“Roma and Julie: Indians in Duality” by Barney Bush and “Looking for Hiawatha” by Andrew Connors are two short stories selected from “Blue Dawn, Red Earth,” a collection of contemporary Native Indians literatures (Trafzer). Bush is a Shawnee who grew up in Karber’s Ridge in Hardin County, Illinois (Bush). Connors is a Bad River Ojibwe from Wisconsin (Trafzer). In both of these stories, the theme of Western cultural colonization in Native American culture is very conspicuous.Bush and Connors are likely referring to the titles of the stories, “Roma and Julie: Indians in Duality” to “Romeo and Juliet,” and “Looking for Hiawatha” to “Song of Hiawatha”.
The former is an English classic Western written by William Shakespeare. The latter is written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a famous white American poet (Maine Historical Society). The authors deliberately chose the titles to represent the cultural oppression from the Western colonialists. In addition, readers may experience the idea about the cultural conflict between Native Americans and the white people throughout the stories.
In order to illustrate the oppression of Western culture in the stories, the article would compare and contrast the cultural conflicts from a Marxist’s conflict perspective. In addition, the paper would analyze the literature elements such as the characterization and style of the stories and how they related to the main idea of the stories. “Roma and Julie: Indians in Duality” talks about an intense quarrel between two Native American couples. The woman in the story (Julie), asks the man (Roma) a set of questions about her identity and their future.Differences between the white and Native American culture causes the exhaustion in her life and confusion of real selves, a white-self and an Indian-self.
For instance, Julie is a Native American who indulges herself with marijuana, but smoking marijuana is actually a white tradition. At the end of the story, Bush wrote “Her body convulses, not because of the rain…But because she has a gun” (Trafzer 337). The author leaves an open ending, “an ambiguous conclusion to a story” (Charters 1146). Julie is ikely to commit suicide with the gun, because she is dominated by the outside oppression and overwhelmed by her internal oppression. The two main characters are conscious about the economic and social forces against them. For example, Julie refers to the Whites as oppressors (Trafzer 334).
“Roma returned to the sun and moon of his homeland, where the White people dig his relatives from their graves… take advantage of his relatives who need their jobs” (335). These sentences indicate the two characters are aware that they are in the lower socio-economic positions.In addition to economic domination of the white people, the influence of western culture and ideology such as Christianity are mentioned in both stories. According to famous German economist Karl Marx, he describes religion as an ‘opiate’ that was particularly harmful to oppressed people (Schaefer 225). Therefore, disadvantaged groups in the society, such as the Native Americans, would become submissive, and accept the culture and social structure imposed by the dominate groups, such as the white Europeans (227).Based on their stories, both authors manifest negative views toward Western religion, because westernized religions are accompanied with colonization along the history.
Westernized religions usually contradict Native American traditions, as Russell Means, a political activist of American Indian Movement, points out that “each new European ideology-Christianity, Science, Capitalism-has ‘despiritualized’ society further, and energized ever-greater European territorial expansions" (Barsh 205).For example, the evangelical Christians have persuaded American Indians to accept their belief systems since the beginning of colonization in America. In this story, Roma uses mordacious tone to denounce Julie’s experience with the white culture and its religion, as Bush wrote, “she is not the affectation that comes only from the darkest side of White people…when you go among the Whites, you must pray first, and ask your invisible guide to accompany you…” (Trafzer 335). Besides the illustration of the western Religion, the practices of American Indian religion are also mentioned in Bush’s story.
Roma was “prayed over”, “oiled”, and “baptized” by the hands of the faithful (335). Some of these ritual elements could also be seen in western beliefs. The majority of the dominate group who practices Christian faith usually try to undermine Native American religions, and hold discriminatory attitudes to these beliefs. Besides of the rejection of the western religion, some American Indians even reject Communist ideology which encourages equality of class and ethnicity groups. According to Russell Means, “Marxism is as alien to my culture as capitalism and Christianity are” (Means).Similar to Bush’s story, the conflict that American Indian confronts is not about class or materialistic struggle, but spiritual and cultural struggle among the American Indian community.
As a result, most indigenous American Indians would object to almost all the western philosophy. “Looking for Hiawatha” is a very distinct story in terms of style and format. It is a relatively plot orientated story compared to “Roma and Julie”. Connors uses the frame story method to tell a story within a story.
The narrator, Two Dogs, recalls a story about an anthropologist’s journey of discovering the story about legendary Hiawatha, but rather he meet a mysterious storyteller, the Snow Dancer. The Anthropologist (Andy) seems to be a Christian, because he is holding a cross in his pocket (Trafzer 412). The story reaches its climax when the Snow Dancer says that some of the rocks can speak, and left reader an open ending question- why some of the rocks speak (414). The author deliberately describes him as a Christian anthropologist in order to expose the ignorance of European American people in terms of understanding Native American culture.Compared to Bush’s story, “Looking for Hiawatha” has a much explicit emphasis on the colonization theme.
The Christianity and American Indian religion are compared throughout the story. Regarding of nature, the American Indian religions are pantheism belief that focus on living in harmony with Mother Nature. They believe spirits are dwelled in every aspect of nature which includes “rocks, stones, boulders, animals, birds, fish, water etc. ” (Trafzer 414).
On contrary, westernized religion disbelieve that nature has spirits, thus Andy is dubious about what the Snow Dancer says about the rocks.Because of the difference in religious views, the white anthropologist fails to understand the American Indian culture from an American Indian perspective. Even though these two stories use different rhetorical devices, the two authors heavily touch on the same colonialism theme. For non-Native American readers, these two stories may not only help them better understand the conflict between the white and American Indian culture, but also help them realize that the cultural colonization is still taking place in today’s American society.
