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My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys For A Reason

Although Native Americans are not as physically violent nowadays as they are depicted to be in western movies, they still pack a pretty mean right hook, metaphorically speaking. They fight not with weapons but with words. Used correctly, words have the power to fell great nations, destroy walls of segregation, and inspire the hearts of the people. Summed up, words hold their power in the form of "aesthetic activism".  This is why Native Americans are just one of the many groups to take advantage of the written word. They do this through such outlets as poetry, stories, and movies. One writer who has gone to great lengths with aesthetic activism is Sherman Alexie. As Rader states in Engaged Resistance, Alexie is just one of many writers who uses his writing to “reverse the imperial colonizing thrust of contemporary culture” and does so through direct participation in the system that has been used against him and many others (115). In My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys, we see Alexie mount an attack against the cowboys who represent the early Americans that persecuted and misused his ancestors. In setting up his attack, he talks about his neighbor Brian who suffocated neighborhood dogs and stuffed their bodies in the school’s basement. In itself, this is a gruesome story, but it takes on more meaning as a weapon against the cowboys when Alexie adds “he must have imagined those dogs were cowboys, come back to break another treaty.” In saying this he brings to light fallacies of the United States government for those who either have not heard of them before or have chosen to ignore them. He uses his poem as an outlet for aesthetic activism, pushing back the blinds on the atrocities that some Americans have used in the past to try to silence the Native American.  

In addition, Alexie uses his poem to explore the theme of Native American identity as seen through a western movie. I think the most prominent theme of identity in the poem is the one which sets up Native Americans as “extras” in the great western that plays out in the United States. As Alexie says near the beginning of his poem, “did you know that in 1492 every Indian instantly became an extra in the Great American Western?” The Native American’s identity became intertwined with that of their European visitors. Suddenly their identity was seen in comparison with their white counterparts who saw themselves as far superior in every way. Native Americans just didn’t measure up with their “backwards” ways and so were just a part of the background. They were models to be misinterpreted in the background noise of the western movie. They were extras who would never have top billing and would be tread upon relentlessly. After the arrival of Columbus, Native Americans had to begin to define themselves by who they weren’t, the white invaders.  As it mentions in the poem, “on the reservation, when we played Indians and cowboys, all of us little Skins fought on the same side against the cowboys in our minds. We never lost”. It’s the us against them mentality that drives Indians to pair up with one another to verbally and playfully(as children on the reservation) defeat the insurmountable giant that is white American, or as represented in this poem, cowboys. The cowboys of the western movies are made to be monstrous and racist to the Native Americans. They take their land and break most treaties. The Indian’s identity in this poem is as the underdog and like most underdogs; it is hard to not root for them even though their activist writing is of a violent nature. In the poem, it is easy to assume that their identity and fight lies in words because they are outnumbered by the people who fight with guns. As Alexie strongly reminds, “my heroes have never been cowboys; my heroes carry guns in their minds”. I think by “guns in their minds”, he is referring to words. Because although Indians are outnumbered, they are able to fight with words, like the Ghost Dance spoken about by Rader, they believe in the power of words. I think their belief in the power of words is best summed up by Rader on page 113 of the text; “from the Ghost Dance to the Maya power song “They Came from the East” to Iroquois’s anti-Anglo spell “Magic Formula” to the Yana’s “Curse on People that Wish One Will,” Native communities have invested language with the ability to control identity and destiny”. I think this poem really makes it a point to highlight Indian’s identity as the underdog, the extra in the western, the disheartened fellow that looks at the world in despair over what it has become, or the dreamer who discovers the grim truth in the fiction. But above those, My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys acts as a form of aesthetic activism for the Native Americans all across the nation.  

  

A link to Alexie's My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys: http://tylerpoems.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-heroes-have-never-been-cowboys.html

A Naturally Native Reflection

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to watch Naturally Native. It's a film that's centered around the lives of three sisters (played by Valerie Red-Horse, Irene Bedard, and Kimberly Guerrero) and their efforts to begin a line of cosmetics using recipes passed down from their tribe. Fun fact: Bedard was the voice and model for Disney's Pocahontas. It's a movie that was written and directed by Red-Horse. 

The film is a great cinematic work for the Native American people as it tries to cover every crucial issue, small or large, in Native American culture. As Rader comments in his book, Engaged Resistance, "because the film works hard to zoom in on the complicated issues Indians deal with daily while also panning wide to show the broad spectrum of the macro issues of Indian people, it does the cinematic work of a lens, bringing both big and small aspects of Native issues into focus"(94). Issues in this movie include many forms of cultural imperialism (mascots, white shamanism, etc), drinking, interracial relationships, a happy marriage among Native Americans, Indians living on reservations and in suburban settings, the status of Native American women, tribal membership and CIB cards, and the presence of the casino in present day Native American culture.

 In addition to addressing at least a dozen pertinent issues, it also deals with Native American identity. For example, throughout the whole movie Tanya doesn’t really identify with her Indian culture. She spends her time looking for love online (a move which almost ends tragically) when she has a great guy right in front of her. I think part of the reason that she pursues a man outside of her culture is because she hasn’t accepted her cultural heritage yet. It takes a visit from the reservation for her to see the loving Native American suitor right in front of her. In order for her to see him though she has to negotiate with herself that she is an Indian and it’s okay for her to marry an Indian man. Another moment where identity is specifically negotiated is the part in which the sisters try to get a business grant from the guy at the YEA who needs to see a CDIB before he can give them any money. As the sisters were all adopted, this requirement cannot be met. The guy then says that they could just say they were Hispanic and get the grant that way. However, the sisters rightly turn that down as that would be a direct compromise of their cultural identity. A third instance in which the issue of identity is negotiated is the one in which the sisters go and visit the white shaman. She tells them that in return for their performing of the Sun Dance for her customers, she will financially support them. The only problem with her seemingly kind offer is that the girls are Presbyterians and adopted and therefore they would never engage in that ritual. Not only that, but like most white shamans, she is practicing a form of cultural imperialism and stands to make some money off of it.  

As you can see, this movie casts a wide net to encompass many issues in Native American culture. This makes the movie a wonderful guide for those who want to learn about the issues but not a great movie for those who desire a straightforward plot. The storyline tends to wander slightly with the writer's urge to pack as many issues into one movie as possible. There is also the fact that if you're looking for a big budget blockbuster, this is not your movie. But as Craig Womack is quoted in Engaging Resistance, native literary texts (and films, for that matter) “deserve to be judged by their own terms, not merely an agreement with, or reaction against, European literature and theory” (93). For that reason Naturally Native is a goldmine for Native American culture and well worth your time. Happy watching!

Here's a link to the trailer for the movie:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XETu3jEPBQ