ipl-logo

Paula Allen's 'Where I Come From Is Like This'

1201 Words5 Pages

“Where I Come From Is Like This” is an essay that primarily is addressing the people who have misinterpreted the significant roles that Modern American Indian women played in traditional American Indian culture. Paula Allen sets up her argument in the first paragraph and states that American Indian Women are “deeply engaged in the struggle to redefine themselves.” (1.) They struggle with the fact that they have to incorporate both the traditional tribal and modern definitions of Indian women in their lives. The first claim that Allen makes in order to validate her argument is that she has “known a wide range of personal style and demeanor” in Indian women. Sometimes people see “women as fearful, sometimes peaceful… but they never portray women as mindless, helpless, simple, or oppressed.” (2.) She is trying to say that all women are complex and different in their own individual way. Her primary support for this claim is ethos, which she builds by sharing the many memories she has growing up as a half breed American Indian …show more content…

By stating that from her “daily experience of Indian life” and mentioning her mother and other Indians that raised her, she gets the audience to trust that what she’s saying is accurate, since she has experience. She states that Indians are truthful human beings and “care for their children and their old people… and that you will never see an Indian orphan and you always know that when you’re old, someone will take care of you.” (7.) Allen is suggesting that if Indians do all these things, there is no reason for other non-Indians to call them savages, and she uses the ethos to help convince readers otherwise as

Show More
Related

  • Cherokee Women Summary

    1518 Words  | 7 Pages

    Theda Perdue`s Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835, is a book that greatly depicts what life had been like for many Native Americans as they were under European Conquering. This book was published in 1998, Perdue was influenced by a Cherokee Stomp Dance in northeastern Oklahoma. She had admired the Cherokee society construction of gender which she used as the subject of this book. Though the title Cherokee Women infers that the book focuses on the lives of only Cherokee women, Perdue actually shines light upon the way women 's roles affected the Native cultures and Cherokee-American relations. In the book, there is a focus on the way that gender roles affected the way different tribes were run in the 1700 and 1800`s.

    Read More

  • Gregory Ivan Dowd

    471 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the 1992, book A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 Gregory Evans Dowd takes an academic approach to Eastern Native American history. Dowd follows the same study identity and cultural transformations by focusing on two Eastern Native ideologies known as nativist and accommodationists. Elaborating on the outlooks, he argues that the monograph does not tell “history from the Indian point of view” and does not focus on a “single Indian outlook.” Advancing his argument the author states that his monograph provides historians with the many perspectives surrounding the Native American history in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds.

    Read More

  • American Indian Females And Stereotypes By Denise K.

    110 Words  | 1 Pages

    She argues that the true role of Native American women in their tribes had been misinterpreted by European colonists who failed to understand that they were important figures, and not just drudges or prostitutes. She does so by giving clear examples of how many tribal cultures were matriarchal highlighting women’s roles as healers, leaders, warriors

    Read More

  • Identity In Hilary Weaver's 'The Big Game'

    282 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hilary Weaver argues in her piece of writing; that identifying indigenous identity is complex, complicated, and hard to grasp when internalized oppression and colonization has turned Native Americans to criticize one another. Throughout the text, Weaver focuses on three main points which she calls, the three facets. Self-identification, community identification, and external identification are all important factors that make up Native American identity. The author uses a story she calls, “The Big game” to support her ideologies and arguments about the issue of identity. After reading the article, it’s important to realize that Native American’s must decide their own history and not leave that open for non-natives to write about.

    Read More

  • Louise Erdrich Round House Analysis

    1124 Words  | 5 Pages

    A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is done. No matter how brave its warriors or how strong its weapons.- Cheyenne Proverb. In “Round House” this quote was fitting because the sexual assault on the mother nearly destroyed her and the family.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Lame Deer Seeker Of Visions

    1358 Words  | 6 Pages

    The perpetuation of the Lakota people reveals the American religious experiences through the stratification of social inequality through the eyes of Lame Deer. Lame Deer provides a personal narrative that landscapes native religion through social injustice inflicted on the Sioux nation. His stories provide a personal interpretation of what it is to be Native American or Indian living in the white man's world. Lame Deer Seeker of Visions, provides the context of religion from the journey of the Medicine Man. Being Indian embodies myth, ritual, and symbolism of religious tradition as a way of cultural and individual identity.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Native Americans

    728 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although Native Americans are characterized as both civilized and uncivilized in module one readings, their lifestyles and culture are observed to be civilized more often than not. The separate and distinct duties of men and women (Sigard, 1632) reveal a society that has defined roles and expectations based on gender. There are customs related to courtship (Le Clercq, 1691) that are similar to European cultures. Marriage was a recognized union amongst Native Americans, although not necessarily viewed as a serious, lifelong commitment like the Europeans (Heckewelder, 1819). Related to gender roles in Native American culture, Sigard writes of the Huron people that “Just as the men have their special occupation and understand wherein a man’s duty consists, so also the women and girls keep their place and perform quietly their little tasks and functions of service”.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of I Am Not Pocahontas

    887 Words  | 4 Pages

    Washuta explained on page 5, “I cringe every time I hear “part Indian,” feeling my arm sliced off at the shoulder,” (Washuta 5). This statement created a feeling of heartache. This made the audience understand her pain and helped communicate the importance of her argument by adding a very human nature to it. The author also included many rhetorical devices in this essay. One of these devices was repetition.

    Read More

  • The Noble Or Ignoble Savage: A Cultural Appropriation Of American Culture

    1494 Words  | 6 Pages

    Even though America has become quite the diverse place with diverse cultures, the cultural appropriation found within the American society contributes to the loss of multiple minority culture’s identity. Native Americans are one of the minority groups most heavily impacted by cultural appropriation. From offensive sports, many American Indians feel as though their cultural identities are lost in the mass of stereotypes and false representations of them in popular culture. In literature and film, Indians are too often portrayed as some variation of “the Noble or Ignoble Savage” (Gordon, 30), violent and uneducated, and it is easy to imagine how this negative representation inspires resentment in the Native American community, who have no interest in having their cultures and peoples being reduced to mere savages,

    Read More

  • The Iroquois Creation Story

    1106 Words  | 5 Pages

    They are often labeled as uncivilized barbarians, which is a solely false accusation against them. This paper aims to address the similarities between Native American beliefs and the beliefs of other cultures based on The Iroquois Creation Story in order to defeat the stereotype that Natives are regularly defined by. Native Americans are commonly considered uncivilized, savage, and barbarian. Nevertheless, in reality the Natives are not characterized by any of those negative traits, but rather they inhabit positive characteristics such as being wise, polite, tolerant, civilized, harmonious with nature, etc. They have had a prodigious impact on the Puritans

    Read More

  • Bad Indians By Deborah Miranda Summary

    1007 Words  | 5 Pages

    Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.

    Read More

  • Analysis: Coming Of Age In The Dawnland

    975 Words  | 4 Pages

    Science journalist, Charles C. Mann, had successfully achieved his argumentative purpose about the “Coming of Age in the Dawnland.” Mann’s overall purpose of writing this argumentative was to show readers that there’s more to than just being called or being stereotyped as a savage- a cynical being. These beings are stereotyped into being called Indians, or Native Americans (as they are shorthand names), but they would rather be identified by their own tribe name. Charles Mann had talked about only one person in general but others as well without naming them. Mann had talked about an Indian named Tisquantum, but he, himself, does not want to be recognized as one; to be more recognized as the “first and foremost as a citizen of Patuxet,”(Mann 24).

    Read More

  • Indian And The Round House

    579 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Round House by Louise Erdrich and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie both examine the relationship between Indians on a reservation and their non-Indian neighbors. Throughout these novels, Indian and non-Indian relationships are punctuated with systems of white supremacy, which manifest both in non-Indians’ ideological belief in their supremacy, and in the material disparity between Indian and non-Indian communities. In The Round House, white superiority is primarily expressed in ideological measure, while The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian focuses largely on the material sphere, but the themes are not mutually exclusive. The Round House focuses primarily on the convoluted relationship between Indians and non-Indian neighbors.

    Read More

  • In Paula Gunn Allen's Essay 'Where I Came From Is Like This'

    1012 Words  | 5 Pages

    Using Pathos Gunn Allen expressed an emotional view to the subject with the stories of hardships of Indian American Women and their differences with the Europeans. She also used logos to give a logical view in how different the women are from tribal to industrial and postindustrial

    Read More

  • In Search Of April Raintree Analysis

    1394 Words  | 6 Pages

    Though, this piece could not be published as it is deemed controversial. But for Cheryl, she knows it by heart, and it outlines the problem both the Metis and Indian people are going through. On the other hand, April despises her Metis culture and heritage. “‘… so anything to do with the Indians, I despised’” (40). April dreams of living similarly to a white person.

    Read More

More about Paula Allen's 'Where I Come From Is Like This'

Open Document