In recent news a travel ban denying citizens from 7 individual countries has been instated by President Trump and then, thankfully rejected by a White House top advisor. I believe the travel ban in particular along with the rejection of it has a strong connection to Tracks by Louise Erdrich. In the beginning of the book Nanapush says a line that I found to be very important throughout the rest of the story. He says, "The land will go. The land will be sold and measured." Here Nanapush is talking about the Native land, which did originally belong to the Natives of this country, being divided up and measured by the intruding white man. Native American people have always been connected to the land, a part of the land, and respected nature. When the white man comes and starts to strip away something that had always belonged to them, they were be forced onto small, unkept reservations. I find this to be a fear Nanapush had and was expressing to Flur so that she was not kept in the dark when this process began.
The article provided links to these lines said by Nanapush by the parallel of freedom. The Natives were free living on the land, being one with the land until the white man came and started to take it away. In terms with the article, Trump and his administration was removing the access to a new start from a large number of people from seven individual countries. In a sense he did not give them the option to be free from their pasts.
The last connection I took from the article was the top White House advisor who rejected the ban. On a larger scale I view it as, contrary to the Trump Administration, not everyone in the United States views people from those seven countries as being inferior. Just as, not everyone agrees that it was right of us to take away the land from the Native American people. The term "take away" when looked through the eyes of high school textbooks, is more so focused on "cultural diffusion" and the determination to reach the west at any cost. Only later in life, like in books, documentaries, and Native American Culture college classes that some may take, do people see the real side of what "colonizing America" meant to those who already lived there. We forgot, or more so, our textbooks purposely forget to mention, that we were destroying lives and families and cultural ways of life in order to have what we see before us today.
not everyone agrees that it was right of us to take away the land from the Native American people. The term "take away" when looked through the eyes of high school textbooks, is more so focused on "cultural diffusion" and the determination to reach the west at any cost. Only later in life, like in books, documentaries, and Native American Culture college classes that some may take, do people see the real side of what "colonizing America" meant to those who already lived there. We forgot, or more so, our textbooks purposely forget to mention, that we were destroying lives and families and cultural ways of life in order to have what we see before us today.
ReplyDeleteJodi,
That is good stuff! I couldn't agree with you more and I am especially thrilled that you chose this connection. What we now know after what we thought we knew is so uncomfortably enlightening.