Short Story Response

The short story “This is what it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” by Sherman Alexie often made various points about more modern Native Americans without explicitly saying anything. It overviewed the idea of the changes that Native Americans felt after being put in reservations as well as the traditional family feeling of a tribe or the lack of such feeling in modern day Native American reservations. When the main character Victor, need money to get to Phoenix in order to retrieve his father’s ashes he went to the Tribal Council in order to get the money that was necessary to travel to Phoenix. The council did not have a lot of money but they were able to give him one hundred dollars, which was not a lot but they said it was “the best we can do” (60). The Tribal Council was willing to help in any way possible in order to help out a member of the community. This shows the sense of family that Native Americans have within a community as they can rely on each other for help. I feel that in Deerfield we have this as well, which one thing I really respect about our town is. While it is not as much of a family feeling, it still seems that people are willing to step up when someone is hurt and needs help, such as with past School Chests that have helped Deerfield citizens and their charities.
One member of Victor’s community who really stepped up to help him was Thomas Builds-the-Fire. He did not have a lot of friends in the community and he was known as the storyteller of the community. He offered to lend Victor the money he needs to go to Phoenix as long as Victor agreed to bring him with. Victor was astounded by the offer and initially rejected saying “I haven’t hardly talked to you in years. We’re not really friends anymore” (62). Thomas countered saying that he wanted to be taken with so it wasn’t really an act of charity, but he was still doing a very nice deed for a seemingly random member of the community. Thomas represents that in the Native American community there are still some people that feel a bond to members of their community, one that is strong enough to make him help another member of the community in a time of need. It portrays the Native American reservation again as a family setting. I think that this is a crucial part of the Native American lifestyle and beliefs as they believe in having a strong community and they are very helpful to one another. This idea of family is shown in their everyday lifestyle as when Victor was a child he referred to Thomas as “cousin” (63). Something as simple as this really illustrates the sense of family within the community. Outside of this community the Native Americans do not get the same treatment and they are really outsiders in a land that they once roamed. When a lady on the airplane that Thomas and Victor were riding was nice Thomas commented on this fact. Victor responded by saying “everybody talks to everybody on airplanes”, “it’s too bad we can’t always be that way” (67). The Native Americans are not included outside of the reservation in the whites lifestyle as they are truly segregated in America today. Even inside of the reservation they still don’t talk to everyone as Thomas is rarely talked to. This could be a comment on the idea that the American culture has seeped into the Native American reservations. I believe this has occurred as the Native Americans in this short story do not seem to act anywhere near the same way as they did before the whites came onto their land. They did not fully integrate with the whites, but the whites still rubbed off on them. The lack of integration into society by the Native Americans is shown by Victor’s father as he left the reservation and lived in Phoenix. When he died “the only reason anyone found him was because of the smell” (68). Victor’s father was not found by friends who were looking for him when he died, but rather by other people who smelled his rotting body. His father had no friends and no sense of community when he left the reservation as he did not properly integrate with the people outside of the reservation. I believe most Native Americans probably had this issue as they had been used to having a strong sense of family their entire life and outside of the Native American reservations there is not as strong a sense of family in each community. The Native Americans were strangers outside of their reservation; they had been crushed into these small areas and did not know many people outside of the walls of the reservation. However the ideas of the outside world had become all too prevalent for Victor. When he and Thomas returned Thomas commented that he knew they would not be friends because of this experience. Due to this “Victor was ashamed of himself” and questioned “Whatever happened to the tribal ties, the sense of community?” (74). Victor was upset that there was not still such a strong family feeling in the community and that everyone was a family member and no one was to be excluded. This occurred because the ways of the Americans had probably soaked into the heart of the reservation. The Native Americans did not maintain their identity of a community feeling as much as they would have liked to. Community was still strong in the reservation, but not as much as Victor would have liked. The American way had obviously impacted the Native Americans as they celebrated the 4th of July. When this occurred, Thomas said it was strange that Indians celebrate Independence Day as “it ain’t like it was our independence everybody was fighting for” (63). In reality, Independence Day represented the exact opposite to the Native Americans as what it did for the Americans. It was the beginning of them losing their Independence and land, so they should not have celebrated it, but they did because white culture became a part of their culture. This is sad to me as whites not only took away their land but also their identity.

Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York : HarperPerennial, 1994. Print.