AE: Prose Dylan G. Williams – Lesson 6
Understanding Details
1. The principal point of this essay is to expose the extent of modern
prejudice against Native Americans. To make this point, Sawaquat
incorporates into his essay six short prejudicial anecdotes from his own
life.
2. Sawaquat attributes the hatred of white people toward Native
Americans to the fact that “we have something they want and they
hate us for it” (para. 4). For his own tribe that “something” was, in the
past, “the Indian village of my Ottawa ancestors” (para. 5); at present it
is the U.S. Supreme Court ruling restricting North American fishing
rights on land that has belonged to Native Americans for centuries
(para. 4).
4. Sawaquat learns about his heritage as a child, but then moves
farther away from this original identity as he becomes an adult. Only
after attending a hobbyist powwow does he begin to realize the need
to rediscover his Indian identity. This cultural awakening gives
Sawaquat the ability to connect his earlier memories with the present,
and it also provides a cultural foundation for raising his daughter.
Analyzing Meaning
1. The story of Sawaquat’s daughter helps the reader feel the emotions
of a victim of prejudice; it is especially poignant because Sawaquat’s
two-year-old daughter is unaware of the trials to come.
2. The cruel behavior directed toward his daughter at the beach recalls
sharply for Sawaquat the suffering he has experienced as a Native
American in his youth and throughout much of his adulthood. Denial of
his ethnicity neither protected him from attack nor eased his pain. Only
when he returned to his Ottawa heritage and began to appreciate his
ethnic traditions was he able to transform his resentment into pride.
Because attitudes toward Native Americans have changed little over
the years, he is already beginning to anticipate the pain his daughter
will experience as she grows older.
3. The subtitles “Theft” and “Circle” represent what was taken away
from Sawaquat during the time that he lost his cultural identity and
became “strangely, white” (para. 7); his rediscovery of his cultural
identity means that this identity may come “full circle” and be passed
on to Sawaquat’s daughter.
Discovering Rhetoric
1.The brief bits of dialogue confirm the distorted attitude of some
members of the white population toward Native Americans.
Comments such as “Those Indians are taking our fish, our land” (para.
4); “We won’t have any dirty Indians in our outfit” (para. 7); and “You
aren’t a real Indian are you? .... Then where’s your horse and
feathers?” (para. 13) express more powerfully than merely “telling” the
distorted feelings aimed at the Native American. You can see here also
how snippets of dialogue can help with characterization. They can also
help to make the narrative more credible.
2. The narrator of the story is a fifty-year-old Ottawa Indian who
attempted to assimilate into white society until about fifteen years ago
when he and many other Native Americans began to feel the need to
remember their heritage. Both the first-person point of view and the
vantage point—that of a father who has been through the pain and is
now beginning to predict the same suffering for his small daughter—
make the essay very personal, eliciting from the reader strong
emotional responses to the injustices experienced by Sawaquat and his
daughter. The narrator’s acceptance of his anger appears to have
transformed itself into sad resignation and a determination to find
peace within himself.
3. Sawaquat’s essay is designed as a lengthy flashback framed at the
beginning and at the end by reflections on the fate of his small
daughter. The greater portion of the essay, subtitled “Theft,” deals with
the author’s early life and his reconciliation with his ethnic heritage,
which helps us establish a clear perspective for the rest of the essay.
The focus on his daughter throughout the essay emphasizes both the
change and the lack of change in the plight of the Native American in
the years since he was a boy. The subtitle of the third section, “Circle,”
further stresses the feeling that Native Americans are trapped within a
tight circle of prejudice.