Forgive Me, For I Know Not What I've Done

“How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” - Sherman Alexie

Alexie employs the varied stereotypes concerning American Indians that have been compiled over the many centuries from literature, song, and film to create an honest and sorrowful commentary on the relationship between American Indians and European Americans. Throughout the duration of the poem the author refers to these stereotypes as if a “Great American Indian Novel” has already been written, as if many have been written. When he concludes the poems he reveals that there is yet to be “the Great American Indian Novel,” because there are Americans Indians still alive. Alexie wittingly alludes to the facts that Europeans have driven the Native Americans from their land, and quite nearly destroyed their culture, in the Age of Discovery. Now as European Americans we are destroying their culture still through a strange commercial fascination of the civilization we were so apt to annihilate a few hundred year ago. As “white” Americans we crave the meaning, mysticism, and spirituality that the American Indians hold. There is also a part of our heritage in which we desire to be forgiven for past grievances. The cost to obtain what we yearn is assimilation, and further destruction. We have made true American Indians ashamed of their origin, because we have distorted the cultural meaning that once defined them through years of abuse. Kids don't want to grow up to be a cliché, they want to grow up to be normal. So many American Indians purge themselves of their abused lineage. Jenny Ray, an American Indian, travels the country trying to rejuvenate the lost meaning of her culture, even her children refuse to accept her long held traditions, because of the derogatory nature of the United States' history. We have taken characteristics from certain tribes, and types of American Indians and applied them to every person with ancestral blood in America. Everyday the demographics show that American Indian tribes are only decreasing in number. Sherman Alexie states that the time in which a book about American Indians will be popular will be the time when there are none left, after which all of the cultures of every tribe will be reduced to mere stereotypes.