Presentations February 24th

Native American culture has so much that the stereotype they are given truly destroys. It is a crime that generalization can diminish a culture in the minds of the ignorant to feathers and war whoops and prevent outsiders from embracing a community's ideas. For instance, the stereotype in my own mind of Native American medicine was the mystical and dangerous dances which did little or nothing for the patient. I didn't know that Native American doctors believed in health as being not the absence of disease but balance. The image of the healing circle now replaces the face of a painted medicine man, and I can see more of the Native American way of thinking. Art and music have both undergone similar stereotypical stripping of all true meaning. Chants have become a symbol of danger for the white cowboy and drums strike fear into the hearts of little kids on the Oregon Trail. Why have Indian songs never been seen as odes of love or loss or joy? Because white-made movies transform certain sounds into indications of the savage and the pagan, both with the worst connotations possible. Learning about so many different drums has opened a world of the diverse that I had no idea existed in Native American music. Music is given meaning when the world does not strip its cultural context of all dignity. Native American art also finds itself in the world of the undervalued. Pottery and masks are things that modern Western culture does not really place a high value on, especially masks. Because of this, no one emphasizes the achievements of artists like Maria Martinez or Philip John Charette and their artistic voices are lost in the din of common critics. The work of Ernie Pepion is especially thought provoking, displaying the sadder side of humanity and, unafraid, presenting the viewer with images they would not always choose to look at in real situations. The image that has stayed with me is that of a man sitting in a wheelchair and about to shoot a buffalo with what looks like a toy bow and arrow. Clashing worlds together, Ernie makes people think about what has happened to Native American people and how their way of life has been corrupted.