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1. A Socio-Cultural Approach to the Native
American Experience: Sherman Alexie’s
Perspective
Nuria Rosina Kolb
Grao en Lingua e Literatura Inglesa
Dirixido por Susana Jiménez Placer
Curso Académico 2013-2014
FACULTADE DE FILOLOXÍA
DEPARTAMENTO DE FILOLOXÍA INGLESA E ALEMÁ

3. TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION …………………….……………………………………………….2
CHAPTER ONE: Brief history of the Native American Peoples. Basic concepts
relating to Native American historical and political development……………….….5
1. Native Americans: the heterogeneity and homogeneity of a group
2. Native American ethno-history in North America before 1770s
1. First European contacts
3. Study of Native American ethno-history in North America, 1770-1890
4. Native Americans in the 20th century
1. The Relocation Program
2. The Occupation of Alcatraz
3. The Problems of Reparations
CHAPTER TWO: Ten Little Indians and Alexie’s Perspective ..…....…………... 22
1. The Reservation
2. The Search Engine
3. Tribalism
4. Sentimentalism: Romantization of the Indian
5. The Cultural Clash
CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………… 33
REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………………… 34
APPENDIX……………………………………………………………………........... 38

4. 2
Introduction
"Often, people think about Native Americans as we were envisioned at the turn of the
century. If we’re not walking around in buckskin and fringe, mimicking the stereotype in
dress and art form, we’re not seen as real. Native Americans are here, and we are
contemporary people. Yet we are very much informed and connected to our history."
(Charlene Teters, California State Polytechnic University 2005)
Native Americans’ reality and actual existence have been usually shut down by the
image which the western civilization has forced upon them for the last centuries. The
preconceived image of what an Indian should be like or how an Indian should behave is
of major importance in the study of the stereotyping process that Native Americans
have experienced for centuries, and still experience and suffer today when most Indian
stereotypes and images are artificially constructed under the influence of the Western
genre. The stereotyping process is still alive nowadays: there are sports teams that have
Indians as mascots and perform rituals degrading them as part of their shows which are,
nonetheless, broadly broadcast via TV not just to the whole country but to other parts of
the world too.
When asked about the first concepts that come to their minds when they hear the
word “Indian” most people answer “alcoholism,” “casinos,” “western fiction” etc. We
have to ask ourselves why an ethnic group which had been living satisfactorily in the
same region for hundreds of years before it was (re)discovered by the Europeans in the
fifteenth century, has acquired such a negative image since the Europeans began to
settle in their territory. And then, how is it possible that a nation that calls itself “The
City Upon a Hill” forgets all the past crimes and injustices that took place in its country

5. 3
and keeps on living without having an exact idea of the real history of the place they
call home?
The aim of my study is to bring Sherman Alexie’s work Ten Little Indians (2003) in
context with the socio-cultural issues of Native Americans today. As this is a collection
of short stories portraying lots of different aspects and problems faced by American
Indians in contemporary America, I saw myself needing to focus on one of the short
stories alone, leaving lots of interesting topics for possible further research.
With this aim in mind, I have devoted the first part of my work to a general approach
to the history and culture of the Native Americans and then I will concentrate on the
analysis of Alexie’s story and how it reflects some of the topics introduced in the first
part. Thus, in the first chapters, before focusing on contemporary issues, I will offer a
brief contextualization of the topic. Who exactly are those Native Americans living in
the US? Why are there so many clichés about “Indians”? Why is there so little
information about their situation nowadays? After studying the historical background I
will try to state the main problems of reservation life. Why is it so difficult to live as an
Indian? We will pay attention to the ambivalence between leaving the reservation to
develop as an individual, and the constant feeling of betrayal after finally having left it.
The second part of this degree project focuses on the first story in Sherman Alexie’s
Ten Little Indians to illustrate Alexie’s perspective on some of the previous topics. This
part is divided into five different sections dealing with the writer’s depiction of his ideas
on reservation life, tribalism, the romantization of the Indians, the cultural clash which
affects Native Americans, etc. in the story “The Search Engine.”
In the first part I tried to deliver a timeline to show the development and changes
faced by the original peoples of the land that is commonly called America, from the

6. 4
early settlements through the massacres caused by the European colonizers finishing
with more contemporary issues and examples of the Indian Civil Rights movement. For
this purpose I have used manuals and works by Sonneborn and Johnson, always
checking the information with that provided by other authors. Since Alexie himself
prefers authors that actually experienced what they are writing about and refuses to
accept works written about Indians by non-Indians, and is suspicious about Indians that
have never lived in a reservation but do indeed write about it, I will try to contrast some
aspects with the information provided by Native American scholars like Mihesuah or
Vine Deloria Jr in the first part.
For the second part of this degree project, I have resorted to Alexie’s collection of
short stories to illustrate his point of view of the situation of his people in the U.S.
today. For this purpose, I have focused on the first short story of the collection, “The
Search Engine,” to comment some of the points mentioned in the first part: reservation
life and its problems, the question of “indiannes,” the stereotyping of the Indian as
“other,” etc. Connette’s Master’s thesis Sherman Alexie’s Reservation: Relocating the
Center of Indian Identity offers an interesting study of “the reservation as a center” in
Alexie’s works written before 2010 , so I have found it very useful to contextualize Ten
Little Indians and his former works as a whole.

7. 5
1. Brief history of the Native American Peoples. Basic concepts
relating to Native American historical and political development
1.1.Native Americans: the heterogeneity and homogeneity of a group
The first settlers of the American territory are generally called American Indians or
Native Americans. When portraying them as a whole, the western world usually forgets
that they, in fact, belong to many different tribes who speak many different languages
and have, as a consequence, many different ways of life. In fact, “The term ‘Native
American’ includes over 500 different groups and reflects great diversity of geographic
location, language, socioeconomic conditions, school experience, and retention of
traditional spiritual and cultural practices” (Reese 2; qtd in MacNaughton 277).
Currently, Native Americans make up less than two percent of today’s US population
but represent half the languages and cultures in the nation. Although only 1.8 million
are registered tribal members - requirements vary from tribe to tribe1
- more than 6
million people identify themselves as such.
According to Lincoln, “The many original peoples of the US remain as varied as
America itself” (80), but they are considered as a separate group unified by their shared
fate during recent history. In fact, Native American tribes share at least a long history in
the continent, and in spite of their diversity and heterogeneity, they partake of some
common characteristics which make them essentially different from the predominant
beliefs of the European settlers. As Lincoln states in Native American Literatures: Old
Hills, Like Stars (1982), Native Americans traditionally “idealize ancestral ties, spiritual
observances, oral culture and traditions, the sharing of goods and responsibilities, and
1
For further information see < http://www.doi.gov/tribes/enrollment.cfm>

8. 6
they acknowledge an ecological interdependence” (80-167). Lincoln classifies as Indian
“any person with at least one quarter Indian blood and tribal membership” (80), but the
criteria differ from region to region. They traditionally devoted themselves to all kinds
of activities connected with the land with which they lived in practical harmony until
the arrival of the first ships from the Old World. Then, the European colonization and
the European lure for more and more land and resources pushed them away from their
original environments.
1.2. Native American ethno-history in North America before 1770s.
One of the most amazing discoveries of the last years is that all Americans can be
considered immigrants as there is no evidence of human life in the continent before the
first wave of people arrived there around 20,000 BC. There are many theories about the
arrival of the first inhabitants to the land that we call America today. Nonetheless,
researchers are now certain that the first settlers came in different waves of people.2
In
fact, a study published in 2012 gave genetic evidence to Joseph Greenberg’s theory of
1986 based on language differences: this theory holds that the aboriginal people of the
Americas descend from at least three different streams of Asian gene flow (Reich et Al.
“Reconstructing Native American Population History”). Predominantly, scientists agree
that the firsts to settle in the newly discovered territory came across the Bering Land
Bridge3
which connected Asia with North America during the Plestocine Ice Ages
20,000 years ago (Pruitt, "Ancient Infant's DNA Provides Key to Native American
Ancestry") following herds of mammoths, bison, and reindeer (Gradstein et al., 412).
2
See < https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/human‐journey/>
3
The Beringia theory holds that people from Asia were able to migrate north into the area that is now
Russia and then cross the Bering land bridge entering the Americas.

9. 7
The latest of these migrations could have taken place 12,000 years ago4
(National
Geographic Society).
According to the Navajo oral tradition, the Dineh – Navajos – originated by
emerging through three worlds – the Black World, the Blue-Green World, and the
Yellow World – before finally settling in the Glittering World in the Southwest of the
US (Sonneborn 1). Surprisingly, this account could constitute a very accurate
description of these people’s actual arrival in the New World, since, according to
scientific researches, the first immigrants in America moved through the Arctic to
Canada and to the Rocky Mountains area to later settle in the lands where they were
living when the European colonizers arrived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The Black World would correspond to the cold environment of the Arctic while the
Blue-Green World would more likely be Canada and its woodland. Finally, the Yellow
World could correspond to the mountains and plains on the Rockies (Sonneborn 1).
Like the Navajos, most Native American tribes have their own stories to explain the
creation of the World, and in contrast with what happens with the Navajo myth, the
scientific theories sometimes clash with the creation stories of some Indian tribes that
hold that their ancestors were created in the continent that they nowadays inhabit
(Native Languages of the Americas). Furthermore, a number of Native Americans like
Vine Deloria Jr dispute the Bering Theory5
because they see it as an attempt to justify
the right of the Europeans to settle on the area too. Another problematic aspect is that
most of the scientists conducting research on the topic are Non-Indian Euro-Americans
4
ca. 25,000 to 12,000 B.C.
5
In Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact (1995), Deloria analyzes the
disrespect towards several Indian stories inherent in Western scientific works and studies. He argues
that it represents scientific language for “I don’t know, but it sounds good and no one will check”
(Deloria, 81).

10. 8
who believe that for the sake of science they have the right to exhume and hold Indian
remains and sacred burial objects in order to study their history (Miheseah 47).
Once the first waves of people arrived in the newly discovered territory, multiple
migrations took place. Around 12,000 B.C., the Bering Land Bridge disappeared
because the rising temperatures produced an increase of the sea level. Consequently,
thousands of years passed before another wave of settlers, probably the ancestors of the
Aleut and Inuit, arrived in America crossing the Bering Strait by boat - ca. 3,000 to
1,000 B.C. Because of their late arrival these are more closely related to their Asian
ancestors than earlier settlers (US National Park Service).
After years of accommodation, many of the early tribes started a migration
southwards in search of better living conditions. Thus, during the following centuries,
the new inhabitants of the territory travelled across the continent following large herds
of game in order to survive (Native Languages of the Americas). Around 11,000 B.C.,
when mammoths died out, the rising temperatures forced the former hunters to adapt
themselves to the new circumstances becoming fruit gatherers and smaller-game
hunters. As a consequence of this change, by 9,000 B.C., the former nomadic
inhabitants of the area were able to settle most of the northern continent. We can find a
good example of these first settlements in Meadowcroft south of what is now
Pittsburgh. It is generally agreed that the area was occupied by 10,000 B.C., and
according to carbon-14 results, it is possible that humans lived there as early as 17,600
B.C (Sonneborn, 3), making the area the earliest settlement known today.
A good example of the variety of peoples living in the northern section of the
American continent is that they spoke over 200 languages and dialects, and that there
were great variations in customs and religious traditions from tribe to tribe (American

11. 9
Indians' Cultural Network). It should be noted that, similarly to what occurred with the
research conducted on Native American ancestral remains, the majority of the books
written about Native American religion or traditions were written by non-Indians, and
many of these books were written without tribal permission. Those containing
inaccuracies will remain uncorrected, according to Mihesuah, because many Indians try
to keep their customs private and will never point out the errors (Mihesuah 69).
1.2.1. First European contacts
“The natives took a span of red cloth for each pelt and tied the cloth round their
heads. The trading went on like this for a while until the cloth began to run short: the
Karlsefni and his med cut it up into pieces which were no more than a finger’s breadth
wide; but the Skraelings paid just as much or even more for it” from the Norse
Graaenlending Saga (Sonneborn 22).
According to Norse sagas, first the Norse sailor Bjarni Herjofsson sighted a large
landmass in the west, and later on Leif Eriksson, an Icelandic Viking, sailed there
around 1,000 A.D., and explored two islands he called Markland and Helluland
(Labrador and Baffin Island). Then he and his crew arrived at a land with wild
grapevines they called Vinlan, “the land of wine” (Newfoundland, Canada). Just seven
years later, the brother of Leif Eriksson and his crew are believed to have attacked a
group of nine “Skraelings” from which they killed eight (Sonneborn 22). This incident
could be considered one of the first violent confrontations between the Old and the New
World.
In 1492, when Christopher Columbus sighted the New Land instead of the expected
Asian continent, it is estimated that there were around 18 million people living in North

12. 10
America. With the financial support of the ruling European monarchs, the lure for
resources like gold soon pushed many other explorers to set sail towards the New
World. In the first years of contact, some explorers saw the natives as just another
resource to be exploited in their search for wealth while others found them useful to get
information about the territory. After years of violent abuse, the reports of the Spanish
conquerors’ mishandling behavior and treatment of the Native Americans started a
discussion among intellectuals in Spain who concluded that the Native Americans were
real human beings and that the imposition of Christianity among them in order to save
the souls of the Indians whose continent the Spanish Crown wanted to conquer was
imperative (Sonneborn 27). In contrast with the first Spanish explorers who brought no
women and whose contact with the Amerindian population – especially in Central
America – originated “mestizo” offspring, the latter British settlers in North America
brought their own families and tried not to get mixed with the original inhabitants.
During these early years of contact, the heaviest impact suffered by the Natives was
caused by the spread of European illnesses among them (Mihesuah 29):
American Indians had been isolated from the Old World for tens of thousands of
years. Thus, they had no immunity to the aforementioned diseases and died quickly after
exposure to them. The first century after contact was the most disastrous; between 1520
and 1600, 31 major epidemics swept across the Atlantic Coast from South America to
Canada. So devastating were these epidemics that the Indian population of North America
fell from 7 million at contact to 3 million individuals within 100 years, […] Europeans
quickly learned of Indians’ susceptibility of disease, and in 1763 British officers led by
Lord Jeffrey Amherst (a college and numerous towns have been christened by his name)
sent blankets infected with smallpox to Ottawas and other tribes in an attempt to quell
Pontiac’s uprising. (Mihesuah 29)

13. 11
Apart from the tragic demographic consequences caused by the introduction of the
European illnesses, the arrival of the Europeans had other – most of the times negative –
effects on the Indian way of life: since the Europeans were interested in fur trade many
Indians began to devote themselves to trapping, which was not so respectful with nature
as the ancient Indian ways of hunting (Martin 2); sometimes Indians exchanged fur for
alcohol (Martin 10), which helped them fight against the cold in the winter, but which
also meant the origin of the endemic alcoholism that has affected the Native American
community since then; the European greed over the Indian land was the cause of wars
and confrontations between Indians and Europeans, wars that eventually forced many
Native Americans to move to other areas; moreover, life in the American colonies was
seriously affected by the confrontations between European colonial powers – mainly
France and Great Britain –, and many Native Americans got involved in these conflicts
either as allies to one or the other European nation or hired as mercenaries by the
European armies. In fact, the eighteenth century witnessed the constant competition
between the British and the French for control over the Indian territory in North
America: the most evident example of this was the French and Indian War, which lasted
from 1754 to 1763 and put an end to the French Empire in North America ("French and
Indian War/Seven Years' War”). After this war, the Proclamation Line of 17636
tried to
establish the limits between the land inhabited by the US citizens and the Indian
territories (Grymes, “The Proclamation Line”).
6
For further information see < http://www.virginiaplaces.org/settleland/proclamation.html> and <
https://www.history.state.gov/milestones/1750‐1775/proclamation‐line‐1763>.

14. 12
1.3. Study of Native American history in North America between 1770 and
1890
The Declaration of Independence of the United States was passed by congress on
July 4th
, 1776, and this meant the beginning of a War of Independence against Great
Britain, a war which lasted until 1782, when the United States got its final victory in the
battle of Yorktown, and 1783, when the British finally signed the Treaty of Paris
recognizing the independence of the new nation and setting its original boundaries
(“The Declaration of Independence”). Now that the United States had been born, the
fate of the Native Americans was mostly set in the hands of the federal government.
In 1824, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)7
was established as part of the War
Department and since 1830, many Indians were removed to the Great American Desert,
west of the Mississippi, to the land that had been purchased from the French in 1803.
One of the most tragic episodes of this program of removals was that which came to be
known as the Trail of Tears8
(1838-1839), when thousands of Cherokees –one of the
three “civilized” Indian tribes- were forced to leave their lands in Georgia and walk
their way to the Indian Territory under terribly harsh conditions even after the US
Supreme Court of Justice itself had decreed that the Indians had the right to stay in their
Georgian farms and lands (US National Park Service).
Thus, Native Americans were gradually pushed away from their original land since
1830, and relations between the settlers and the tribes kept getting worse and worse as
the settlers moved and tried to “conquer” the West. As one of the consequences of this,
in 1851 the US Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act which created the
7
See <http://www.bia.gov/WhoWeAre/BIA/>
8
See < http://www.nps.gov/trte/index.htm>

15. 13
reservation system ("Defining Rights and Responsibilities"), authorizing the creation of
Indian reservations in modern day Oklahoma. Nonetheless, as many tribes ignored the
removal orders, the enforcement of the policy required the US Army to actively restrict
those tribes’ movements and led to several major conflicts, massacres and wars. No
wonder the nineteenth century was later called the “bloody century.” The Indian Wars
of the nineteenth century began in 1860 and finished with the Massacre of Wounded
Knee in 1890. During the Plains Indian Wars the U.S. Army attempted to drive the
inhabitants off the Plains and into reservations with little success ("French and Indian
War/Seven Years' War”). In the 1860s, when gold was discovered in the Montana
Territory, pressure on the Army to contain the Indians increased. Along the way to the
gold, sacred ground for the Lakhota,9
as well as their prime hunting grounds, had to be
crossed causing regular confrontations.
Meanwhile, the federal government decided to get rid of the main food resource of
the Plains Indians to enforce their removal: the massive herds of buffalo. “The
government realized that as long as this food source was there, as long as this key
cultural element was there, it would have difficulty getting Indians onto reservation”
(Greymorning; qtd in Jawort “Genocide by Other Means”). It has been estimated that in
1700 there were over fifteen million animals living in the Great Plains10
; in 1881 there
were barely two and a half million buffalos. A few years later, in 1893, less than 400
wild bison were left in the Great Plains (Jawort, “Genocide by Other Means”). With the
removal of the buffalo and the buffalo slaughter, seasonal migrations stopped, which
was expected to force the Plains Indians to adopt the new sedentary lifestyle imposed by
9
Often called Sioux, but the term is found to be derogatory.
10
The American buffalo (Bison bison) became almost extinct in the 19th century.

16. 14
the colonizers.11
But pushing the natives away from their homeland was not going to be
so easy since their removal had more than just an economic impact among the Native
Americans. Native American cultures were extremely rooted to the land they inhabited
before relocation, so life in the reservations was almost impossible for them.
Additionally, the federal government did not take into account that different tribes were
being forced to share the same piece of land and that this land was sometimes the
original homeland of a hostile tribe.
By the late 1870s, after some of the bloodiest wars between the original peoples and
the colonizers - already called the United States - had taken place, the Peace Policy
established by President Grant12
in 1869, which aimed at replacing the corrupt agents
supervising the reservations with Christian missionaries, was seen as a failure and
President Hayes began to reduce this policy. As a consequence, by 1882 all religious
organizations had passed their authority to the federal Indian agency. Five years later, in
1887, the Dawes Act or General Allotment Act13
was passed by Congress. It stopped the
attribution of land parcels to tribes and started their attribution to individuals instead
(“Genocide by Other Means”). The general consequence was the reduction of the
reservation land because this Act also established that the “excess,” that is, the
reservation lands remaining after the allotments had been completed, could be offered to
white settlers (“Genocide by Other Means”). In some cases, non-Indians owned an area
of reservation land larger than that owned by tribal members even though Native
Americans outnumbered the white settlers. This policy continued until 1934 when the
11
For further information about the topic see Geist, Valerius. Buffalo Nation: History and Legend of the
North American Bison.
12
For further information, see <http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/presidents/bio18.htm>.
13
See <http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=50>.

17. 15
Indian Reorganization Act14
, that aimed to place administrative responsibility for
reservation services to the Indians themselves, was passed.15
Over the years, Amerindians were gradually removed further and further west until
the “frontier”16
reached as far as the Pacific Coast and there was no space further west
and Native Americans were declared a “domestic dependent nation.”
1.4. Native Americans in the 20th century
1.4.1. The Relocation Program
When the House Concurrent Resolution 108 of 1953 was passed into law with only
little modifications, 1,362.155 acres of land and 11,466 individuals were affected,
and 109 tribes were terminated (Johnson, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island 7).
Termination ended the special federal-tribal relationship by transferring
responsibility for the majority of terminated peoples from the federal government to
the states.
In 1952, the Bureau of Indian Affairs had established a national relocation assistance
program for family heads to seek employment off the reservations. Although this was
not the first action to transfer responsibility on Indian reservations to local authorities,
and not the first attempt to relocate Native Americans into urban areas, it was one of the
most prominent ones. As Johnson observes, over 100.000 Native Americans left their
14
It remains the basis of federal legislation concerning Indian affairs.
15
For further information see <http://www.sovereignnationsnews.com/#!treaties/c1yng>.
16
See Billington, Ray Allen., and Martin Ridge. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier.
Albuquerque: U of New Mexico, 2001. 381‐83. Web. 28 May 2014.

18. 16
original homelands in order to move to Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Cleveland, and
San Francisco17
(8).
This time, the US government provided work for Native Americans, mostly unskilled
or semiskilled jobs which moreover they found very hard to maintain, in exchange for
reservation land. As Indian workers often took their families to their new homes “Indian
railroad colonies” were built (8). For many, especially for younger Native Americans,
employment through relocation seemed to provide them with an opportunity to “escape”
the traditional farming on the reservation. Relocation was also favoured by the fact that
many of the 25.000 Indians that served the US Army during World War II got used to
warm water and electricity, conveniences which were almost nonexistent on
reservations (9). Others moved as a consequence of Indian boarding school
placements.18
No attempts were made by officials to settle members of the same tribe in the same
urban area, so relocated Native Americans of the US were unable to form an “Indian
community” at the Bay Area (10). As a consequence of this loss of the traditionally
fundamental family ties and traditions, “Native Americans began to experience two
conflicting impulses: the economic necessity to leave the reservation and the emotional
urge to return to their cultural origins” (10). Thus, in 1975 the final report of the Native
American research group, a Division of Scientific Analysis Corporation in San
Francisco, concluded that this first urban generation of Indians suffered the most
important crisis since the Indian wars of the 1800s (10). According to a
Shoshne/Bannock student at the University of California at Berkeley, and author of
“Reflections of Alcatraz:”
17
“The Indian population of the San Francisco Bay Area grew to between 15,000 or 20,000 in 1964”
(Johnson 9)
18
The boarding school issue is later mentioned when dealing with Alexie’s “The Search Engine.”

19. 17
It’s hard for me to go to college and eventually be assimilated and never be able to
relate to the American Indian and their problems. I feel they’re trying to make me into a
white person…There is little opportunity to learn anything about my own history: I’ve
tried to take courses in history at the University. I can’t find out anything about my own
people. (LaNada Boyer qtd in Johnson, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island 11)
The relocated Indians often found themselves stuck between government promises
and the reality (11), and the desperation caused by the relocation program gave origin to
an angry urban generation that felt voiceless in the context of US politics. Questions
such as how to retain their identity under the pressures of separation, assimilation, and
urbanization, or how Indian families could bring up the younger generations in both
traditional and non-traditional ways, and the suspicion that the city and city life would
eliminate them as a distinct people were now at stake among Native Americans (10).
According to Johnson, “Government officials had encouraged terminations,
assimilation, and relocation under the assumption that these programs would bring
Native Americans into the mainstream of American society and thus destroy any
remaining vestiges of Indian power” (13). But this strategy was unsuccessful because it
also helped urban Indians to meet each other and form what was later called “pan-
Indianism,” “a process whereby members of Native American cultures that had suffered
collapse because of European pressures and tribal destruction discussed new survival
techniques forming a kind of ‘intertribal unity’” (13).
1.4.2. The Occupation of Alcatraz (San Francisco)
As Johnson states in the introduction of American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the
Longest Walk (1997), “the spirit of Alcatraz represented both challenge to prevailing

20. 18
images of Native Americans as the fading victims of history and resistance to the
policies and treatment of Indian individuals and communities in the past and
present”(1). On November 20th, 1969 a group of North American Indians that identified
themselves as “Indians of All Tribes” (IAT), claimed the island of Alcatraz19
by “right
of discovery” (American Indian Center, 1969): they demanded “clear title to Alcatraz
Island, and called for the establishment of an American Indian University, an American
Indian cultural centre, and an American Indian museum” (Johnson, American Indian
Activism 1). Authors like Vine Deloria Jr. place the event in the context of the civil
rights movements of the time, such as the Poor People’s March of 1968.
The young protesters, who were mostly students, condemned the treatment Native
Americans had received under the Indian termination policy, that is, the abolition of
Indian reservations and the removal of all federal involvement in Indian tribes, and they
accused the government of the USA of breaking Indian treaties.20
The numerous civil
rights demonstrations of the 1960s served as inspiration for the Native American
protesters. Furthermore, the occupation showed a strange juxtaposition of the original
activists and the various celebrities that supported the movement.21
The Alcatraz Occupation lasted for 19 months, from November 20th, 1969 to June
11th, 1971 when it was forcibly ended by the U.S. government (US National Park
19
On December 30, 1859, the US Army seized Alcatraz and established a military administration that
lasted 77 years (Johnson, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island, 2). It was used as a small prison until 1907
when it was renamed Pacific Branch to become a US Military Prison (4). In 1963, it was declared surplus
property and the remaining prisoners were reassigned to other institutions (19).
20
The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie between the U.S. and the Lakhota (Sioux) returned all out‐of‐use
federal land to the Native Americans from whom it had been originally obtained; Alcatraz penitentiary
had been closed on March 21, 1963 (Johnson, American Indian Activism, 25).
21
Anthony Quinn, Buffy Sainte‐Marie, Dick Gregory, Jane Fonda, Jonathan Winters, and Marlon Brando
were all convinced by Jim Thorpe’s Daughter Grace to visit and support the occupiers.
Creedence Clearwater Revival also supported the occupation with a donation that was later used to buy
a boat. For further information see Gilio‐Whitaker, Dina. "The Controversial Stunt Marlon Brando Staged
at the 1973 Academy Awards." < http://nativeamericanhistory.about.com/od/controversies/a/Brando‐
Littlefeather‐And‐The‐Academy‐Awards.htm>

21. 19
Service). Nevertheless, the whole action had a direct effect on federal Indian policy and
established a precedent for later Indian activism and most of the later Indian activism of
the period can be dated back to the events in Alcatraz. Some examples are: The Trail of
Broken Treaties, the BIA occupation or the Longest Walk.
The events at Alcatraz led to an annual celebration of the rights of indigenous people
– “Unthanksgiving” day – welcoming all visitors to a dawn ceremony. As, since the
arrival of the first colonizers, Native Americans had been forced to live as a minority in
their own original homeland, the events of Alcatraz Island served as a symbol of the
things that had been promised by the government but had never been actually awarded –
during the almost 300 years of contact, 389 treaties have been broken –. Even
nowadays, over fifty years later, many American Indians still live in between cultures
and many see Alcatraz Island as a holy place, calling it “Allisti Ti-Tanin-
Wiji”22
(Johnson, The Occupation of Alcatraz 2). Native Americans are still the most
impoverished of all ethnic groups living in the United States:
Among the most formidable challenges facing native peoples today are those rooted in
economic conditions. American Indians living on the nation's nearly 300 reservations are
among the poorest people in the United States. On most reservations, sustained economic
development, while much discussed, has yet to make a significant dent in a long history
of poverty and powerlessness. Despite the many federal programs and the large sums of
federal and philanthropic money that have been used over the years, many Indian
reservations continue to experience extremely high unemployment rates; high
dependency on welfare, government jobs, and other transfer payments; discouraging
social problems; and an almost complete absence of sustainable, productive economic
activity. (Cornell, Stephen, and Joseph P. Kalt, “What Can Tribes Do?” 1992)
22
Rock Rainbow/ Diamond Island

22. 20
Many years later, on November 16th
, 2010 the Harvard Kennedy School of
Government honored ten tribal governments in Albuquerque23
and, as a reaction, the
Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Indian Nation and chairman of the Honoring Nations
Board of Governors stated: “Our destiny is in our hands. Being capable of directing our
own future and defending the futures of our children and the futures of our nations is
profoundly important. Honoring Nations understands this – and is a very, very positive
program in Indian Country” (The Harvard Project).
1.4.3. The Problem of Reparations
In order to understand the problems U.S. judges face when it comes to reparations,
we have to know that most Americans are “theoretically committed to remedial justice
and also aware of the abuses inflicted on the Indians by non-Indian governments,
associations, and individuals, even though this awareness is still spotty” (Williams,
229). Williams believes that there is a “certain psychological need” that prevents law-
makers from recognizing the importance of a reparations program which is the reason
why the US has no general program of reparations and no prospects for embracing one,
in spite of a global supportive tendency (229). Williams explains this reluctance by
connecting it to fundamental elements of the American legal culture: according to
him, the Indian, as an idea or symbol, has a “profound mythic hold on American’s legal
imaginations” but, at the same time, American law has often ignored the problems of
23
“Honoring Nations is administered by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic
Development. The Project’s goal is to understand the conditions under which self‐determined social and
economic development is achieved among American Indian nations” (The Harvard Project).

23. 21
actual Indians: “Native Americans have been both blessed and cursed to occupy a mere
symbolic role and we need to understand it before we can change it” (229).
Generally, American law treats “social issues as questions of remedial justice,24
rather than social policy” (230). Nevertheless, America has never initiated a “thorough-
going effort at reparations for Native Americans” (230), since Native Americans
normally seek collective solutions for collective mistreatment, and American law has
difficulty recognizing such a claim.
Since the first years of its existence, the US has always imagined itself a nation built
through general consent, “A City Upon a Hill.” According to Williams, the interesting
thing about the USA is that “in order to emerge innocent from the darkness of European
corruption” (230) it has always tried to liberate itself of its dark history, forgetting that
the land was indeed inhabited long before Columbus’ arrival. When Native
Americans demand collective reparations, they are threatening all this myth-making: “If
the planting was foul, then so must be the tree” (Williams, 230), which would question
US sovereignty over the land formerly inhabited solely by Native Americans.
According to Williams, “such a possibility might be considered by an international
court, but it is utterly unlikely that any US court, exercising US sovereignty, ever
would” (231). In other words, because of their moral perfectionism, no American judge
will make any such concession. American judges feel that they must recognize the
conquest of the American territory as a historical fact and try to develop a record that
will make the conquest of the American continent legitimate because - being part of the
system - their own power depends on it.
What is most threatening is the fact that the Indian tribes claim “entitlement to
sovereignty over part of the land as collective sovereign bodies.” Williams states that
24
Remedial justice is critical so as to ensure that individuals are made whole for the violation of their
rights.

24. 22
courts in America would probably not have so much trouble to recognize claims by
individuals for individual justice because individual claims can be read as “an assertion
of the Indians’ assimilation and of the fact that they belong to an unproblematic
American sovereignty” (230).
The USA “could no longer be a light to enlighten the nations: it feeds itself on land
choked with the bodies of its victims. Reparations are so frightening because the threat
is so profound” (246-247). If the US could accept the guilt of history then it would also
accept that reparations would project discredit on the origins of American sovereignty
and, at the same time, “make the reparations anyway because if purity is no longer an
option, then guilt is tolerable” (247). In other words, the US first needs to seek new
ways to think about its own sovereignty before being able to develop a real reparations
program.
2. Ten Little Indians and Alexie’s Perspective
2.1.The Reservation
To understand the meaning of the reservation as a setting we first need to clarify that
Indian reservations are areas within the US identified by the federal government as land
reserved for American Indians. Indigenous communities have certain sovereignty over
the territory, which is supposed to grant tribes freedom to maintain their cultural
heritage and traditions. These areas constitute different societies on the margins of the
larger mainstream America, with physical and socio-cultural frontiers problematic for
cross-cultural exchange (Connette, Abstract ).

25. 23
For Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian (Academy of American
Poets), who grew up in impoverished conditions, life as a writer was more than beyond
reach: it never came to his mind that a reservation Indian could speak out and be heard
(Fassler, “The Poem That…”), a feeling that contrasts with the attitude of the over-
confident Corliss – on whom we are going to focus our attention later in this paper –
with her ambitions to become “better” than the rest in the short story “The Search
Engine.” As Alexie's work reveals, the “rez”25
has an effect on Indian culture and
identity within contemporary multicultural societies; even among individuals who grew
up outside the reservation in a more urban context it leaves a lasting
impression. In Alexie’s own words:
I was the first person in my family ever to go to college, leaving the reservation,
leaving my tribe, feeling excited about going but also feeling like I’d betrayed the tribe.
And knowing that no matter where I ended up, or what I did, I would always be there.
Some large part of me would always be there, on the reservation. Now I am actively and
publicly advocating for Native kids to leave the reservation as soon as they can. The
reservation system was created by the U.S. Military. It was an act of war. Why do we
make them sacred now, even though most reservations are really third-world, horrible
banana republics? […] And a century ago, when we moved onto the reservation, my tribe
stopped moving. All the innovation we’ve done since then has been just modeling after
Europeans. I mean, our greatest successes are casinos! So, ‘I’m in the reservation of my
mind’ addresses this lack of innovation, the Native imagination being shackled and
curtailed, as well as the failure to celebrate the innovations that have happened. (Alexie
qtd in Fassler "The Poem That Made Sherman Alexie Want to 'Drop Everything and Be a
Poet'")
25
Native American slang for “reservation.”

26. 24
The reservation, as a result of the confrontation with and the resistance to the
colonizer, has often become a kind of cultural center and a “refuge from outside
society” (Connette 14). It has a “dualistic quality”: inhabitants often want to escape in
order to fulfill their dreams but are often pulled back by their tribal identity and family
ties (14).
The themes in Alexie’s writings – or films like Smoke Signals (1998) – usually
revolve around the reservation which is if not physically at least psychologically always
present in the lives of the Indians. But Alexie’s reservation portrayal focuses on a
different side of reservation life: in his world, the reservation is a place where the
inhabitants are often corrupted by alcohol and violence while they keep on living within
the imperialist environment that has surrounded them over time (15). He opposes the
conception of many reservation inhabitants who think that in order to remain tribal, that
is, faithful to the Indian traditions, Native Americans have to remain on or return to the
reservation: from his perspective, the only thing individuals can learn on the
reservation is how to give up, as Corliss’ family in “The Search Engine” exemplifies
(Alexie 30).
Certainly there are other options for a Native American nowadays than just
remaining in the reservation. As stated before, Alexie feels there are other ways to
develop and it is a must to leave the reservation in order to evolve as an
individual insofar as leaving it does not mean leaving the cultural background behind as
well. For example, he describes himself as an individual coming from “two hometowns
and two cultures making one unique Indian identity” (Connette 66). For him,
his strength as a writer comes from his own background as a reservation Indian, which
means that he knows what he is writing about and he is usually critical with those non-
Indians who try to do the same. He uses his Spokane roots to speak about his own

27. 25
experiences as an Indian. Through his texts, he confronts negative images, challenges
misrepresentations and offers the possibility that the Indian can be visible and a
participant in mainstream culture without losing tribal integrity.
In Mixedblood Messages (1998), Owens tries to explain the fact that a study
published in 1989, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial
Literatures, ignored American Indian writers but, at the same time, “considered
Euramerican literature within its discussion” (Owens, 51) by stating that “Native
American writing is not postcolonial but rather colonial, that the colonizers never left
but simply changed their names to Americans” and that the main problem is that “the
center, even when it begins to define itself as something ambiguously called
‘multicultural’, still does not always hear more than the echo of its own voice or see
very far beyond its own reflection” (Owens, 51). Owens feels that the omission of
Native American authors in this kind of studies is just another kind of “colonial
enterprise” and he finds that it is only logical that people who have suffered under the
authoritative discourse that has been prevailing in the country for over five hundred
years are still not allowed to participate in the center of its literature that had, in fact, its
origins in colonial authority. Normally, post-colonial discourse can be applied to
Indians only with difficulty because the reservation is technically a domestic US colony,
yet still a sovereign Indian nation.
2.2. The Search Engine
Having reviewed briefly the history and some of the major events and injustices
related to the Native American community we can finally read Alexie’s short story.

28. 26
Since the arrival of the first Spanish ships, Native Americans have suffered the
exploitation of the colonizers even on a literary basis: early European texts on Native
Americans and their way of life in the New World were offered as the only source of
information, or at least the only useful and valid one, about the inhabitants of America.
These works, which were mainly read by Non-Indian readers, built up the first Indian
stereotypes. In other words, there was European monopolization in the production and
consumption of stories about the colonization of North America (Cox, 6-7; Connette
15). This monopoly was even intensified in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with
the development of the Western genre first in literature and then in the movies. In his
fiction and according to Connette, Alexie imitates mimicry, a condition of colonialism
(Deena, 90; Connette 15), when he incorporates stereotypes of his own native
community within the texts. In a way he imitates the colonizer by re-writing the Indian
narrative within the setting of popular culture (Connette 16). By the type of
characterization he uses for his characters, Alexie calls attention on the internalized
oppression: his Indian characters partake of some negative stereotypical features as a
type of mimicry to suggest that colonial oppression has remained constant even though
time has passed (16). Alexie also focuses on the power of Indian peoples to survive
along history, thus exemplifying David Moore’s proposal in “Return of
the Buffalo”(2001), that Native American writers can “assume a sense of power by
bringing back powerful images of the past to contemporary literary works” (Moore 53;
Connette 16).
In Ten Little Indians (2003), the reader encounters several contemporary Indian
characters who offer a broad perspective of American society today. Each main
character is a prototypical hybrid of conflicting cultures which make him or her unique
and his or her story worth its telling and reading. The protagonists of these nine stories

29. 27
show a constant struggle with themselves and their own sense of powerlessness among
mainstream white American society. The cultural conflicts each character must face
derive from their similar cultural backgrounds: they all have Native American roots
(mostly Spokane), and most of them are profoundly concerned about their cultural
hybridity.26
Alexie’s work reveals Indian identity not as a separate autonomous being
but as a hybrid identity that is compatible with others (Conette, Abstract). He is against
the misrepresentations and stereotyping of Indians which originated in the Euro-
American mind, as well as against the Indian history told from the outside.
Sherman Alexie’s aim is to represent a perspective that actually comes from the
inside and looks out at mainstream society. Most of his characters are mixed in many
senses, prototypical “others” that break with the prevalent white-male supremacy. In
fact, many of his main characters in the collection are women. Nevertheless, we could
say that the characters of Ten Little Indians are less concerned with their ethnic identity
than the ones of Alexie’s earlier publications. For example, in The Toughest Indian in
the World (2000), the characters often question the codes of Indian authenticity
(Grassian, 173) and here we find that they are less obsessed with their ethnic identity.
The characteristic of being Indian does play a major role but is not the “primary
determinant of these characters’ identities” (Grassian, 173), because their isolation is
often caused by other means like poor family relations, psychological problems, or a
patriarchal American culture. Alexie’s characters show that a Native American in the
US cannot escape from the ambivalence of living within two traditionally conflicting
cultures, but he or she can try to make the most of it, as we shall see in Corliss’ case.
His characters experience firsthand the clash between two cultures which have been
26
In order to analyze some of the issues of the Native American context more closely, we are going to
focus on the first short story of the collection, “The Search Engine”

30. 28
stereotypically characterized by showing opposite features.27
Corliss, for example, is a
pure Spokane Indian stuck in between learning English poetry and her Indian family on
the reservation. In her mind, she tends to place herself outside the community she is
describing and usually makes generalizations about their lifestyles: “she hated their
individual fears and collective lack of ambition”, “they all worked blue-collar
construction jobs”, “they never asked questions” (Alexie, 13; emphasis added). In some
ways, she “seeks to transcend ethnic boundaries” (Grassian, 174). Thus, Corliss both
suffers from the experience of being stereotyped and participates in the stereotyping of
others: “she knew she judged people based on their surface appearances, but Lord
Byron said only shallow people don’t judge by surfaces” (Alexie, 2).
2.3. Tribalism
The issues of “Indianness” and race are predominant in Alexie’s stories, but, as his
interviews evidence, he introduced modifications in his depiction and conception of
tribalism after 9/11. According to Loree Westron, over the course of his career,
“Alexie’s representation of Indian identity has changed dramatically, moving from the
fervent and angry tribalism of his reservation stories, to a sense of otherness in an urban
environment, and on to a more pan-Indian and poly cultural stance” (“‘Indianness’ and
Identity in the Novels and Short Stories of Sherman Alexie” 2). In his early fiction
readers are never allowed to ignore tribal issues and none of his characters can be
simply identified as US citizens. In his later works, especially in those written after
9/11, there is a certain change. As he explains to Tanita Davis and Sarah Stevenson in
their interview of 2007, “Ever since 9/11, I have worked hard to be very public about
27
See the “Western” conception of good and evil portrayed through the characterization of Indians and
Cowboys.

31. 29
my multi-tribal identity. I think fundamentalism is the mistaken belief that one belongs
to the only one tribe; I am opposite of that” (Conversations 190). In the same interview
he repeats again that “the reservation system was created to disappear and murder
Indians. And I still think to some large degree that reservations still serve that nefarious
function” (Conversations 189).
2.4.Sentimentalism: the Romantization of the Indian
In his works, Alexie usually criticizes sentimentalism and the romanticizing of the
Indian question. In the first short story in Ten Little Indians, “The Search Engine,” he
offers a critical approach to the topic of the romanticizing and stereotyping of Indians in
the North American culture. The young female protagonist of the story worries that, if
she gets more involved with white people, she will lose the power and mystery of
her “exoticism” and “that would be a wonderful day for human rights but a terrible day
for Corliss” (Alexie 11). In fact, the reason she gives to explain why she does not want a
white roommate is simply that she is afraid that he/she would be able to see past the
stereotypical Indian mysticism and see Corliss as a human being and not as a type,
“white people were too romantic about Indians” (Alexie 11). She feels the need to
remain mysterious in order to get the attention required. She knows how to make profit
of both communities. On the one hand, she tries to leave the reservation and her cultural
roots behind by engaging in outside activities and studying the language and literature
of the dominant culture. On the other hand, she accepts the scholarships and financial
support she gets because of her Native roots (Alexie 11). Later in the same story, we
find that she herself romanticizes Harlam Atwater and feels totally disappointed when
she finally discovers he is not an “indigenous version of Harrison Ford” (33).

32. 30
2.5.The cultural clash
Corliss is a pure bred Spokane Indian who must confront her family and community
to pursue her English major studies. The origin of the feelings of Corliss's Spokane
Indian community towards non-Indians dates back to the injustices faced by the various
Native American tribes since the arrival of the Europeans. One of her uncles sums up
the family’s feelings about whites when he comments that "white people were killing
Indians in the nineteenth century" (Alexie 13) as a response to Corliss’ admiration for
the nineteenth century English poets:
“I bet you’re reading one of those white books again, enit?” the first uncle asked.
“His name is Gerard Manley Hopkins,” Corliss said. “He wrote poems in the nineteenth
century.”
“White people were killing Indians in the nineteenth century,” the second uncle said. “I
bet this Hopkins dude was killing Indians, too.”
“I don’t think so,” Corliss said. “He was a Jesuit priest.”
Her father and uncles cursed with shock and disgust.
“He was a Catholic?” her father asked. “Oh, Corliss, those Catholics were the worst.
Your grandmother still has scars on her back from when a priest and a nun whipped her in
boarding school. You shouldn’t be reading that stuff. It will pollute your heart.”
“What do you think those white people can teach you, anyway?” the third uncle asked.
She wanted to say, “Everything” (Alexie 13-14)
In the passage, we clearly see two points of view regarding history, Corliss focuses
only on the creative part of the white conquerors and her family is not able to see
beyond the bloody history that joins them together. In an interview with John and Carl

33. 31
Bellante in 1993, Alexie reaffirms his skeptical attitude by stating that he is “ambivalent
towards Christians” and mostly “towards churches, who haven’t been very good to
Native Americans and reservations” in his homeland, since they actively participated in
their cultural genocide and beat students at boarding schools” (Conversations 7).
Having these thoughts in mind, it is no wonder to find several religious allusions and
references to the clash between the Indian culture and the western Anglo-Saxon cultural
and literary tradition in the collection. In “The Search Engine” alone, we can find
references to historical figures such as George Armstrong Custer, canonical English
writers such as John Donne, Elizabeth Bishop, Auden, American writers such as
Langston Hughes, etc. Corliss’ favorites are: Whitman, Shapiro, Jordan, Turcotte,
Lourie, O’Hara, Hershon, Alvarez, Brook, Schreiber, Pawlak, Offutt, Duncan, Moore
(Alexie 38). We can also find references to pop culture such as Jimi Hendrix, Kurt
Cobain or Bruce Lee. We do not need to explain that most of them are non-Indians.
But going back to the setting, having grown up in the Indian reservation has made
Corliss critical of other Indians and their way of life. She prefers to live alone because
she assumes another Indian would invite others to stay over and not contribute to the
rent (Alexie 10). She even considers the act of sharing in a negative way when she
states that more than tribalism it seems to be a sort of failed communism (the negative
aspect of the statement can only be understood when we pay attention to the
American conception of that political system). Thus Corliss seems to have adopted the
American attitude of individualism as a way of life in stark contrast with her community
which she sees as a whole – merely as a group – placing herself outside that group:
“they’d rather die standing together in long lines than wandering alone in the
wilderness. Indians were terrified of being lonely, of being exiled, but Corliss had
always dreamed of solitude” (Alexie, 10). We need to point out that McDonald’s and

34. 32
other famous American restaurant chains are often used in Alexie’s fiction in order to
mark the contrast with reservation life. Many of the characters use these places as
meeting spots and, in this way, participate in mainstream society.
After accidentally finding Harlan Atwater’s book in the library, she is amazed that
another Spokane was able to write poetry. Corliss’ reaction shows the little confidence
she has in her own people and that is also the reason why she immediately feels
attracted to the image she builds about the mysterious writer. When she tries to contact
him, which proves difficult, we learn that although he is genetically a Spokane Indian,
he was raised amongst a white family. Personally, he experienced this cultural division
painfully because he was never fully accepted as a white or as a Spokane Indian. He
feels trapped between both worlds, alien to both at the same time (Alexie 41).

35. 33
Conclusion
The balancing of stereotypes and cultures is a main aspect of the short stories Alexie
writes. In Ten Little Indians (2003), Native Americans are described as hybrids living in
between cultures and, although characters struggle to be individuals rather than
stereotypes, they cannot fully avoid falling into this trap: after years living under the
stereotyping pressure Native Americans sometimes cannot do without these stereotypes,
so people assume these images themselves and thus promote and perpetuate them.
Corliss provides a great example of this in how she chooses to live alone (Alexie 10).
This proves that stereotypes are universal and are set on both sides of the cultural
barrier. He uses humor in order to face the great concerns of his community making
constant allusions to events of the past that are, sometimes, ignored in class. It is often
stated that Alexie writes for a white audience but, in a way, it helps the ones living
outside the setting of his stories to understand the feeling of constant in-betweenness
faced by Native Americans in the USA.
Alexie’s perspective is clear after reading his collection and complementary
interviews and studies about his fiction. His first movie, Smoke Signals (1998),28
proved
that Native Americans are not only trying to engage in every aspect of public life these
days, but also trying to find a way to perpetuate their traditions and beliefs after
engaging in mainstream America. It is a fact that reservations are among the poorest
regions of the country and that Native Americans still face basic challenges that have
their roots in the past arrival of the Europeans to their country but it is also true that
many have accepted the fact that they cannot ignore history and, in order to get a
change, they have to actively participate in public life.
28
Utterly produced and made by Native Americans.

36. 34
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Announcements. The Harvard Project, 17 Nov. 2010. Web. 10 June 2014.
<http://hpaied.org/news-a-events/events-and-announcements>.
US National Park Service. "Other Migration Theories." National Parks Service. U.S.
Department of the Interior, 05 May 2014. Web. 01 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.nps.gov/bela/historyculture/other-migration-theories.htm>.
US National Park Service. "We Hold the Rock." National Parks Service. U.S.
Department of the Interior, 11 Aug. 2014. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.
<http://www.nps.gov/alca/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm>.
US National Park Service. "Trail Of Tears, National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park
Service)." National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, 19 June
2014. Web. 22 June 2014. <http://www.nps.gov/trte/index.htm>.
Westron, Loree. Indianness’ and Identity in the Novels and Short Stories of Sherman
Alexie. N.p.: Academia.edu, 21 May 2010. PDF.
Williams, David C. "In Praise of Guilt: How the Yearning for Moral Purity Blocks
Reparations for Native Americans." Reparations for Indigenous Peoples:
International and Comparative Perspectives. Federico Lenzerini. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2008. 229-49. Web.

40. 38
APPENDIX
Land Transfer. Map by Arlene Goldberg, Media Projects, Inc., in The Native American
Experience On File, New York: Facts on File, 1991

41. 39
© Digital History 2014
© Paula Giese 1996. The Closing of the Frontier

42. 40
This map was copyrighted from unknown sources by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Map of
Indian Reservations in the Continental US.
© Donald Healy 2008. Spokane Tribe - Washington map. Map image by Peter Orenski based
on input from Don Healy. “The Spokane Reservation, in western Washington, is home to the
Spokane, an inland Salish-speaking people related to the Flathead, Coeur d’Alene, and similar
tribes” (ENAT, 252).

43. 41
Carlisle Industrial Indian School, c.1900
Three Lakota Boys, Carlisle, ca. 1900

44. 42
© Ilka Hartmann. Alcatraz Island, San Francisco.
© Ilka Hartmann

45. 43
PHOTOS:
"American Indian Civics Project: Indian Boarding Schools: Tools of Forced
Assimilations, 1870 to 1934." American Indian Civics Project: Indian Boarding
Schools: Tools of Forced Assimilations, 1870 to 1934. American Indian Issues,
n.d. Web. 19 July 2014.
<http://americanindiantah.com/lesson_plans/ml_boardingschools.html>.
"Frontier Forts." Frontier Forts. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 July 2014.
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/images/carlisle.html>
United States. National Park Service. "We Hold the Rock." National Parks Service.
U.S. Department of the Interior, 11 Aug. 2014. Web. 13 Aug. 2014.
<http://www.nps.gov/alca/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm>.
"The Louisiana Digital Library." Default. Louisiana Digital Library, n.d. Web. 13 July
2014. <http://www.louisianadigitallibrary.org/>
Storm, Karen; et al. "Photographs from Indian Boarding Schools." Photographs from
Indian Boarding Schools. N.p., 29 Dec. 2008. Web. 20 July 2014.
<http://www.hanksville.org/sand/intellect/gof.html>
MAPS:
"Spokane Tribe." Spokane Tribe - Washington (U.S.). FOTW Flags Of The World, n.d.
Web. 10 Aug. 2014. <http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/xa-squax.html>.
Giese, Paula. "MAPS: GIS Windows on Native Lands, Current Places, and
History." Maps of Native American Nations, History, Info. N.p., 1996. Web. 20
July 2014. <http://www.kstrom.net/isk/maps/mapmenu.html>.

46. 44
The Library of Congress. "Map Collections Home Page." Map Collections Home Page.
The Library of Congress, 15 Mar. 2011. Web. 4 July 2014.
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/gmdhome.html>.
United States. National Park Service. "Map of Indian Reservations in the Continental
US." National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, n.d. Web. 10 Aug.
2014. <http://www.nps.gov/nagpra/documents/ResMAP.HTM>.
"Manifest Destiny, the Closure of the Frontier, and the Price of Progress."
Hist111/manifestdestiny.html. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 July 2014.
<http://www.users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist111/manifestdestiny.html>.
Further information:
Champagne, Duane. Contemporary Native American Cultural Issues. Walnut Creek,
CA: AltaMira, 1999. Web.
Deats, Suzanne, and Kitty Leaken. Contemporary Native American Artists. Salt Lake
City: Gibbs Smith, 2012. Print.
Gradstein, Felix; et al (2004). A Geologic Time Scale 2004. New York: Cambridge
University Press. Print.
Kilpatrick, Jacquelyn. Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film. University of
Nebraska Press, 1999. Print.
MacNaughton, Glenda, and Gillian Williams. Teaching Young Children: Choices in
Theory and Practice. Maidenhead, Berkshire, England: Open UP, 2004. PDF
Merchant, Carolyn. American Environmental History: An Introduction. New York:
Columbia UP, 2007. Web.

47. 45
National Park Service U.S. Department of Interior. "Native American Consultation
Database Search Screen." Native American Consultation Database Search
Screen. U.S. Department of the Interior, n.d. Web. 3 July 2014.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8jRgPcO7JQ>.
Pruitt, Searah. "Ancient Infant's DNA Provides Key to Native American
Ancestry." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 13 Feb. 2014. Web. 2 May
2014. <http://www.history.com/news/ancient-infants-dna-provides-key-to-
native-american-ancestry>.
Thomas, David Hurst. Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for
Native American Identity. New York, NY: Basic, 2000. Web.
Tomkinson, Sarah. "Respect Native American Symbols." Western Courier. Western
Courier, 28 Sept. 2012. Web. 05 June 2014.
<http://www.westerncourier.com/opinions/respect-native-american-
symbols/article_c7c95d1c-0994-11e2-8c9f-001a4bcf6878.html>.
Walch, Michael C. "Terminating the Indian Termination Policy." Stanford Law
Review 35 (1982): 1181. Heinonline. Web. 10 June 2014.
<http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/stflr35&div=49&g_sent
=1&collection=journals#1207>.