Black Elk utilizes his visions to create understanding of nearly all things he is later exposed to. The discussion in closing will further illuminate his utilization of vision, to ask for help for his people in a time of crisis.
To discuss the vertical model of artistic communication it is difficult to narrow the filed to just one example, as Native American literature, and to a lesser degree film have become somewhat prolific as genres. Two authors who build upon this tradition are Scott Momaday and Alexie Sherman as they are significant and prolific writers of Indian tradition. Each has written and published several works, including a variety of genres, that all attempt to translate the oral traditions of their nations into a written form that contains the expression of the oral tradition.
In Alexie Sherman's collection of short stories, the Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven he offers a suggestion about the nature of reservation life, and the necessity of the expression of imagination. His equation is; " Survival = Anger x Imagination. Imagination is the only weapon on the reservation." (150) for Sherman and many other Indians the expression of imagination is done through variant writing that frequently challenges traditional English genres, melding in and out between poetry and prose, as well as frequently peppering phrases with oral tradition statements.
McFarland 255)
Wilson 34) Writing has therefore created a symbolic outlet for the traditional oral expressions of culture and many Native Americans seek to write the stories of their people, not only for the purpose of translating such vision to the broader culture but to rebuild a lasting tradition of vision and assimilation.
In their all but indispensable interview for the Bloomsbury Review conducted in the fall of 1993, John and Carl Bellante questioned Sherman Alexie about that equation, and he responded: "Exactly what my attitude toward life is" (p. 15). When the Bellantes asked what "precisely" about white culture so angered him, Alexie answered, "Pretty much everything patriarchal.... We've resisted assimilation in many ways, but I know we've assimilated into sexism and misogyny.... Women are the creators. We get into trouble when we try to deny that."
McFarland 253)
The value of this particular statement is significant in that anger and patriarchal systems of dominance are constant theme in Indian fiction and discussion, regarding white culture and how to meld the two cultures in a single individual, without losing sight of Indian heritage.
Hollarh)
Sherman also brings to mind a discussion of assimilation, a concept which was forced upon many Indians of his and previous generations, and to some degree still is today, as opportunity is limited on reservations and leaving, to live in a white world is one of the only alternatives to achieve success in or outside of the respective nation of origin. An additional aspect of assimilation is the variance of culture within reservations, as many tribes were regionally grouped, or moved great distances to share space with other nations, whose traditions they learned and lived with as a dichotomous source of pride or conflict. Additionally, the blending of these cultures as well as the necessary overgeneralization of native beliefs, (as they constitute 500 independent and sovereign nations) can lead one to the idea that modern Indians are a homogenous group all believing the same things and responding to change in the same ways and this is not the case at all.
Einhorn 6)
Perhaps more than any other Native writer, Alexie is aware of the power of the media. He understands it is the new battlefield. Alexie's sophisticated internalization of films and television in these poems reveals the critical and cultural vision that would eventually push him to turn the written narratives of the Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven into the visual narrative Smoke Signals.
Rader 147)
The film is the story of two Native Americans from an Indian reservation in Idaho, one the son of an alcoholic father and the other an old man who wishes to give this son (Sherman) a more native and fundamental view of his father, as they travel to Phoenix Arizona to retrieve the mans ashes, following his death. The vision throughout the film is of remembrances of both the modern young man and his older companion. The film dissects the conflicts of the old and new generations both facing extinction on a reservation that continually calls them home but offers them no benefit of potential "success" by white standards....
The stories are moving for the dominant cultural reader as well as for future generations of subjugated immigrant groups. This is not to say that all subjugated groups are immigrants, as the experience of the indigenous Native American population must also be seen as expressive of the American literary experience. The transition from an oral tradition to a written tradition has proved a struggle which was shadowed in extreme only
Ginsberg in fact spent some time in a psychiatric ward and his poem Howel makes the implication that his and his contemporaries madness is caused by the madness of society which, due to its infatuation with technology, has become a demon far worse than any found in humanity's collective mythology. Jung argues that in modern society, mythology has not actually disappeared, it has just taken a less noticeable form in
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