common for the person to claim that they were a receiver of this bloodline through their grandmother or a woman figure because no one wanted to be in relations to the horrible, savage Indian (Deloria 3). This is the opposite standpoint from the Natives who are balancing the two cultures. Whites in today’s society seem to feel like they have an understanding of who the Natives were through the half-told stories they learned in school, meeting a Native, reading books, and watching movies and TV documentaries. Due to incorrect sources such as these, Deloria states, “The more we try to be ourselves the more we are forced to defend what we have never been” (2). With whites trying to be involved with a culture they only half want to appreciate causes more issues for the Natives. By not being fully informed, it isn’t beneficial at all.

          A Native lifestyle can be demanding when surrounded by a primarily white culture that is regularly critical. Erdrich conveys the idea of living a culturally balanced lifestyle while showing sides of humor and pain that comes along with it in a similar yet different way than Alexie with her poem, Dear John Wayne. The poem depicts a group of Natives going to a drive-in to watch a Western film starring John Wayne. Wayne is the face of the poem because he is the epitome of Western films. These films, like all, are for entertainment purposes, so the film writers were okay with bending the truth if it meant that audiences would be entertained. Erdrich’s piece is lighthearted and it can be shown in the line, “A few laughing Indians fall over the hood slipping in the hot spilled butter” (Stanza 6 Line 1-2). The Natives found it ridiculous that people actually buy into these films, but they, personally, are trying to be unbothered by the absurd portrayal. This also seems to be the feelings of Deloria when people share that they too have Native blood and how Victor’s parents found the note sent home to be laughable.

​           Along with this idea, whites are typically shown as though they believe they are superior to Natives. The mosquitos in the poem are a metaphor for the whites. Mosquitoes are blood sucking insects that take until they’re fully satisfied, whether the host wants it or not. The whites did the same and what’s ironic about this is the fact that Wayne, the star of these awful portrayals, died of cancer, which is a disease that took over his body against his will. This isn’t to say that the Natives never fought back, they typically did if they needed to take action. Much like “the bear,” they weren’t provoked unless they had a good reason (Erdrich Stanza 3 Line 6). It’s painful to the Natives that they have to defend their identity and their land because they settled the land long before whites stepped foot on American soil. This feeling of pain in the poem can be translated in not only Alexie’s work, but in Deloria’s work as well.

          The characters depicted in these author’s works defy the odds of embodying the stereotypes that society expected them to fall into. The characters are trying not to internalize the white customs in order to fit in or feel accepted. They don’t allow what they are being told to affect the lives they are pursuing even though it is extremely difficult due to how plentiful the white population is. As stated by Deloria, “Everywhere an Indian turns he is deluged with offers of assistance, with good, bad, and irrelevant advice, and with proposals designed to cure everything from poverty to dandruff. Rarely does anyone ask an Indian what he thinks about the modern world” (225). It isn’t uncommon for whites to believe that Natives are stuck in the past or that they fill the stereotypical “Indian mold.” They are more interested in providing them with their opinion and mindset as opposed to letting them follow their own path. It goes along with the idea of whites feeling superior and how their ways are the best. It can leave one pondering
what it would be like if the Natives were constantly pushing their beliefs and culture down the throats of the whites. How would they react if the tables were turned?

                                                                                Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: Grove Press, 1993. Print.

Deloria, Vine. Custer Died For Your Sins. University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. Web

Erdrich, Louise. Dear John Wayne. Print.

​A Balancing Act Between Cultures