An Intense Flight

After reading, discussing and generally obsessing over The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I decided to see what other Sherman Alexie gems my local library might have.  His 2007 book Flight was the very first book in the paperback section.  The cover’s primary colors and the story’s first sentence—“Call me Zits.”—suggested that this might be another Young Adult novel, but I ignored my nagging impulse to invent a homebound younger sibling to save face at the checkout counter.  If this librarian knows anything, I thought, she’s well aware that Alexie’s Young Adult novels deal with universal issues that audiences of any age can appreciate.  Two hours and many tears later, I realized that Flight was a lot more legitimately “adult” than I expected.

Sherman Alexie at a book signing. Source Wikimedia Commons

Flight, like The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, centers on a male Indian (or half-Indian, half-Irish in Zits’ case) teenager with an alcoholic father.  Both protagonists are on a journey towards self-discovery while faced with adversity.  The similarities, though, essentially begin and end with these basic details.  While Junior is optimistic, sensitive, and hard working, Zits is a dangerous troublemaker determined to spread his misery and anger around. Flight’s inclusion of extreme violence—including mass murder, terrorism, police brutality, and a few especially bloody events in American history—make it a rather shocking, in-your-face read that validated my feeling of how tame The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian really was.

Both books deal with important issues that are present in the lives of teenagers and adults alike, but The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is presented in a way that younger audiences can digest and understand.  After reading Flight, I recognized how important the illustrations were to the readability and effectiveness of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  They served to lighten the mood and give the mind and heart a moment’s rest from the heavy subject matter.  Flight hit hard from cover to cover, offering no such respite.

With Diary, Alexie did what a great author should do: tell an intriguing story through tight, dynamic prose, create relevant and memorable characters, and ultimately inspire his readers to explore more of his work.  It is frustrating, then, to think about young readers who may miss out on this or other Alexie books because of school bans.  I can understand why a book like Flight would not be used in schools.  But The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is clearly an age-appropriate book that all schools can and should use to teach about contemporary Native American life and the general teenage experience.  The book’s few “provocative” details about alcoholism and sex that any teenager with a television or plain old hormones is already quite familiar with should not deter schools from using this important novel.

The Politics of Sharing

In the late 19th and early 20th century, the American and Canadian governments began establishing boarding and residential schools designed to assimilate and acculturate Native children. By “civilizing” the young children, and  “erasing” their Native background, these children could become more “productive” members of North American society.

Leap from the boarding school era to the 21st century, when Sherman Alexie wrote The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. When Junior, the protagonist, decides to get a better education off the reservation in a nearby “white” school, he faces major social repercussions within his home community. By leaving the reservation for school, he has become a traitor, anow considering himself part Indian, part not. At home, his friends don’t really want to hear about all the white kids at his new school, and Junior felt uncomfortable being honest about his home life at his new school because it is so different from their idea of normal.

This dichotomous existence, the embrasure of an extremely difficult existence in the name of bettering one’s self, is difficult to comprehend. Various groups have taken actions over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries to gain freedom, justice, and equality for Native populations, and have succeeded in many of these endeavors. Still, Native communities struggle with the repercussions of the earlier boarding schools and residential programs. For many, original languages and customs were lost or forgotten by the majority of people. With a resurging interest in energizing Native culture, a few non-profits have arisen with a dedication to preserve and teach Native American languages, ensuring their survival. While language remains an especially important part of maintaining and saving Native cultures, other institutions have also become involved.

The International Sites of Conscience has started the Indian Boarding and Residential Schools Sites of Conscience project, including three schools with original missions of assimilating Native children into white society. These schools have since been re-purposed, and are either owned by various groups and tribes, universities, or high schools. The primary goals of the project include using history to address critical questions about contemporary issues facing Native communities, and using old school sites as centers for communities to confront their difficult histories and discuss their diverse legacies today.

Currently, the International Coalition’s Indian Boarding and Residential Schools Project, Ottawa-based Legacy of Hope Foundation (LHF), and former boarding schools are jointly developing a travelling exhibit entitled Where are the Children?, based on LHF’s popular photo exhibition that shares the story of the thousands of Native children sent to boarding schools and residential programs during the 19th and 20th centuries in Canada in the United States. The exhibition will travel to boarding school sites in both countries, inviting visitors to share stories and images of their own experiences.

When I think about the travelling exhibit, I wonder what effect it will actually have on visitors. First, who is the audience? If the exhibit is specifically trying to attract people from Native communities or backgrounds, the exhibit could potentially alienate other visitors. Considering the history being presented, worrying about this seems a bit ironic. In addition to the matter of audience, the topics represented in shared stories and experiences could present other issues. Will the sharing be limited to boarding and residential schools experiences, or will it include general hardships faced by the exhibit’s visitors? If the latter, the exhibition’s collected material could potentially become a bone of contention, depending on the audience and who decides to share stories or images. It reminds me of a moment in Alexie’s book, where a white man comes to a Native American funeral, trying to convince them of his love for all things Native American, only to be completely shunned by the Native American community because of his status as a collector and outsider.

Sharing can become political. Depending on who can share and who wants to share, an exhibition such as Where are the Children? could become controversial, all because of audience and deeply rooted political sentiments. Hopefully, the conversations and workshops held at the Sites of Conscience pilot schools will enable success in not only a historical education, but also a new cultural and social perspective.

Bringing History Home

Noongar Elder Uncle Angus shared his personal experience as a child of the Stolen Generations with Colgate students at Marribank, formerly Carrolup, in Western Australia. June 2008.

“How can you criticize our history? You did the same thing in America to the Indians.”

I was on the Perth subway with several classmates two days after arriving in Australia. In a casual conversation with the stranger, a classmate had explained that we were spending time with members of the Noongar tribe in Western Australia. “Oh, watch out for those aboriginals. They steal,” he had told us.

This answer had taken us aback. While we knew Aboriginal people in Australia still faced racism in daily life, we didn’t expect to encounter it ourselves in the first days of our trip. Further, we had not anticipated this criticism of our own history when another classmate mentioned that we had been studying Australia’s Stolen Generations. But the man on the subway was right about one thing: both our nations have checkered pasts in terms of the treatment of our native populations. Even our country’s history with Indian Boarding Schools mirrors Australia’s efforts to “smooth the dying pillow” of Aboriginal cultures through harsh, assimilatory educational efforts.

As I read Sherman Alexie’s An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I started to think about this encounter on the subway and I realized we were both wrong. In so intensely focusing on Australian Aboriginal issues, we had forgotten to look at home, while by treating the Stolen Generations as a historical issue, the man on the subway failed to see the continuing issue of racism. Moreover, we were speaking in broad institutional terms, instead of the daily lives of people whom none of us represented.

Based on his own experiences growing up, Alexie’s novel is told through the eyes (and cartoons) of fictional teenager Arnold Spirit, Jr. who lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Urged by his high school teacher, Mr. P, Junior leaves the reservation and enrolls at the all-white Reardon High School 20 miles from his home. Throughout the rest of the book, Junior grapples with his outsider status both racially and socio-economically at school and amongst his community on the reservation.

The true highlight of Alexie’s young adult novel is the complex portrayal of a life on and off the Spokane Reservation from the perspective of multiple characters. Many characters like Rowdy, Junior’s best friend, do not support his decision to attend Reardon High School and feel that he is abandoning his community and Indian culture. Yet others such as Junior’s father’s best friend, Eugene, support the teenager and recognize the bravery that it takes to try breaking the cycle of poverty on the reservation by pursuing a better education elsewhere. Ultimately, Alexie’s novel clearly presents the tension between the individual and community, personal and collective experience.

In 1969 a non-profit organization called Indians of All Nations occupied Alcatraz Island. Courtesy of nativelegalupdate.com

This complexity is an important part of American Indian history, which so often focuses on the collective while neglecting the individual perspective. In the late 1960s a Pan-American Indian movement began to develop, influenced by the Civil Rights movement of the previous decade. In 1969 a group of Bay Area Indians occupied Alcatraz Island under the banner of “Indians of All Tribes.” Through the 1970 “Planning Grant Proposal to Develop an All-Indian University and Cultural Complex on Indian Land, Alcatraz,” the group asserted that “we don’t speak for Indians all over the country. The Indians all over the country speak for themselves.” Indians of All Tribes recognized the need for an overarching movement to lobby for the greater American Indian community, while also still representing individual voices and perspectives.

Bringing varied individual perspectives into a community history certainly presents a challenge. For Indians of All Tribes, the similarities of personal experiences across the country became a rallying point for the Pan-American Indian organization, while for Sherman Alexie’s Arnold Spirit, Jr., the varying personal perspectives created a challenging social web for him to navigate as he set out to find personal hope and freedom through an education off of the reservation.

By the end of my study trip to Australia, I found my understanding of the Aboriginal issues had been equally complicated, bringing the historical into present day and the community story to the individual level. Intimate conversations with members of the Stolen Generations in culturally significant spaces only underscored the serious problems that still exist today. The conversation on the subway now stands out as an example of confusing institutional faults with individual perspectives. Change must come from both sources, though at times they may seem diametrically opposed. However, without the Sherman Alexies a la Arnold Spirits of the world in tandem with larger movements like Indians of All Tribes, we have no chance at making even the smallest change.

Between the Rock (aka Alcatraz) and a Hard Place

Alcatraz, Photograph by Jon Sullivan; Source: Wikimedia Commons

In late November 1969, a group of San Francisco Bay Area Indians seized Alcatraz Island after the San Francisco Indian Center burned down.  Then, in February 1970, they drafted a grant proposal to convert the island into a cultural-education center. [1] Ironically, shortly before, Alcatraz was one of the nation’s most prominent high-security prisons.  However, these Indians wanted Alcatraz to be “focused on the Indian people” and “a place of our own.  Somewhere that is geographically unfeasible for everybody to come and interfere with what we would like to do with our lives.” [2] Author Sherman Alexie, himself a Spokane Indian, tells a similar story of liberation and struggle in his semi-autobiographical novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  Focused around the teenage boy Arnold Spirit, Jr., Alexie superbly blends the adversity and hopelessness of reservation life with Arnold’s strong desire to attain a better future beyond the “rez.”  Just as the Bay Area Indians were fighting for an island of their own, Arnold is searching for a place in the world where he can find both acceptance and success.  You could say that Arnold is searching for his own Alcatraz Island.

American Indian Reservation; Source:newsfornatives.com

Arnold’s journey begins with his transfer from Winnipit Reservation High School to the well-regarded and nearly all-white Reardon High School off the reservation.  However, this decision is not solely self-motivated.  Arnold, angered over the outdated resources of his reservation school, throws a book at his teacher and is suspended.  Much to his surprise the teacher comes to him to confess the pain he, as a white reservation teacher, has seen and caused on the reservation.  He warns Arnold, “if you stay on this rez they’re going to kill you.  I’m going to kill you. We’re all going to kill you.” [3] Inspired to escape the vicious circle of reservation life, Arnold decides his only choice is to do the previously unthinkable, break from his tribe.

This break is only the first, and possibly easiest, part of Arnold’s journey.  Leaving Winnipit causes him to lose his best friend, Rowdy, while his acclamation to Reardon is anything but smooth.  As “half Indian in one place and half white in the other,” Arnold feels like a stranger in both worlds. [4] Though he wants to embrace Reardon with all its opportunity and hope, he finds the rejection on the rez hard to stomach.  The reservation, with its alcoholism and low education, is often not a pleasant place.  He remarks, “Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know?  Indians were supposed to move onto reservations and die.” [216]. But unfortunately for Arnold, this prison also contains many of the people he loves most.

Yet, at Reardon Arnold becomes highly successful.  He dates the popular and lovely Penelope and becomes a star basketball player.  And it is through basketball that his conflict comes to a head.  The Spokane Indians’ mentality in Winnipit towards their Reardon rivals is much like it is with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, you are either with them or against them.  Following a less than pleasant reception at the first game between Reardon at Winnipit, Arnold prepares for a rematch at Reardon’s gym.  In a blaze of glory, Arnold shuts down Rowdy, his former best friend and Winnipit’s best player, to lead Reardon to victory.  Caught up in the moment Arnold thinks, “We had defeated the enemy!…We were David who’d thrown a stone into the brain of Goliath.” [195] But then the realization comes to him- the Indians are still the losers, they are David.  As said by the Bay Area Indians, “while we were physically away, we still had our families and people in our hearts and on our minds.” [6] With a heavy heart, Arnold is surprised to find shame and confliction in a moment which he believed would be full of glory.

At Alcatraz the Bay Area Indians faced uncertainty and resistance, just as Arnold faced unsuspected challenges and pain.  But as the Bay Area Indians eventually failed in their attempt to gain Alcatraz, Arnold begins to build his own “island” in the world.  In a touching reunion ending the novel, Rowdy tells Arnold that he is the “nomadic” Indian in a world where nomadic Indians have almost disappeared.  Arnold travels from place to place to sustain himself in a world with sparse resources.  We are left with the feeling that Arnold will be one to succeed and go out into the world proclaiming, “We are a proud people!  We are Indians!” [7]

[1] “Planning Grant Proposal to Develop an All-Indian University and Cultural Complex on Indian Land, Alcatraz,” in Great Documents in American Indian Histor, ed. Wayne Moquin (Da Capo, 1995), 374.

[2] Ibid, 375-6.

[3] Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2007), 43.

[4] Ibid, 118.

[5] Ibid, 195.

[6] “Planning Grant Proposal,” 377.

[7] Ibid, 375.

Clearly nothing ended happily ever after

Our readings gave us a wonderful look, firsthand, at the plight of Native Americans in postwar America. A theme of abandonment runs through Sherman Alexie’s short story “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” and the selected works from Great Documents in American Indian History. Both readings did end with an optimistic sense of acceptance and the hope for change, however.

Though informative and enjoyable, the readings painted an incomplete picture. Just a few years after the Alcatraz island takeover, one of the worst periods of Indian relations in the twentieth century took place. Stopping the story where we did felt like shutting off Old Yeller right before the father has to put down the poor dog, thus shielding us from the horrific ending to this period of Indian rights activism.

I saw a story arc through the four documents that mirrored Alexie’s piece. It started with an initial abandonment. Victor’s father left him, much like a paternalistic United States government had selectively neglected Indian treaties about fishing and land rights. Yet, both readings end rather optimistically. Victor was able to accept his father abandoning him and then he reconnected with tradition through the story teller, Thomas Builds-the-Fire.  By 1969, the documents shift from pointing out the failures of the U.S. government to asking for the sovereignty to solve the Indians’ own problems from a base on Alcatraz island. They seemed to accept their abandonment and wished to be left alone.

A sign from Alcatraz island, showing the lasting marks from the American Indian occupation in 1969. Unfortunately, American Indian relations only worsened in the following years. Photo Courtesy of Tewy at Wikimedia.org