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The Ghost Dance and the Politics of Exclusion in Sherman Alexie's “Distances.”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2013

TOM FARRINGTON
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Abstract

Critical responses to (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene) Sherman Alexie's stories of the Spokane Indian reservation and its (semi-)fictional inhabitants in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993, herein TLR) tend to polarize over the problem of the collection's cultural authenticity. The majority of these criticisms fall into one of two categories: those who condemn the author's prose for trafficking moribund Indian stereotypes, and those who defend his commitment to realistic portrayals of a struggling reservation community. In either case, it is the perceived capacity of the stories to develop a particular sense of indigenous community that typically functions as the measure of their cultural authenticity. One story from TLR that has received none of this critical attention is “Distances,” a contemporary, dystopian realization of Wovoka's late nineteenth-century Ghost Dance prophecy that shares none of the characters, settings or events common to the other stories. This apparent withdrawal from the collection's featured community and “reservation realist” aesthetic affords Alexie the critical distance to examine the exclusionary principles that underlay the formation of American Indian communities, and the value of these principles for the individual members. A close reading of “Distances” reveals Alexie's representations of contemporary Ghost Dances to be crucial interjections into the debates surrounding American Indian literary nationalism, as his writing seeks to dramatize the problems of a separatist agenda for urban Indian communities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 2: Special Collection: Art Across Frontiers , May 2013 , pp. 521 - 540
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 Alexie, Sherman, “Tuxedo with Eagle Feathers,” in Sherman, Face (New York: Hanging Loose, 2009), 80Google Scholar.

2 Alexie, Sherman, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (New York: Grove, 2005Google Scholar; first publishd 1993), hereafter TLR with page references parenthetically in the text.

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4 As Tatonetti, Lisa, “Behind the Shadows of Wounded Knee: The Slippage of Imagination in Wynema: A Child of the Forest,” Studies in American Indian Literatures, 16, 1 (2004), 1–31, 27–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, points out, the notion of Wounded Knee as the “end” of indigenous history can be discerned from titles alone, even before considering the repeated structures of relevant historical texts, such as Robert Utley's The Last Days of the Sioux Nation (1963), Ralph Andrist's The Long Death: The Last Days of the Plains Indians (1964), and Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1972).

5 Tatonetti, Lisa, “Dancing That Way, Things Began to Change: The Ghost Dance as Pantribal Metaphor in Sherman Alexie's Writing,” in Berglund, Jeff and Roush, Jan, eds., Sherman Alexie: A Collection of Critical Essays (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2010), 1–24, 21Google Scholar.

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12 Tatonetti, “Dancing That Way,” 9.

13 It is likely that War Dances and Face were published after Tatonetti submitted her study, therefore it would be unreasonable to suggest their deliberate omission from Tatonetti's piece. Nevertheless, my analyses of works within these publications provides only further illustration of an argument about Alexie's politics that is primarily constructed with reference to works that were published within the time frame of Tatonetti's survey (1991–2007).

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19 This is not to imply that many Indian communities do not face difficulties and prejudices that threaten their lives and cultures today. They do, and I believe one of Alexie's most significant achievements is educating readers about the origins and extent of those problems.

20 The described violence (burning, drowning, dismemberment, rape) is notably reminiscent of that enacted upon the indigenous population by early Spanish settlers, as described by Bartolomé de Las Casas in his Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies (1542).

21 The title of Messiah for Wovoka has been much protested, most emphatically by Wovoka himself, and its use by Alexie again evokes the syncretic origins of the Ghost Dance.

22 Or at least those Indians with telephones. A 2003–4 telephone survey by the University of Pennsylvania claims that ninety percent of American Indians interviewed are not “bother[ed]” by the name of the Washington Redskins (Annenberg Public Policy Center, “Most Indians Say Name of Washington “Redskins” Is Acceptable while 9 Percent Call It Offensive, Annenberg Data Show,” National Annenberg Election Survey 04 (Philadelphia: University of Pennslyvania, 24 Sept. 2004)), though Carol Spindel's personal interviews with Indians in her Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy Over American Indian Mascots (New York: New York University Press, 2002) show considerable resistance to such iconography.

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34 Alexie, Indian Killer, 246. Subsequent page references are given parenthetically in the text.

35 Here I identify Marie Polatkin by her first name simply in order to avoid confusion with her cousin, Reggie Polatkin.

36 Tatonetti, “Dancing That Way,” 19.

37 Alexie, Flight, 4. Subsequent page references are given parenthetically in the text.

38 Although Flight is another text that has been largely overlooked by critics, a fuller examination of the ways in which Zits's time-travelling misadventures and oddly blissful domestic payoff function as part of Alexie's political agenda is unfortunately beyond the scope of this article, though it is perhaps worth pointing out his admission that this choice of happy ending still makes him “squirm.” Rachel Giese, “Inner conflict: Sherman Alexie's soul-searching new novel,” cbc.ca, 19 June 2007, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, available at www.cbc.ca/news/story/2007/06/20/sherman-alexie-flight.html, accessed 1 June 2012.

39 Alexie, Face, 80.

40 Sherman Alexie, “Sherman Alexie talks serious fiction,” interview with Kathy Wise, Cowboys & Indians, available at www.cowboysindians.com/Cowboys-Indians/January-2010/Sherman-Alexie-talks-serious-fiction, Jan. 2010, accessed 15 Oct. 2010.

41 Alexie, Face, 80–81.

42 Ibid., 80.

43 Urban Indian Health Commission, Invisible Tribes: Urban Indians and Their Health in a Changing World (Seattle: Urban Indian Health Institute, 2007), 3–4Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., 4.

45 Examples include Victor's promise to listen respectfully to one of Thomas Builds-the-Fire's stories in “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” and Junior's “good story” in “A Good Story.” These narratives establish the positive bonds between individuals necessary for a sustainable community.