Poetry and Western Films
The Native American Poetic Response to Movies about the Old West
"History" of the West
Starting with the early silent films, Hollywood's representations of the "history" of Western expansion served a specific purpose, that of legitimizing and glamorizing the displacement of an entire people and the destruction of an entire culture. The Western myth of individualism was no more than a positive spin on the white consumption and expansion that destroyed the lives of countless Native Americans.
In the name of unifying and creating a nation, the West was "won." From whom and how exactly are questions with answers too harmful to American progress to be recorded accurately. As noted in The Invention of the Western Film, by Scott Simmon, the Western films' "falsifications of history's details claim[ed] to be at the service of a grander national truth" (114).
The Poetic Response
Confronted with horrific injustice, and popular culture's acceptance and insensitivity to it, it is no wonder that artists have risen up in protest. Poetry is one medium through Native American artists have tried to correct the lies communicate the truth about Native American experience.
Through their poetry, Native American writers attempt to abolish the mythic West and provide a true record, not only of what happened to their people, but how it continues to affect them today. For a people whose culture is based upon oral storytelling and communal, interactive accounts of history, this is no easy task.
In Elizabeth Cook-Lynn's "You May Consider Speaking about Your Art," she discusses the difficulties and motivations one struggles with as a Native American writer. Faced with her people's marginalization and dehumanization, Cook-Lynn says that writing comes out of "deprivation" (440). She also says that "writing, for me, then, is an act of defiance born of the need to survive" (440).
She faces an "inexhaustible legacy" which can be difficult to commit to paper since Native Americans often "see [themselves] omitted from the pages of written histories" (445). In this, as in so many things, Native Americans must conform to white European standards.
Cultural Survival
Yet even though poetry (or even the written word) isn't the preferred method of communication for Native American stories, their poetry still manages to establish a sense of identity and rootedness.
Professor Leni Marshall argues that some contemporary Native American writers' perform acts of social transmission necessary for cultural survival (37). She says that one of the goals of their writing is "to fill in the gaps in others' education" (37).
For a people displaced and alienated, poetry "claims and reclaims desired space and the space of desire... connection to land, to family, to a people, to home" (Gould 27).
References
Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth. "You May Consider Speaking about Your Art." The Woman that I Am. Ed. Madison, D. Soyini. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1994.
Gould, Janice. "Poems as Maps in American Indian Women's Writing." Speak to Me Words. Eds. Gould, Janice and Dean Rader. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2003.
Marshall, Leni. "Kiss of the Spider Woman: Native American Storytellers and Cultural Transmission." Journal of Aging, Humanities & the Arts 1.1-2 (2007), 35-52.
Simmon, Scott. The Invention of the Western Film. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
