Bigger Isn’t Always Better

Two months into my seventh grade year, my house was flooded by Superstorm Sandy. Two and a half feet of water and gasoline came into my world and destroyed it in a matter of hours. I thought my family would never be able to bounce back onto stable ground from this and we would be living in squalor for a while until we were able to get everything back; It was a real shock to our family but we soon realized that we do not need all of the materialistic things we accrued in our years of living on Seacrest Ave. It is actually relieving to live simply only with the things that you need and not want. This idea is reflected in the culture of Native Americans. There are many people who believe that Native Americans live in a state of squalor and poverty due to their simple and seemingly anti-materialistic culture, however, their definition of wealth and riches is different than what the society that makes up the majority of this country may think, as described by Vine Deloria Jr.’s, Custer Died For Your Sins, and Sherman Alexie’s, “Superman and Me.”

The standard of Native American Culture has been the same since what is now the United States. Native Americans, like any other minority in this country, are seen as less than because of a difference in heritage and culture. Native American culture is very simplistic, meaning that they stick to only what they need and not want. They do not take into consideration the materialistic capitalist society that many other U.S. inhabitants often indulge in. They have been oppressed and segregated even because of simplicity for hundreds of years now. It is common throughout American History that white people degrade minority races because of fear in differences.  

When researching the topic at hand, all of the research on the wealth and poverty levels of Native Americans said the same things in different ways: “Native Americans are among the lowest in National Poverty level.” For example, an article from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis detailed the measurable wealth of the Native population of Minneapolis by describing the Native American owned cafe, the outreach office for the Fond du Lac Tribe, and the Native aimed Community College. The author then goes on to describe the “poverty” of Native Americans by detailing, “And the satellite Minneapolis police station that sits next to the clinic is an effort to curb the crime that’s also prevalent in the area, usually crimes of poverty rather than passion” (Clement). Another article from the Huffington Post writes, No matter their location and amount of jobs in their area, Native Americans experience an unemployment and poverty rates at disproportionate levels” (Asante-Muhammad). Native Americans are only at the governmental level of poverty, often dealing with task force workers who do not solve any economic difficulty, they probably make it worse off than it was.

With the help of Vine Deloria Jr.’s, Custer Died For Your Sins, we can see the demonstration of how Native Americans are labeled as “poverty.” When beginning to describe the first hand wealth issue, he writes, “To hear some people talk, Indians are simultaneously rich from oil royalties and poor as church mice. To hear others, Indians have none of the pleasures of the mainstream, like riots, air pollution, snipers, ulcers, and traffic. Consequently, they class Indians among the ‘underpriveleged’ in our society” (Deloria 16). This whole statement is ironic in the fact that the people who say that the Native Americans are rich because of the oil in their land are wrong. Native Americans since the beginning of this country have been pushed around and exploited for the things that are theirs. The Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota was the most recently subjected to this exploitation; this exploitation stemming from the materialistic society that surrounds Native Americans. He then continues to write about the contrasting argument which is also wrong. His sarcastic tone in that statement shows the painful reality of materialism. All of these new inventions and technologies people keep discovering and inventing are detrimental to society. A lot of cars causes traffic (as mentioned as a luxury by Deloria) which causes accidents which causes injuries which can cause economic ruin because our healthcare system is in shambles currently. This is just one example of the algorithms that this “beloved materialism” can impact our society. And while it is not mentally healthy to always focus on impending disaster, it is important that we acknowledge these things and take precautionary steps to try our best to counter them. It is concerning how Deloria’s sarcasm and his witty but urgent tone makes this argument a lot more real and threatening to the future of the security and legacy of our nation and how we can help and hurt the minority groups, as subjective as that concept is.

Deloria also agrees that the power of education can be used to help Native American youth grow past what social labels have been placed on them. He writes: “ The entire outlook of the people was one of simplicity and mystery, not scientific or abstract. The western hemisphere produced wisdom, western Europe produced knowledge” (Deloria 11). In this, he argues that Native Americans have in fact been tricked and walked all over for the simplicity of their lifestyles whether it was deserved or not. He takes a stab at the Europeans who came and settled in the United States by saying that it is their fault that Native Americans are perceived the way they are; Europeans, more specifically white males, are the reason for the misconceptions of Native American lifestyles. This is not the only race that white males have ruined as also mentioned by Deloria. Through this notion of Native American lifestyles, Americans believe that they are aware of everything that Native Americans stand for, which has been proven false on several occasions. Ironically, if Americans applied the same tactic of education to help themselves, there would be a lot less of these misconceptions of certain types of people; if Americans can use their brains to get out of certain problems, no race would be inferior. Empathy is also included in part of this.

With the help of Sherman Alexie’s, “Superman and Me,” we can take a deeper look into the “poverty” level of Native Americans. Sherman Alexie chronicles his life through reading. He learned to read from a superman comic by interpreting what the caption was on the picture he was looking at based on what the picture detailed, (facial expressions, body positions, etc). He then progressed to reading full books in which he learned that stories are told in chunks, called paragraphs. Paragraphs are new ideas being introduced to the plot of the story and give new information in the context of the plot. He applied paragraphs to life; He was a paragraph in his house, his house was a paragraph of their tribe, his tribe is a paragraph of Native Americans as a whole, and so on. The simplicity of a paragraph is often overlooked when we read a novel or an article or any piece of writing; paragraphs are often just subconsciously identified and we continue reading the next thought.  

Another example that we can find from Alexie that Native Americans are not materialistically rich is in education. Alexie describes his childhood development as growing up in hope, fear, irregular paychecks, and government surplus food but always had stacks and stacks of books, of which he taught himself to read. In doing this, he developed a thirst and power for education. He became a writer instead of a pediatrician like he had originally intended. He grew up believing that Native Americans didn’t write in any form. He never thought he could become what he is, but now he uses his power of knowledge to influence and help the Native American youth to “save their lives,” specifically those who are attentive as he visits schools and teaches creative writing. Dealing with the outcome of your fate is a lot to grapple with so young. How are they supposed to know what exactly he is talking about? He is “saving their lives” by showing them that they can be more than what they are and can keep being who they are. They don’t need the materialism of standard American society to be powerful and influential on others. They have everything that they need. The kids who he describes as “sullen and already defeated,” who sit uninterested and quiet are the kids who he reaches out to the most. He metaphorically describes how he does this by comparing them to a locked door: “They refuse and resist. “Books,” I say to them. “Books,” I say. I throw my weight against their locked doors. The door holds. I am smart. I am arrogant (Alexie 3).” He pressures them for their greatness because if he can rise above this notion of poverty and “nothingness” all by himself then they, too, can be great with influence. This demonstrates that Alexie believes that education and wisdom is the only wealth a person can need in their life.

The concept of wealth itself is also subjective, due to the fact that the only measurable wealth is in monetary assets which some groups of people do not believe in. In whole, for Native Americans education and wisdom are some of the wealthiest things to attain. Native Americans don’t have these harmful things, as depicted by Deloria, because they are not necessary. This idea can help us Americans as a society and many humans get along with one another.

 

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman, Custer Died for Your Sins, Simon and Schuster, 1969.

Asante-Muhammad, Dedrick, Beyond Standing Rock: The Native American Economic Experience, The Huffington Post, 2017.

Deloria Jr., Vine, Superman and Me, Los Angeles Times, 1998.

Clement, Douglas, The Wealth (and Poverty) of Indian Nations, fedgazette (newspaper of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis), 2006.

First Draft –  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OA74Kvf4aN58Rj7rV8n7F5LW0_8WXFjUp_ncnXEA-KM/edit