Today, we talked about poems and short stories from “The Business of Fancydancing” by Sherman Alexie and watched a short documentary film called, “A Century of Genocide in the Americas: The Residential School Experience” by award-winning director Rosemary Gibbons, a graduate of the Native Voices Documentary Program at the University of Washington. The poems and stories talked about the clash of modern life and culture, identity and history, and being a native person navigating the complexities of contemporary changes. The film discussed residential and boarding school experiences of survivors with difficult circumstances being taken from home, made to assimilate and be institutionalized, and ultimately, be white-washed of their culture and have Indian culture, language, and identity removed from them. Discussion was great and students had good questions. They are fantastic in engaging with difficult material like this and thinking about them together.
boarding schools
Day 11: E. Pauline Johnson’s “As it was in the beginning”
Haudenosaunee writer, E. Pauline Johnson, of Mohawk and English descent considered “Indian girl of modern fiction” at the turn of the 19th century.
Today, we discussed Johnson’s reading and how her cultural influence shows up in her writing of this story and in many of her other ones as well. She writes a short story that is surprisingly full of issues that are struggled with by modern natives even today about love, death, religion, culture, identity, and home. Her ideas have been marvelously posed to readers speaking from the time of her writing of the turn of the 19th century which resonate today. The discussion was lively and interesting and garnered the curiosity of many Native Literature students.
Related articles
- Writing Short Story (thedubiousseeker.wordpress.com)
- “The Six Nations,” by E. Pauline Johnson (ceww.wordpress.com)
Native Tribal Scholars: Native Literature Class 