Tayo and Emo

Tayo tries to balance his conflicting emotions of sadness, fear, remorse, anger and chaos, but he is constantly surrounded by racism, alcohol and poor relationships with family or friends.  Tayo can see through the invisible racism that is put on Native Americans, but is powerless to stop it.  Life is good when a Native Americans can put on a uniform and be respected man in society by covering up his native roots.  However, if one finds out his true indemnity, that person will not judge him or her by their interaction, but by misleading stereotypes of the Native American culture as a whole.  An example of this is when Emo is trying to get with a young girl, but the girl figures out that he is and Indian.  Emo is called “Geronimo,” which is a stereotypical name for Indians and the girl wants no part of him.  “She says, ‘that’s an Indian isn’t it?’ She yells back at him, ‘this guy’s an Indian?’  He says, ‘yeah-his name is Geronimo.’  She starts screaming and faints”(Silko 55). No matter what the first impression is, being Indian means him or her is an alcoholic, crazy person.  Emo gets mad at this and many other things that he is unable to handle and he often transfers his oppression to Tayo.  Tayo and Emo are opposites, where Tayo represents good and Emo represents Evil.  Emo enjoys the act of killing people; “Emo fed off each man he killed, and the higher the rank of the dead man, the higher it made Emo”(Silko 56).  Emo sees killing as a game, where as Tayo understands that killing is universally a bad thing.  The feud between the two causes Tayo to drink and drink so he can try and ignore Emo’s ways.  However, drinking only makes one lose control and do irrational actions.  After a couple of drinks, Tayo loses control and stabs Emo in the stomach with a glass bottle.  This shows that

alcoholism can never lead for a way out of a situation, but only force one to make bad decisions. 

Tayo has trouble moving forward in life because he has constant flashbacks of his past.  He looks to the past to find happiness, but it also reminds him of dreadful memories.  Tayo remembers the racism shown when him and Rocky are recruited to the United States Army.  The recruiter said, “Anyone can fight for America,” he began, giving special emphasis to “America,” “even you boys”(Silko 59) This is an example of clear racism displayed by the recruiter, where he sets himself apart from them by saying “you boys.”  The recruiter even lies to Rocky saying that he can be a pilot, when he knows that Rocky is going to be sent to worst position there is because of his race.  It is hard for Tayo to forget these memories especially when he lives with his aunt Thelma, who haunted his childhood.  Thelma pretends to take him in as a loving child, but treats him like dirt.  Thelma tells Tayo only disturbing stories about his mother to imply that he was a mistake to be born.  At a young age, Thelma tells Tayo the story of his conception: “Right as the sun came up, she walked under that big cottonwood tree, and I could see her clearly: she had no clothes on.  Nothing.  She was completely naked except for her high-heel shoes.  She dropped her purse under that tree.  Later on some kids found it there and brought it back.  It was empty except for a lipstick”(Silko 65).  Thelma tries to justify telling Tayo this at a young age by saying, “she was your mother, and you have to understand”(Silko 65), but it only brings pain to Tayo.  Tayo resolves to the land and nature to find a place of solitude.  Tayo and the Laguna people represent the cattle of the land.  “Cattle are like any living thing.  If you separate them from the land for too long, keep them in barns and corrals, they lose something…they are scared because the land is unfamiliar, and they are lost…scared off animals die of easily"(68).  Tayo disconnected from the land when he shiped of to the Philippians and now the land is the only thing that can save him from his PTS.  The land is a source of healing, as long as the cattle can survive in harsh climate, so can Tayo. 

   

The film Reel Injun displays the depiction of Native Americans in film over the past century, from fantasy figures, to being stereotyped, to real human beings.   It started in the 1920’s during the silent era, where Native Americans were portrayed as fantasy or spirits, not as real people; “a romanticized, brave, and stoic figure with a close connection to the land”(Diamond).  People would watch film of Native American dances on the streets of New York during this time and think of it as fictional.  Although Native Americans were depicted in a positive way, they were not seen as real life society members.  Next came the great depression years where Native Americans were portrayed as Savages.  This created a rise in western films featuring the all-saving “cowboy.”  John Ford was flagship cowboy that would kill all of the savage Indians and save the day.  “...And he wouldn't look. He wouldn't watch. And we'd come out of those theaters after the, uh, cavalry had rescued the white people, and all of a sudden we'd hear, "There's those Indians," and we'd start fighting. We had to fight them white kids. Every Saturday we knew we was gonna get in a fight”(Russell Means).  Many Native Americans watched these films and could see how stereotyped and how wrong these films were.  These films told the overall population, which had no prior knowledge about Native Americans, that Native Americans were evil.  This is why there were so many fights between white people and Indians, because of misunderstanding of each other’s culture.  Many western films would display all Indians wearing a headdress, living in tipis, and being very skilled at riding horses and shooting buffalo.  This caused people portray all Native Americans around the nation like the plain Indians. Native Americans became colonialized: the act of taking one group of people’s culture and assimilating that way of life to other groups.  This whipped out the culture and the history behind all other groups of Native Americans.  “We're too busy trying to protect the idea of a Native American or an Indian - but we're not Indians and we're not Native Americans. We're older than both concepts. We're the people. We're the human beings”(Trudell).  This quote is a perfect example of how the people native to America were colonialized and given the name “Indian” even though they are human too, just like the white settlers.  Native Americans were perceived as fictional, spirited people and then as savages.  It wasn’t until the 1960’s when the “Groovy Injun” came forward.

The Groovy Injun gave birth to hippie culture, of wearing headbands and being free spirited.

  Hippies took the image of the plain Indians, just like the savage era.  They colonialized Native American culture to a point where people thought all Indians were hippies.  “[In the 60s] People asked me, what are you, are you a hippie? And I said no, I’m an Indian, what’s a hippie?”(Sacheen LIttlefeather).  Hippies integrated into the fantasy/spirited view of Native Americans and became the mainstream culture.  1960’s were also time for peace, love and civil rights.  The large movement of African Americans fighting for equal rights caused Native Americans to fight back as well.  The hold up at Wounded Knee in 1973 was a stance for equal treatment among Native Americans.  However, it wasn’t until Sacheen Littlefeather’s speech of the mistreatment of Native Americans during the Academy Awards that gave hope and motivation to Indians across the country.  “We don’t believe we’re going to get out of [Wounded Knee] alive and the moral is down low and Marlon Brando and Sacheen Littlefeather totally uplifted our lives”(Russell Means). The speech and Marlon Brando’s refusal of the Academy award has never been done before and it set fire to the media.  The Hollywood Indian was finally changing to be a complete character, a real human being.  In the 1990’s, films like Dances with Wolves and The Last of the Mohicans gave Native Americans deeper roles and personalities.  These films became box office hits.  The new portrayal of the Indian allowed for Native Americans to write and direct their own films.  Films like Smoke Signals were directed by Native Americans and showed an accurate representation of past or current Indians.  After almost a century, Native Americans became round characters in film.  “We're creative natives. And we're... and we're like the Energizer Bunny. The mightiest nation in the world tried to exterminate us, anglicize us, Christianize us, Americanize us, but we just keep going and going. And I think that Energizer Bunny must be Indian. He's got that little water drum he plays. And I always say, "Next time you have a powwow, have the... the Energizer Bunny lead the grand entry, and after a few rounds then we can get together and EAT him", because we never waste anything”(Charlie Hill).  This quote shows that Native Americans were determined and would not stop fighting until they received accurate representation of their culture; they have come along way to be real like society members.

    

Ceremony Continued

Tayo, the main character in the novel Ceremony, comes home from World War II in the Philippians  He is expected to assimilate back into his hometown culture like nothing had happened, but Tayo cannot stop thinking about his severe war memories and is unable to fit back into society based on several reasons.  First of all, Tayo comes back to stay with his aunt Thelma, who is nothing but disrespectful.  She does not understand what posttraumatic stress is and sees Tayo as “her dead sisters half breed-child.” (Silko 27) Rocky had always been Thelma’s favorite child, where as Tayo is an unfortunate burden that she must care for only because it is her duty as a Christian women.  Tayo’s aunt eventually brings over Old man Ku’oosh, the medicine man, to hopefully heal his “sickness.”  However, Ku’oosh also could not understand Tayo’s Posttraumatic stress; “he would not have believed in white warfare-killing across great distances without knowing who or how many died.” (Silko 33)  Times have changed from the old way of warfare, where one couldn’t kill another without knowing the result of it.  Tayo could not handle using mortars and big guns on random targets, innocent people or not.  Old man Ku’oosh leaves Tayo with no hope to get better, and Tayo becomes only certain of something he has feared for a while.  “It took only one person to tear away the delicate strands of web, spilling the rays of sun into the sand, and the fragile world would be injured.”  The Laguna Pueblo group believes that one has to heal first, before the world can heal; if Tayo cannot heal, then the people around him will be affected.  Tayo tries to cry, but he feels not relief from crying anymore.  Solving Tayo’s posttraumatic stress will take something more than white people’s and Ku’oosh’s medicine.
and brings back posttraumatic stress.

 

Ceremony displays large signs of Posttraumatic stress throughout the book, but also displays signs of transferred oppression and the homo social exchange of women.  Transferred oppression occurs like dominoes; one person takes the hate given by a group that is socially seen as a higher power (due to their race, religion, etc.) and then that person reflects it on someone that is socially seen as a lower power.  The white people oppress Native Americans, so Native Americans transfer that oppression to others, like Mexicans.  “Men run around with Mexicans and even worse, nothing is ever said.” (Silko 31)  Another example of transferred oppression is when someone gets bullied and that person takes his or her anger out by punching a wall. Transferred oppression only embraces the social class system and it still occurs everyday.  Women constantly get oppressed by men and are seen as objects by many men.  Men pass women around just to please their sexual wants, which is called homo social exchange of women.  Silko explains how Tayo and many other veterans, “didn’t want to give up the cold beer and the blonde cunt.” (Silko 38)  This explains how Tayo puts on his war uniform to conceal his true identity, just so he can sleep with women.  Homo social exchange of women and transferred oppression are two underlying themes in the novel ceremony that shape the world's social structure.