↞Native American Oral Tradition↠

The Impulse to Make Art: Examining Oral Tradition

by Haley Rains

  The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, Southern France

↠ "Native American cultures use stories to teach moral lessons and convey practical information about the natural world." The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc was discovered in 1994 and is located in Southern France, about 400 miles from Paris. Before landslides and other natural occurrences within the environment around the cave exposed it, the cave was sealed tightly for around 20,000 years. Inside of the cave, discoverers found elaborate paintings that--according to radiocarbon dating--are from as long ago as 32,000 years. This makes these paintings some of the earliest known artifacts of present-day man’s ancestors; in fact, the paintings are two times older than any painting ever discovered elsewhere.  

              According to Werner Herzog—a well-known documentarian and the writer and director of “The Cave of Forgotten Dreams” (a documentary about the paintings in the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc)—what is most intriguing about the paintings is what they represent; the horses, bison, cave lions, cave bears and woolly mammoths that cover the walls within the cave represent the “instinct to make art in order to represent the world around them.” 

               As soon as humans evolved to the point where they could walk upright (by way of changes to the environment in which natural selection selected favorably for)--thus allowing for the use of their hands (which were previously used to walk on)--they began to develop tools; these tools increased their ability to hunt and gather more efficiently and subsequently created more time for them to develop early stages of culture, which included the production of art and early forms of language. 

                Like our early human ancestors, Native Americans encompassed this transmission of information through art and storytelling within their culture.  As stated in Key Elements of Oral Literature, "In this one brief tale, important, life-sustaining lessons about greed, the wisdom of elders, and game management are conveyed in an entertaining and engaging way."

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Works Cited:

Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Dir. Werner Herzog. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2017.

"Herzog Enters 'The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams'" NPR. NPR, 20 Apr. 2011. Web. 30 Jan. 2017.

↞How to Write the Great American Indian Novel↠ By Sherman Alexie

 ©2017 Haley Rains Photography 

"...White people must carry / an Indian deep inside themselves.
Those interior Indians are half-breed / and obviously from horse cultures. If the interior Indian is male / then he must be a warrior, especially if he is inside a white man."(Alexie 27-30)

↠ In his poem, "How to Write the Great American Indian Novel," Sherman Alexie gives out very little sugar with his pronouncements. "How to Write the Great American Indian Novel" is his unforgiving commentary on the all-to-familiar portrayal of American Indians in American art and entertainment. Alexie uses humor to expose the inaccurate, stereotypical image of the "tragic Indian." Alexie observes, "All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms. / Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food." (1-2) American Indians are portrayed in American art and entertainment in way that romanticizes them; by painting an image of an all-knowing, spiritual warrior that belongs to a mysterious, vanishing culture, non-Indian artists and writers are perpetuating a wildly inaccurate (at times amusingly so), cliché,  and an even harmful stereotype of American Indian culture.

              The phrase “preferably from a horse culture” appears throughout the poem. Alexie is commenting on the tendency of non-Indians to reduce all Native American cultures to one group: Plains Indians. This group has been romanticized and vilified in American culture—from dime-store novels to Hollywood westerns. Additionally, these groups represent a historical period that has been well-preserved in America’s imagined history. These groups resided in the West, a region that has itself been romanticized and mythologized in America’s collective conscience. Therefore, “horse cultures” are a trope, a cultural shorthand that Americans invoke then they are talking about Native Americans—and it is, of course, inaccurate and misguided.

"There must be one murder, one suicide, one attempted rape./

Alcohol should be consumed. Cars must be driven at high speeds." (23-24)

          Alexie refers to racist stereotypes throughout his poem. He uses a tone of sarcasm, This line refers to the often cited criticisms of contemporary Native American cultures. According to these stereotypes, all Indians are violent, depressed, sex offenders, alcoholics, or careless. Or, they are perpetual victims of these things. Either way, they are tropes used by the dominant culture to categorize—and limit—Native American people. Alexie’s poem is actually a commentary on the way the dominant culture—through its popular culture—continues to define and limit the way it chooses to think about Native Americans. When white Americans think about Native Americans, they do so on their own terms.

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Works Cited:

Alexie, Sherman. "How to Write the Great American Indian Novel." Nothing But The Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Prentice-Hall Inc., 2001. P. 425-426. Print.