In Class Discussion: Group 4, #16.

In the book’s opening story, as Victor’s uncles, Adolph and Arnold, fight in the yard, and someone shouts that they might kill each other. But the narrator writes,  “Nobody disagreed and nobody moved to change the situation. Witnesses. They were all witnesses and nothing more. For hundreds of years, Indians were witnesses to crimes of an epic scale” [3]. What are the crimes Native Americans have witnessed? What effects do these crimes have on the circumstances and behavior of the characters in Alexie’s stories?

The first thing that my mind recalls is where one of the characters (I couldn't find it in the book) comments that they don't trust papers anymore. I instantly remembered the

 incident with Chief Seattle and the broken treaty from the early 20th Century. I'm not sure of all the details and intricacies of what happened, but I do know that the U.S. government broke a treaty that they had with Chief Seattle and his tribe (I think it had to do with land rights). Maybe this could be what the character of Alexie's novel was talking about? Maybe they don't trust papers (or written documents) because of what happened to them in the past. Maybe they hold spoken vows and oaths high above that of written documents because for American Indians value upholding promises and keeping secrets. 

Another crime that American Indians have witnessed include the fallen battle at Wounded Knee. I think about the massacre that happened there and it's no wonder that American Indians still hold resentment about what happened. If the table was reversed, I don't think I would find some peace or understanding about that as long as I lived. It's so easy for me to say "get over it, that was in the past, we're different now" but events so vast, so large, which hold a magnitude of sorrow don't just disappear over one generation's memory. I think this is very applicable to the characters in Alexie's novel. I think that when the narrator refers to them as witnesses it makes everyone just onlookers to what is happening- which is how it's been for many generations for the American Indians. So many times they were helpless and unable to do anything about the absurdities that were happening to them. Yes, time helps to heal wounds, but sometimes that's not enough. Maybe that's why most tribes are turning to alcohol because they need something to mask the pain that they still have inside of them; a coping mechanism if you will. I don't think they believe that it will solve their problems, but it's a way for them to carry on without being consumed by sorrow.

-Matt talked about the dehumanization effect that the American Indians have faced due to their history. I found this very true, but it manifests itself in a myriad of ways other than with the American Indians that I think is relevant enough to discuss. Take for example those sweet doggie commercials with Sarah McLachlan or the grief-strickening commercials about starving children in the margins of society like this one: 

The more people are exposed to this type of media (the heightened pain, the global disasters, the millions of children suffering from starvation) over and over and over and over and over again, i truly think people being to become numb to it. They just see the next commercial as that- just another commercial with more starving children. And maybe, just maybe, this is what has happened to the American Indian nation. I'm not saying that they don't feel any pain or grief about the past, but I am suggesting that because they've been exposed to so much, that they have become used to that way of life (i'm also not saying that that makes it okay to futher oppressing that nation).