Book Summary: Night Flying Woman

The Choctaw Indian Tribe is very different in terms of the roles of the men and the women. Women assume the position of leader in most cases. However, they all have to work together. Men, women, and children have to come together to help the tribe to function.

Do you know about the Iroquois? The Iroquois had to face many challenges due to the weather in their environment. The Iroquois were impacted by their environment in many ways.

After the recent readings for Zinn’s book, I began to do some research on the Indians helping the British during the Revolutionary War. I Google “Roles of Indians during the Revolutionary War,” and I sound a very interesting site that backed up Zinn’s statement. Many of the Indians, especially the Shawnee, Creeks and the powerful Cherokee and Iroquois helped the British in the American Revolution. The British promised Indians more than their freedom, they also promised to stop settlement on their land. However, there are some Indians that fought for America as well, those tribes were most involved with people who would become Americans. They lived in an intermarriage community and have personal relationships with them.

The Iroquois are a group of native americans.The Iroquois are divided into 5 dans. The Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga tribes. Later a sixth nation, the Tuscarora tribe, joined the confederation.

Many Europeans believed that they were superior to other cultures. They had a mindset that they were more deserving and more civilized than other peoples. This caused problems between the Europeans and other cultures. When the Europeans arrived in America, there was no hostility between the groups, but as time went on this European mentality caused many conflicts between the different cultures in the New World.

As with all peoples through history, most Ojibwe would know of some myths, legends and tales explaining natural phenomena, ceremonies, life and death etc. However, the Ojibwe Grand Medicine Society or Midéwiwin kept many details secret of these explanations from the common people so as to confer belief, respect and wisdom to those with this knowledge. There are four different levels or degrees in the Midéwiwin of seniority and hence levels of details in the stories. The following origin description is from the highest or fourth level and contains a spirit or Manitou called Black Stone or Black Rock. It is told by the high midé shaman, Alec Everwind (b 1898) at the Red Lake Penemah village in Minnesota, translated and recorded in about 1960 and involves the trickster Manitou, Nehnehbush (or Nanabush), an important go between the highest spirit Gitche Manitou and man. The source of this version of the origin narrative is Ojibwa Religion and the Midéwiwin, pp 92-93,

Religious and spiritual misinterpretation occur frequently throughout the Jesuit documents. These misunderstandings are justified throughout these historical documents and provide a clear Native belief system to the subjective recordings of the Jesuits who detailed these connections.

The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act was an act, which allowed new territories to decide if they were a free or slave state by popular sovereignty (Civilwar.org, Kansas-Nebraska Act). Kansas-Nebraska Act negated the Missouri Compromise. Missouri Compromise was an effort by the congress to diffuse the political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri in 1819 for admission as a state in which supported slavery (Garraty and Foner). This was done to restore the balance of slave and free states at the time. Kansas-Nebraska Act violated the compromise that was made in the Missouri Compromise, it reignited the disagreement between the anti and pro-slavery factions, which lead to violent events. This act prematurely pushed Osage Indians from their land by encroaching white settlers and it had a very negative effect on them. Which is why I believe Osage Tribe would have never been in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

harvesting their raw materials was geopolitical in nature, as nations sought to increase their standing and become a world superpower. Another document that displays this is Document E, a graph that displays the money made from imports and exports from Africa, South of Sahara, in the year 1854 and in 1990. Looking at this graph, in 1854, imports and exports from and to Africa were considerably smaller compared to 1990. The overwhelming column for 1990 shows that Europeans exported more goods more often from Africa over time. Over the span of 136 years, Europeans have obviously have had an interest of exports of raw materials found in Africa as seen in this document, which brought them more than 20 million pounds in 1990. This evidences the

In the mid-nineteenth century, a girl named Ni-bo-wi-se-gwe (Oona) was born in pitch darkness in the middle of the day when the sun and moon crossed paths. The book Night Flying Woman by Ignatia Broker is the biography of Broker’s great-great-grandmother, Oona. It describes Oona’s life through what Broker has learned from her grandparents when they passed down the stories. In the book, one of the main themes is passing traditions on. I chose this theme because, in the book, passing traditions on is a major part of the characters’ culture. Passing traditions on is a practice that is important to many cultures and it effectively connects generations of people through experiences and stories.

It is a warm summer night and shades of orange, red, and gold appear in the sky over the pine-covered hills. The sun soon disappears beneath the dark hills and darkness settles over the land. The buffalo, antelope, and elk find places to rest for the night and all is quiet except for the creeks and birds. In several hours, the sky will again be lit with a multitude of colors and the animals will begin to rise. A new day will begin in the Black Hills, just like it did hundreds of years ago. And just like hundreds of years ago, the Lakota consider the Black Hills to be sacred lands. However, some aspects have changed, as the Lakota can no longer call the land their own. The Lakota have spent over 100 years fighting for physical reclamation of

Where Jacobson works with animalistic symbolism, Morrisseau expresses the Ojibway worldview within his work through the use of narratives. Morrisseau’s grandfather Potan was known as a Midewinini and Jissakan, a shaking tent seer, and was well versed in the traditional stories and teachings of his people. One aspect of the Ojibway world view is the importance of narrative, which was told by the elders of the community. These narratives “were instrumental in teaching about history and morality. The Ojibwa narratives were used to pass on knowledge,” (Wobodistch, 15) This oral tradition that was meant to carry on the wisdom of one generation to the next. The narratives “were also intended to be entertaining so that the audience, which was supposed

Thomas King’s short story “Borders” explores the idea of pride and its power to strengthen the Indigenous identity through the erasure of physical borders. The protagonist’s mother teaches him that he should not have to abide by the physical borders of countries to be living on the land because something as deeply personal as one’s cultural identity is worth more than “a legal technicality” (King 292). Her disregard of the American-Canadian border grants the protagonist the knowledge that when they do not recognize the border, the border will not recognize them. Thomas learns this cultural pride by witnessing his mother's unapologetic display of her Blackfoot identity, discovering the power of resilience and media, and learning the stories of his family and people. These revelations show

Three Day Road is a novel by Joseph Boyden, first published in 2005. The story is set from Niska’s teenage days in the early 1870s to the pre-WWI years, the war itself and the immediate post-war time. It takes place in Northern Ontario and on the battlefields of France and Belgium. We follow two parallel narratives, Niska’s and Xavier’s. They are both Cree Indians. She is one of the last Canadian medicine women to live off the land. Niska is a proud, strong and independent character who does not give in during a time of cultural interference from the white people. Her two boys, Xavier and Elijah, have fought in the Great War and one of them has returned. Xavier is an invalid and addicted to the army’s morphine when he comes back to Canada.

Modernity has been mainly characterized by its imperialistic policies and colonizing endeavors, which while creating the current legal organization of the world have largely marginalized the many indigenous groups who originally occupied the conquered lands (Andrews and Walton 600). Although post-modern societies have seen an increase in the awareness of these matters, American-Canadian author Thomas King has dedicated his work to throwing light on issues still not tackled. In his short story “Borders”, King tells the adventure of a Blackfoot mother and her child, who try to cross the border to the U.S. but refuse to declare their nationality. It is through his masterful choice of narrator and the careful depiction of the mother’s struggle to maintain her Blackfoot identity that the author conveys the many difficulties First Nations face in their effort to keep their heritages alive.