Native America: an Introduction

By King Meera -
AMERICAN LITERATURE

Native America: continental drift 
glaciation (like Ice Age)
"Baelin"strait used by people to migrate 
DIFFERENCE between settlers occupants colonizers and invaders
Settlers: not harmful; may possibly gradually take over; nomadic
Occupants: authoritarian, encroach
Colonizers: set of people sent by "mother" country to get gold, silk, spices etc. Supposedly outsiders can support the natives in ttheir quest for upward mobility; Romans did it first
Invaders: take, loot, leave - like Scandinavians

Most info available about Native America is through the Europeans' questionable translations
Native America seen as:
-pagan
-respected women greatly no side-lining
-stories would largely depict beliefs about (i) nature of physical world (ii) social order and appropriate behavior (iii) *problem of goood and evil
-oral narratives
1 origin/emergence (creation, evolution)
2 historical (ancestors (lifestyle, tales of nomadic behavior, records about Europeans))
3 *trickster tales (coyote, fox& rabbit, animal characters, moral stories)
<nature-tribe bond very important>
-Dine'e means people
-ant people, bee people - then from people to man (ant man known, spider man known for web of life)
-no narration without performance 
-performance involves enacting, response(and reward), props, sounds of nature, painted faces
* whenever anyone in the tribe messed up, there'd be a performance
-outsiders often carriers of different disease (which locals are not exposed to and cannot fight off)
-Not aware of the value of what they have - got very little in return for the valuable things they gave 


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