native american literature presentation
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Native American Literature PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Native American Native American LiteratureLiterature
English 11English 11Ms. BurnsMs. Burns
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• Our American identity as we know it is a product of our past. Our class will focus on literature which reveals how we arrived at our society and culture today.
• We study Native American literature out of a respect for the indigenous cultures who were here before the European explorers as well as a respect for their cultural and literary influence throughout the years.
Historical & Cultural Context Historical & Cultural Context
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• Indigenous Americans inhabited this continent before anyone else. They endured many invasions from the Spaniards for the following primary reasons:
1. land 2. gold 3. crops (all of which were plentiful)
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• Once explorers and settlers decided to stay and start building the natives could do nothing although they usually tried to fight back.
• Natives had a completely different set of values and traditions:
- some wouldn’t fight back until they realized they would lose their land completely
- they lived off the land and held it in high regard; earth was the mother
- they never used more than they needed and they never wasted anything
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• The settlers flagrant ways and intruding methods of desecrating the land came as a huge blow to the Native Americans.
• The Europeans also brought disease that natives were never exposed to before, which brought actual physical desecration to their people.
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Storytelling & Oral TraditionStorytelling & Oral Tradition
• Long before European explorers came to North America, Native Americans had a rich literary tradition of their own. Their stories, histories, and legends were shared and preserved through oral tradition. The storyteller is one whose spirit is indispensable to the people.
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• The Native Americans spoke hundreds of languages and lived in incredibly diverse societies with varied mythological beliefs.
• Despite their differences, their cultures and literary traditions had the following common elements:
They believed in the power of words and they relied on memory, rather than writing to preserve their texts
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• The oral tradition was a performance and is offered to the audience as dramatic events in time.
• The storyteller is very important to culture and is one of the most
honored and respected members of the tribe/society
• The relationship between the storyteller and the audience is established through: voice emphasis, gestures, use of space, eye contact, and the audience can be representative of the characters in the story.
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These oral stories include the following types of texts:
• cultural information (beliefs about social order and appropriate behavior)
• historical accounts including migrations: how people got to where they are
• lessons describe how and why things are the way they are
• creation stories and the origins of societies (beliefs about the nature of the physical world)
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Some Dominant Themes & Motifs:Some Dominant Themes & Motifs:
• relationships between humans and animals
• respect and reverence for mother earth and nature
• land as the strength of the people• village/community/tribe as sovereign• cyclical patterns: renewal and continuance• importance of tribal traditions and history