In The
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), Alexie describes
the life of a fourteen-year-old Native kid named Arnold Spirit, Jr., who
experiences the usual turbulence of the teen years. His attendance of the affluent
white school twenty-two miles away from the reserve puts this young man into a
third space – between the cultures—he is forced to form his own identity
in-between those different worlds. His own third space is also special because
he is a hydrocephalic with a lisp and a stutter, who was humiliated by his
peers. This story inspired me to create my list of things that bring joy,
following in the steps of Arnold. This amazing kid reassured me that all
hardships can be overcome with hope and joy.
To answer the question
about the aboriginal literature, I would like to quote Alexie who has been
known for his realistic depictions of reservation life, what he himself calls
"reservation realism" (as said in the introduction to the 2005
edition of his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven).
In The Absolutely True Diary I see the reservation`s nature depicted as
stunningly beautiful, but destructive at the same time with problems of poverty,
alcoholism, and abuse. “Reservation realism” as a genre gives the pubic a lot
of food for thought, providing us with the everyday contexts of racism; showing
that racism is not simply a theoretical concept in the academic textbook, but
rather a narration that people live through, form their identities within its
framework, and overcome it with hope and love of life.
My questions after this
reading are: At what age would you think students can be exposed to this book.
Do you think the 14-year-olds would be able to connect with the main character?
How much intertextuality can this narrative evoke in the readers of this age?
The article Forts, Curriculum, and Indigenous Métissage:
Ignoring Decolonization of Aboriginal-Canadian Relations in Educational by
Donald (2014) offers a very interesting perspective on introducing the Indigenous Métissage as a way to integrate
native perspectives, to create an “ethical space”; as opposed to the frontlines
of forts as objects/historical artifacts dividing the society according to the
colonial perspectives, racial and other categories. Artifacts and objects play
an important role in education, for example, the book by Turkle (2008) explored
the value of objects in the learning process.
In this sense the Indigenous Métissage (and the aboriginal
literature as part of it) may serve as an approach to de-colonization of the
current curriculum and anti-racist education. The created “ethical space” will offer
the society, students and educators the shared conceptual map, not a mere
costume and food experience, so well described by King (2012) in Chapter 3: “these
bits of cultural debris—authentic and constructed—are what literary theorists
like to call “signifiers”, signs that create a “simulacrum”" (King, p. 54).
The question is: Do we
still talk about the costumes and other traditional attributes of the
Indigenous culture in our classrooms?
References
Alexie, S. (2007). The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown & Co.
Donald, D. (2009). Forts, curriculum, and Indigenous Métissage: Imagining decolonization of Aboriginal-Canadian relations in educational contexts. First Nations Perspectives, 2(1), 1-24.
King, T. (2012). The Inconvenient Indian: A curious account of Native people in North America. Toronto: Anchor Canada.
Turkle,
S., & Turkle, S. (Eds.). (2008). Epilogue: What inspires?. In S. Turkle
& S. Turkle (Eds.), Falling for Science: Objects in Mind, pp.
273–283. MIT Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhfd5.64
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