What I researched and Why?
‘“What if the ghost dance is real?” Justice asks me again and again’ (34). Even when I reached the end of this book, to me what stood out as the most important passage of the text is the dialogue between Zits and Justice about The Ghost Dance, towards the beginning of the book (pp 31-35). Intertwined with the introduction to Zits about violence and power, it serves as the precursor to Zits walking into a bank with the intention of murdering innocents. Zits tell Justice a brief history of the purpose of the Ghost Dance, in which bottom line, if the Indians did this dance long enough, the dead Indians would return and the white man would die. When Zits finally believes in the power of the Ghost Dance after his practice with the guns and the persistence of Justice’s questioning, he decides his time has come to act upon his newly-found beliefs. But what is the Ghost Dance really and why does Alexie use it in his book? I wanted to gain some historical perspective to further understand this poignant part of the text.
What I found
I wasn’t sure I’d find very much in my search, but it was quite the contrary and I found some interesting things on the topic. And thanks to the power of YouTube, I found a very interesting video, giving a brief history and importance of the Native American Ghost Dance, through the interview of Anita Collins, a member of the Paiute tribe today. The video is also accompanied by an interesting montage of pictures and spiritual music, http://youtube.com/watch?v=cI0Jfdkq4z8.
For those who don’t have the time to watch the short video, here is a little bit of what Anita says. A Paiute Indian (Nevada) named Wokova, who the others perceived as a Paiute Messiah, became one of the first individuals to spread the message of the religious Ghost Dance movement, he was also known as Grandpa Jack Wilson. This movement began at time as Anita Collins called it, “a time when looking for hope for the future” came about; The Paiute were struggling to survive and there was a lot of uncertainty about what would happen to the tribe in the future. Wokova gave them “a voice during sad times, gave them strength.” Within the preaching of Wokova, came a message that if the dance was done, the white oppressors would disappear and the tribe would reunite with friends/relatives in the ghost world in brotherhood. This message and the dance spread across the United States to desperate worshippers, as far as the Great Plains. The government began to fear the movement and the US Army massacred 300 Indians at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, putting an end to the movement. Not to mention, 27 men received the Medal of Honor for the battle.
I also found some songs and lyrics to various Ghost Dance Songs: http://msnbc.com/onair/msnbc/TimeandAgain/archive/wknee/ghostsongs.asp.
My Interpretation/ What this adds to our class discussion
What stood out to me most, in listening to Anita Collins describe how important the Ghost Dance and Wokova were to the Paiute people, were the striking similarities I found that existed in comparison to Zits and Justice. If nothing, this passage stands as a great time of confusion for Zits in his life. He had been through so much in his young life, including so much pain, isolation, and being deserted by foster parents numerous times. He was holding onto his childhood memories, including distant memories of his real parents, and the history of the Indian people he had read in books and seen on television. Enter Justice, who resembles Wokova greatly. Anita Collins speaks to great end about the sad state of her people and the need for a message of hope and a path to regain their strength. For the first time in Zits’ life, he had found a friend, a mentor, a leader who he agreed with that could show him the way. He found the voice he was looking for to give him strength. Zits is so fragile during that time, that he is looking for anyone willing to help to relieve his pain. Justice leads Zits down a path in which Zits believes that killing innocent people in a bank (white people, at that) would relieve that pain and strain of desiring his parents to return. Killing people in that bank is Zits’ Ghost Dance, minus the songs, the drum, and the circle of fellow Indians. And the bank in which the attempted massacre takes place is Wounded Knee. Sherman Alexie integrates Indian/American history, in a symbolic manner, so perfectly in this book throughout, but primarily in this passage to set the stage for Zits: The Time Traveler.
I think this adds to the discussion we had in our previous class discussion of postmodernity in terms of Zits lack of identity. His history has been given to him through the television, the discovery channel, books; in other words, he has received his history through superficial terms. His lack of true experience of history distorts his mind and makes him vulnerable during his search for identity , selfhood, personal feeling of history and love.
4 comments:
I did have an opportunity to look at the video, and really appreciated it. I think it really enhances that section of the book, drawing the past into the present.
As a side note, I found the information about the relationship that the Paiute had with nature very interesting. When she spoke of how before picking a plant, she would tell it what she needed it for and leave a small gift, it reminded me of the Japanese Shinto tradition. If you are interested in this kind of cultural unity between humans and nature, you might want to look into it.
I definitely agree with you that Alexie found a very symbolic way of conveying his character's personal pain with the large-scale suffering of the Native Americans. I'm glad you researched Ghost Dances, because audiences who are unfamiliar with it only have Justice's unreliable description.
The narrator in the clip said Wokova warned his followers they "would have to lose almost everything." Zits definitely embodies a soul who has lost his identity; he meets Justice, who is white, angelic, and enlightened but equally detached from the dominant culture, and he actively hurtles himself into a violent, ugly, nihilistic existence. The Youtube clip shows how misconstrued the intention of the dance was; the message of overcoming persecution warps into the administration of perverse "justice" by disenfranchised teenagers.
I don't think we really talked about it in class, but the television programs and books that Zits read to gain an understanding of Native American history were mediated. They were produced, funded, and aired by rich people, probably white. Although today's politically correct media tries to tell the stories of Native American origin without bias, there still exists some prejudice. As we spoke about in class, Native Americans are still seen as Noble Savages. This is why I find Sherman Alexie's writing so interesting. This is a man who can draw from his own experience and those of his friends to tell tales that allow his readers to understand what it's like to be Native American NOW.
I believe throughout the book Alexie ties the pain of Zits to the pain of Native Americans as a whole, and the Ghost Dance seems to be the glue that tie the two together. At the begining of the book Zits laments how everything he learned about Indians he learned from books and T.V. and how he hated himself for this. He also said that Indians did not accept him because he does not know traditions (they were not passed from his father), so the Ghost Dance is symbolically important to Indians and in the life of Zits as well, although for different reasons. Zits' Ghost Dance is what inevitably changes him for the better, and the Ghost Dance for Native Americans provided a second or new life for people, much in the way it did for Zits. The Ghost Dance is key in the book and I found this information on it very interesting and helped my understanding of the deeper meaning of it.
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