Waking up the long-time oppressed Native American

Many people think about the history as it started from the time when their own nations arrived at this land – United States. The great nation, especially in California, is combined by various ethnic groups, such as white, Indian, Asian, and Mexican, who have different skin color and speak different languages. Among these people, Native Indians were the people who have lived on this land for “at least 12,000 years – and perhaps for 15,000 years or more”. (James J. Rawls, Walton Bean. California: An Interpretive History. Chapter 2, the Original Californians. 10) They are also the people who had been oppressed the longest since Spanish had discovered the land. Under the long-term oppression, many Native Indians tried to use different ways to express their feeling. In both poems, “Indian Cartography” from Deborah Miranda and “Itch Like Crazy: Resistant” from Wendy Rose, these two Native Indian poets, who are struggling about the history of their ancestor’s mistreatment, are trying to use their poems to express out the depression. Their poems have similar background, but their act emotionally different.

Being Native Indians, both Deborah Miranda and Wendy Rose’s ancestors experienced the displacement. The themes of both poems are based on the displacement, and talk about the history of how Native Indians had been forced to move away from their native land. In “Indian Cartography”, Miranda uses her father as the main character who takes out the original Californian map and tries to “trace mountains ranges, rivers, county borders like family bloodlines”. All stuffs, he are tracing, are symbolized the old memories includes the happy kind and the bloody kind. In her dad’s memory, he remembers the old days with joy. There are the many wonders, such as the salmon in the rivers, and silver scales. But those Native Indian icons can not be found any more. Miranda’s father mentions that “the government paid those Indian to move away and [he] don’t know where they went.” They have lost track of their own tribe, because all tribes have been forced to move away, and their land had been destroyed.

Likewise, Wendy Rose talks about the scenes of the displacement and the reservations in her poem when she says “Selling the natives, to live among strangers”. In early 1820s, federal government had approved a removal policy for Native Indians. Their original idea was built up reservations for Native Indian to live. To finish the project, government assigned three commissioners, Redick McKee, George W. Barbour, and Dr. Oliver M. Wozencraft. . In their proposals, the reservations would be 11,700 square miles or 7,488,000 acres, which the size is almost 7.5% of the entire land area of the state. However the congress only gave them $50,000 for their projects to build the reservations which would cost at least one million. Of course, shortly the projects were failed. (James J. Rawls, Walton Bean. California: An Interpretive History. Chapter 11, Racial Oppression and Conflict, the “Indian Question”, 150). Even though some Indians got a little “paid” from the government, they couldn’t survive after their left the land. In fact, many Native didn’t even move into the reservations, but tried to find other places to live. As result, most of them died later. Rose also mentions “rewards for sine service, or kinship with the crown”, which refers that Congress adopted a suggestion from Edward F. Beale to set up the reservation as military posts for the United States Army in 1853. Historian estimate when Spaniards discovered California, there were at least 300,000 Indians within the boundaries of the state in 1769 (Chapter 2, 13). Comparing to the ratio of the Native Indian still survive now, their nation is dramatically declined. During the Spanish and Mexican periods, California Indian population down sized from 300,000 to more than 150,000 by 1845. By 1870 there were only estimate 30,000 Indian left, and in 1900 there were only 16,000 (Chapter 11, Racial Oppression and Conflict, Decline and exploitation, 154). No matter the Essenlen tribe as Deborah Miranda, or Hopi tribe as Wendy Rose, their tribes were ac accelerated declining in the 1800s.The displacement deeply hurt the nations of Native Indians.

Sharing the same background, both Miranda and Rose use metaphors to illustrate the sadness and cruelness of the history, strongly connected with their ancestral spirit. However, emotionally, Miranda and Rose use different tone of voice to express their feelings and their point of view of the history. In Miranda’s “Indian Cartography”, her father’s voice is softer and sounds helpless. While he is tracing the old memories of the mountain and the nature, he only wants to remember the beautiful life that he once had, for example that the river he once swim in and the silver scales he once walked across. For Indians, their California dreams are so different than many others who were migrants. The life style, in their dreams, is very simple and close to the nature. Even their religion, spiritually connectX them to the nature as well. When Miranda’s father thinkX s about his past, as the last generation who lived in a cohesive tribal Chumash unit (a compound in Santa Barbara) (website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_A._Miranda), only the six-packs beer could calm him down, and he will “follow [in] a longs, a deepness [thought].” It seems like he sinks into a deep dark hole whenever he thinks about the terrible things happened to his tribe. Being the last generation, he had lived in the beautiful nature once, had a really Indian life. X nice verbalAt the same time, he also witnessed the tragedy his own nation had gone though. He was helpless to watch his nation falling apart. Emotionally, he tries to “swims out” of the deep dark hole, and looks for the “lands not drawn”, which symbolize his hope eager to rebuild their Native Indian’s life style, and to re-see the light of their nation. The tone of the voice in this Miranda’s poem sounds really helpless

In contrast, the tone of Wendy Rose’s “Itch Like Crazy: Resistant” is much stronger. Miranda uses her father’s soft and gentle voice to tell the story and express the sadness and helpless, but Rose’s poem make the history sounds more bloody and hatred. She personifies the conquest as a person who was “selling [their] native”. This line is also a pun which accuses that white traded Native Indians and their land as goods, but not treated them like human being. The images of those invaders in her poem are more hideous and horrorific. The line, “The terror couches there” is to satirize the Spanish squat on their land and banished their people. “Ghosts so old, they weep for release. Have haunted too long,” is metaphor that the Native Indians have been oppressed for too long, and they are crying out for release. She uses the “blood” of her mom’s veins to symbolize the violence of the mistreatment. “My mother, the stones, the channels of water, blood for her veins, every place, a place where history walked”, her mother is also metaphor as her tribe and their land. The “stone” and “water” are symbolized the blood of her nation which has been all sucked out during the conquest. In spite of the same situation, Rose uses stronger tone of voice to criticize the mistreatment of Native Indians.

Discovered the same history, Miranda and Rose’s reaction are very different. Miranda’s poem is more like telling a sad historical story about the war of conquest. In her poem, Miranda’s father remembers the “swollen bellies of salmon coming back”. It connotes that they hope one day their tribe or their nationality would be returned just like the salmon come back every fall to spawn in the river. Every time they think about the declining of their nation, the hurtful memories make them feel like “drown by a displace river” which “fluent in dark water” with dead bodies. The depressed images draw the readers’ mind to a scene of a dark hole which is full of the bad memories from Miranda’s father.

Unlikely Miranda, Rose’s poem is more emotional with hatred. She acts aggressively to the mistreatment of history. Her poem is more active as she woke up from the oppression, and tries to fight back. She used many metaphors to embody the cruelty of the conquest. First she sees the discrimination “when [she] see Columbus in the eyes of nearly everyone” as metaphor of the racist. Clearly, she thinks almost everyone in United States discriminates the Native Indians. Afterward, she uses “terror crouches there” to describe the ugly and horror faces of those invaders who took over their land. She describes the Spanish discovery of California as “Every ring on turtle’s back, a mortar to split our seeds.” To her it was not a great exploration of new land, but the beginning of the destruction of their homeland. Towards to the end of Rose’s poem, she uses more metaphors to show the nationality is waking up, such as “sunflower bursting from asphalt, raises green arms to the sun”. She is not just sinking into the sadness of the oppression of their nation, but ready to fight back. “From which we emerge, every red thing in the world is the reflection of blood, our death and our rising…..” the violent side of the blood made their world became red, but their ethos is “rising” from the death. She is ready to fight for their rights as she “dance[s] the mission revolts again”. She starts to reveal her nationality and clarify her identity as she “know[s] strength of spine tied to spine.” The hatred makes her want to “lure the soldiers into trap after trap.” She is trying to speak out her hatred, and the sense of resistant under the long-term oppressed nationality is growing more and more stronger.

One or other, rooted in the same history, both “Indian Cartography” and “Itch like Crazy: Resistant” are illustrated the Native Indians’ displacement and mistreatment. Although both poets, Deborah Miranda and Wendy Rose, use different tones in their poems and react differently, they are using their powder to speak out the truth of their nations, and try to open people’s eyes to see what their nations have been gone through. They hope to wake up their own people to identify themselves and dispel the fear of long-time oppression